Finally holding their postponed talks at Gaza's airport yesterday morning, the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, and the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, agreed to "restart full security co-operation", make "maximum efforts" to solidify the current fragile ceasefire and meet again in a week or so as they work for a resumption of substantive peace negotiations.
The meeting, a tentative first step towards improved Israeli-Palestinian relations as the "Al-Aksa Intifada" reaches its first anniversary this week, only took place because of intense pressure on both sides from the Bush administration - which wants this conflict calmed so it can widen its anti-terror coalition to include Arab and Muslim states.
But the urgent need for a more stringently enforced ceasefire was underlined afresh as the two men - joint Nobel Peace laureates who now regard each other with deep suspicion - sat down together. Just hours beforehand, a bomb planted at the entrance to a nearby army base had injured three soldiers.
In the course of their meeting, further clashes broke out in the same area, just a few miles south of the airport, with the gunfire audible to the negotiators. A Palestinian teenager, it was later reported, was shot dead in the violence, and nine more Palestinians were injured. To the north, police were reporting an Israeli woman had been stabbed to death just inside the Israeli border with the West Bank.
The handshakes between the two leaders were tense and unsmiling. A press conference scheduled for the end of their session was cancelled.
But Mr Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, read out a joint communique - a text that had been prepared before the meeting but which Mr Arafat and Mr Peres had now approved. "The two sides will resume full security co-operation and exert maximum efforts to sustain the declared ceasefire," said Mr Erekat, reading from the statement. "And the government of Israel will begin to lift closures and redeploy its forces."
Mr Peres had said earlier the PA would now also begin arresting militants alleged by Israel to be orchestrating intifada violence and collecting illegally-held weaponry, but the statement made no reference to this. A first meeting of the joint security committee has been tentatively scheduled for Friday.
Islamic extremist groups reiterated yesterday that they did not intend to observe the ceasefire - and support for their stance is widening among the Palestinian public.
A survey among 1,200 Palestinians by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre shows 85 per cent support for continuing the intifada, and finds 49 per cent see its goal as "the liberation of all Palestine" - not just the West Bank and Gaza.
The same survey finds 85 per cent support for "armed operations" against Israeli targets, and shows support for Mr Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, at 29 per cent, barely outpolling Hamas, at 21 per cent.
If the findings illustrate the ominous decline in Palestinian backing for the shaky partnership exemplified by yesterday's talks, there is no shortage of hostile voices on the Israeli right either where it is argued that Mr Peres is helping to legitimise Mr Arafat, whom Mr Sharon has branded the local equivalent of Osama bin Laden.