MIDDLE EAST: If proof that a conflict is over lies in the emergence of rival claims to victory by the warring parties, then perhaps, after slightly more than 1,000 days, the intifada confrontation has reached its end, after costing 3,000 Palestinian and Israeli lives, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem.
But along with a declaration by the Israeli army's chief of staff that the war had been won by Israel and the retort by a Hamas leader that his fighters had prevailed, there was also no shortage of evidence yesterday that it was premature to regard the five- day-old intra-Palestinian ceasefire as marking a conclusive end to 33 months of confrontation.
In the West Bank city of Kalkilya, marchers in the funeral procession of Mahmoud Shawer his son into the air to enable him to let fire with an Uzi submachine gun, amid shouts from other mourners that the death would be avenged within 24 hours.
A leader of the al-Aqsa Brigades, an extremist off-shoot of Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction which has rejected the ceasefire, Shawer was shot dead by Israeli troops, the army said, when resisting arrest in an early morning raid. Palestinian sources claimed he was only wounded in the leg in the initial exchanges and killed subsequently.
In Gaza, meanwhile, the Israeli army temporarily blocked a key junction just days after opening it, following the firing of four anti-tank shells at a nearby Jewish settlement, injuring four Israelis. Two Palestinians were hurt when Israeli troops fired on a car on the same road in unclear circumstances.
Nevertheless, the much-improved climate of relations was underlined when the Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister played down the Shawer killing as the kind of incident which was inevitable "on the winding, mountainous road" to peace. Furthermore, the PA Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the Gaza shellfire at the settlements as an intolerable act of sabotage.
Intent on boosting Mr Abbas's credibility at the expense of Mr Arafat, Israel yesterday released a first group of more than 30 Palestinian security detainees. Mr Abbas insists that without "significant" numbers of the 5,000 Palestinian prisoners going free, the ceasefire will collapse.