Palestinian protests continued in the West Bank yesterday, a day after gun battles left at least four Palestinians dead and hundreds injured, but the violence was markedly less intense. And while Israeli and Palestinian leaders exchanged recriminations over Monday's vicious fighting, they also set about resuming peace efforts via the mediation of the visiting US peace envoy, Mr Dennis Ross.
About 20 Palestinians and five Israeli soldiers were injured in yesterday's clashes - in Ramallah, Bethlehem and other West Bank flashpoints - but there were no reports of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian policemen exchanging gunfire, as happened at several trouble spots on Monday.
Israel directly accused Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority of encouraging, and then losing control of, the Monday clashes, which coincided with "Nakba", or "catastrophe", day when the Palestinians mark the anniversary of Israel's establishment.
Mr Arafat's aides denied this, insisting that the clashes were a consequence of Palestinian frustration with the slow-moving peace process.
The executive committee of Mr Arafat's PLO issued a statement taking "great pride in the great popular awakening that swept all areas of our nation".
In contrast to the last major Israeli-Palestinian gun battles four years ago, when Israel was led by the hardline Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli government has fostered relatively warm ties with the Palestinian leadership.
The new violence, which included an attempted Palestinian attack on the Israeli-held Joseph's Tomb enclave in Nablus late on Monday night, was thus a blow to the Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak.
A right-wing demonstration in Jerusalem on Monday night, called to protest against the imminent handover of full control of three Jerusalem-area Palestinian villages to Mr Arafat, drew tens of thousands of participants, and the speakers included Rabbi Yitzhak Levy, whose National RReligious Party is quitting M Barak's government, and Mr Natan Sharansky, whose Russian immigrant party is considering following suit.
An opinion poll yesterday showed 57 per cent of Israelis opposing the transfer of control, which Mr Barak is delaying because of the West Bank violence.
As Mr Ross returned to the region to try to accelerate peace efforts yesterday, Mr Barak acknowledged that there were many obstacles ahead on the road to peace, and the army's West Bank commander, Shlomo Oren, expressed his dismay at what he called the Palestinian proclivity to "resort to violence" when negotiations ran into trouble.
That dismay was echoed by Israel's leading political columnist, Nahum Barnea, who asserted in an article yesterday that Mr Arafat was "a great believer in controlled terrorism", and accused the Palestinian leader of "playing with fire".
Mr Ross took a different view. "I am quite certain," he said after meeting Mr Arafat in Ramallah, "that his purpose and focus are very much geared to seeing that the negotiations with the Israelis succeed."
A mile away, on the edge of the city, Palestinians were burning tyres and throwing stones, and Israeli soldiers were firing rubber bullets.