The night sky on the southern edge of Jerusalem was filled with bright lights - not just the fireworks with which residents of the Giloh neighbourhood were marking Israel's 53rd anniversary of independence but also flashes of gunfire and shells which have become the norm in this area over recent months.
Independence Day gunfire from Palestinian areas left eight homes damaged in Giloh. Return fire from the Israeli army damaged homes in the nearby Palestinian town of Beit Jalah and the Aida refugee camp.
And the near-simultaneous booms and blasts overhead captured the Israeli mood: a defiant celebration in the midst of what Defence Minister Mr Binyamin Ben-Eliezer described yesterday as "a hard, long war".
One Israeli commentator described the period as "the most difficult and evil time in our history". And a "national mood" opinion poll in the leading daily Yediot Ahronot found that only 23 per cent of Israelis believe the country will be at peace with its neighbours 50 years from now. Some 24 per cent foresee imminent regional war.
Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of Israelis crowded streets, parks and beaches to celebrate independence, albeit amid heightened security.
In many parts of northern Israel, Israeli Arabs, far from celebrating, went back to the remains of villages which they or their parents had left during Israel's founding war of independence and repeated their longstanding demands to be allowed to rebuild their homes.
And in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where the establishment of Israel is marked as the day of "Nakba" or catastrophe, the violent confrontations continued. A Palestinian farmer, a father of seven, was shot and killed near the Bureij refugee camp, close to the Israeli-Gaza border. Israeli military sources said he had tried to cross the border and ignored their warning shots. Palestinian police said the man, Atef Wahdan (40), had been working in a citrus grove when Israeli troops fired on him from a tank.
Further south in Gaza, hundreds crammed the streets for the funerals of four men blown up in disputed circumstances on Wednesday night. According to Palestinian police, the four, three members of the Fatah force and a civilian, were killed when Israel detonated by remote control a bomb they were about to try to defuse.
However, a Fatah-linked group, Popular Resistance, vowing to avenge the killings, said the men had been about to plant a device to blow up Israeli tanks when they were themselves hit by an Israeli bomb.
Despite the violence between their forces, Israeli and Palestinian security officials are to meet this morning to try to work towards a ceasefire. Meanwhile, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, is setting out for meetings in Cairo, Amman and Washington designed to broker a return to peace negotiations.
Mr Peres, who is set to meet Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday, is believed to be ready to agree in principle to a Jordanian-Egyptian proposal which the Palestinians have already accepted.
Notwithstanding the diplomatic activity, Mr Marwan Barghouti, one of the key West Bank orchestrators of the intifada, vowed yesterday that nothing could stop it.
Israel's army chief-of-staff, Gen Shaul Mofaz, offered a similar assessment, saying he expected the conflict to go for a "relatively long" period, "not days, not weeks, not even months, in my opinion".