The fragile Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire was still holding last night, with the killings of two Palestinians and one Israeli, apparently by gunmen acting beyond the control of their respective authorities, producing a ghoulish kind of balance of violence.
Formally initiated at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the ceasefire - brokered by CIA Director Mr George Tenet and designed to end almost nine months of violence - was fatally violated for the first time late on Wednesday night, when gunmen opened fire on a Palestinian truck in the West Bank, killing Mr Awni Ali (45) and injuring three members of his family.
The Palestinian assertion that the gunmen were Jewish vigilantes - initially rejected by Israeli officials - was acknowledged later by Israeli sources to be probably accurate.
The Council of Jewish Settlements condemned the killing, while other settler leaders predicted more such attacks.
Hours after that killing, on the main road linking Jerusalem to Bethlehem, a Palestinian gunman shot dead a senior Israeli intelligence officer and was then killed himself. By all accounts the killings occurred at a planned meeting between Israeli Col Yehuda Edri and his Palestinian intelligence agent, Mr Hassan Abu Sheira. Mr Abu Sheira approached the vehicle and shot Col Edri in the head. A bodyguard chased, shot and killed him.
Masked activists from Fatah, Mr Yasser Arafat's mainstream faction of the PLO, took responsibility for the attack, and praised Mr Abu Sheira, in an interview screened by Abu Dhabi television. They said while they would honour the ceasefire in those parts of the West Bank under full Palestinian control - they would "continue to pursue settlers everywhere, until they leave our land".
Despite the killings, and intermittent mortar fire at settlements in Gaza, some Israeli and Palestinian officials were sounding slightly more optimistic about the ceasefire's prospects. Mr Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian negotiator, said the truce could prove "a turning point" and that the Palestinian Authority was determined to enforce it.
Now, he added, the Israelis needed "to announce a settlement freeze, and to announce their compliance with the concept of permanent status negotiations".
Gen Doron Almog, Israel's military commander in Gaza, said that while there had been some violations, the ceasefire was generally being honoured. And Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, told ministerial colleagues that Israel was withdrawing some of its tanks in parts of Gaza, Nablus and Ramallah, and would continue to do so in areas where the ceasefire was observed. But there would be no easing of restrictions, he said, in areas where gunfire continued, and the "cooling-off period" before a planned settlement freeze would not start until all the shooting had stopped.
Several thousand Syrian troops are moving out of Beirut toward the mountains of central Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, in a major redeployment. The pullout, mainly from Christian areas of the Lebanese capital, comes amid growing calls in Lebanon for Syria, Lebanon's patron state, to withdraw all 30,000 of its soldiers, following Israel's withdrawal of its troops to the international border last year.