The Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, has forged a political truce with militant Islamic groups to create a united front in their struggle against Israel, Palestinian officials and analysts said yesterday.
But the alliance is fragile, may not last much beyond the current wave of clashes and does not offer any evidence that Mr Arafat has condoned any bombings, the analysts said.
The truce includes Islamic Jihad, which admitted responsibility for a suicide bombing in Gaza on Thursday, and Hamas, which has in the past waged bombing campaigns against Israel. Both groups oppose peacemaking with the Jewish state.
The groups are now invited to meetings with Mr Arafat and other leading political groups in Gaza and take part in "field co-ordination" of protests.
But the Palestinian political analyst, Mr Ghassan al-Khatib, noted: "This kind of a relationship would soon end if issues returned to the negotiating table . . . The relationship would go back to the way it was before the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada."
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, until recently Mr Arafat's partner at peace talks, has also regrouped to tackle the unrest.
He is trying to woo the rightwing politician, Gen Ariel Sharon, blamed by the Palestinians for the unrest, into a coalition government.
The usually differing Palestinian factions have been brought together by the Intifada, or uprising, named after the al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem.
At least 133 people, almost all of them Palestinians or Israel Arabs, have been killed in the bloodshed.
The clashes began on September 28th after Gen Sharon visited the area, known by Jews as Temple Mount. Palestinians said that he had defiled the shrine by visiting it.
In the first suicide bombing since the clashes began, a Palestinian on a bicycle blew himself up beside an army post in Gaza on Thursday, slightly injuring one soldier.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have long had major disagreements with Mr Arafat, and opposed the signing of Israel's first peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993.
But Mr Khatib said Palestinian opposition groups had been pleased to work with Mr Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction on keeping alive the struggle against 33 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas leader, Mr Mahmoud al-Zahhar, said the suspension of peace talks with Israel and the involvement of Fatah in the Intifada had opened the door wider to a better relationship.
"We cannot say that the Palestinian Authority has abandoned the option of negotiations but at least they have added another factor to the solution - the Intifada," he said.
"They have tried negotiations for years and when the moment of truth arrived they discovered we were right from the outset."
Mr Zahhar said Mr Arafat could not afford to neglect the anger of the Palestinian people over the peace process, which had not brought the results they had hoped for.
Mr Jamil Majdalawi, a leader of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which also opposes peace with Israel, said meetings between the various factions and the Palestinian Authority would continue to bolster national unity.
Mr Marwan Barghouthi, a Fatah leader in the West Bank, said Fatah was co-operating with various national and Islamic groups over "daily Intifada activities".
"We are very proud of this wonderful unity we are living as a people, as factions and as a leadership," he said.