Despite the first arrests by Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority of militants alleged to be orchestrating attacks on Israeli targets, an Israeli kibbutz member was blown up yesterday by a suicide bomber from the Islamic Jihad extremist group.
Mr Yair Mordechai, a father of five from Kibbutz Shluhot in northern Israel, was leaving the kibbutz yesterday morning when he stopped his car alongside a Palestinian teenager who was walking towards the kibbutz, eyewitnesses said. The teenager, who came from the nearby West Bank town of Jenin, then detonated explosives he had strapped to his body, killing them both.
The bombing underlined the opposition among Palestinian militant factions to increasingly urgent ceasefire calls from Mr Arafat.
An official Palestinian Authority cabinet statement at the weekend warned "all those who are trying to violate" the ceasefire that they were "deviating from the national interest and the national unity of the Palestinian people".
Nevertheless, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even the Palestinian Authority leader's own professed loyalists in the Fatah faction and the Tanzim militia, are openly defying the ceasefire effort - and, by extension, challenging Mr Arafat's authority. Mr Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah chief in the West Bank, for example, said almost derisively that the year-long Intifada "didn't begin with a decision, and will not end with a decision from anyone."
Although Israeli officials say it is premature to assess Mr Arafat's latest ceasefire efforts, four or five Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists have been taken into Palestinian Authority custody.
In Tulkarm, in the West Bank, about 1,000 Palestinians demonstrated against the arrest of the local Hamas spokesman, Mr Abbas Sayed.
Mr Arafat's security chiefs have also been meeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders to warn them against further attacks, and Mr Arafat has replaced some of his officials in areas where the ceasefire has been most violated - including Bethlehem and Rafah, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip.
While groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are publicly committed not merely to the Intifada but to the destruction of Israel, the opposition from "loyalist" figures like Mr Barghouti reflects the Palestinian public mood - which is ferociously anti-Israel.
Mr Barghouti and others have pointed out that close to 30 Palestinians have been killed since Mr Arafat and the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, met to formalise the ceasefire less than two weeks ago - including another two in Hebron on Saturday.
Israeli officials counter that their military actions are a direct response to Palestinian shooting attacks. In Hebron, for instance, where at least eight Palestinians have been killed in recent days, the army has captured two previously PA-held neighbourhoods after gunmen there opened fire on two consecutive days last week at Israeli worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Meanwhile yesterday, relatives of the Israelis who died last Thursday when a Siberian Airlines plane crashed into the Black Sea set off for the crash scene.
Some of the relatives have complained that Israel has given relatively little attention to the incident, with no national mourning ceremony yet scheduled, asserting that this is because most of the victims were recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union rather than "veteran" Israelis.