New Delhi, Oct. 16 -- A fragile pause is being graded by forensics and forklifts: find the dead, feed the living, keep the clocks.

JERUSALEM - The deal that promised to stop the gunfire is being judged, in its first days, by what comes home under a white sheet. As dawn convoys from the International Committee of the Red Cross roll between checkpoints and floodlights, Israel counts the bodies of captives returned from Gaza and families gather to meet them with folded flags and trembling hands. The arithmetic is not only private; it is political. A cease-fire built to move in verifiable steps is now being measured against its most wrenching obligation: a credible accounting of the dead, and a process the public can trust.

The agreement's ...