While diplomatic efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire were mired in confusion yesterday, there was no mistaking the escalation of violence in the West Bank, Gaza and inside Israel itself.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, cosponsor with Jordan's King Abdullah of a proposal to end the violence and get the battling sides back to the peace table, emerged from a meeting with Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, to announce that "both Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to a ceasefire" and that peace negotiations would resume after a four-week test period.
Coming after seven months of violence which has seen some 400 Palestinians and 70 Israelis killed, this sounded like a dramatic and welcome breakthrough. However, it turned out the President's announcement was news to the parties themselves. They were still arguing over the terms of a possible cessation of hostilities, with Israel opposing the freeze in building at Jewish settlements envisaged by the Egyptian-Jordanian proposal, and the Palestinians firmly resisting Israeli calls for its amendment.
Mr Yossi Sarid, a left-wing Israeli opposition leader who happened to be meeting the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, when Mr Mubarak made his announcement, said that the Palestinians were taken completely by surprise. While he believed they were ready for a ceasefire, this would only follow an Israeli declaration of a settlement freeze. This was something Israel's pro-settlement Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, was unlikely to authorise.
Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, a minister in Mr Arafat's cabinet, emerged immediately to deny the ceasefire reports, noting that Israel had yet to say yes to the EgyptianJordanian initiative.
Mr Peres also held talks yesterday with King Abdullah - again with settlement building high on the agenda - before flying to Washington for a meeting with the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell.
Mr Peres, who appears to be negotiating on several fronts simultaneously - with the Egyptians, the Palestinians, and between the bickering factions in Mr Sharon's "unity government" - said Israel would take "unconditional, immediate steps" to ease living conditions for the Palestinians. These would include issuing thousands more work permits for labourers hitherto banned from entering Israel.
While the various negotiating parties sought to clarify the status of the stopstart ceasefire effort, it was bloodshed as all-too-usual on the ground. In the heart of northern Israel on Saturday night, an Israeli soldier was shot dead in his car by gunmen in a vehicle which pulled up alongside him. In Bethlehem a few hours earlier, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man, alleged by Israel to have been involved in intifada violence, in his car. His five-year-old son was hit in the eye.
Early yesterday, an apparent suicide bomber detonated explosives in his car alongside a bus carrying 40 students to school from settlements in a northern sector of the West Bank. The bus sustained minor damage and the apparent bomber was found dead in his car. Two hours later, a bomb was spotted and defused in the Israeli town of Netanya.
There were also intermittent gunbattles in parts of Gaza. An Israeli tank fired at two refugee camps in response to gunfire and mortar fire at settlements in the strip. Six Palestinians were injured.
Mr Peres said that Mr Arafat was "boiling with rage" at the mortar fire and had repeated his orders that it be stopped.
One of Mr Peres's cabinet colleagues, hard-line Internal Security Minister Mr Uzi Landau, derided the notion of Mr Arafat seeking to stop the violence. He said it was time Israel treated the Palestinian leader "more like Saddam Hussein".