Israeli troops were late last night ordered by their government to enact a quasi-ceasefire, Israel Radio reported, hours after the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, had called on the Palestinian Authority to join him in agreeing a "total truce" to end eight months of Intifada violence.
According to the radio report, the army was told not to initiate any actions against Palestinian targets, and soldiers were told to silence their weapons unless they themselves were fired upon or believed their lives to be in danger.
At a press conference earlier in the evening, Mr Sharon had broadly embraced an American initiative to stop the conflict, but had rejected a central feature of the recommendations of a committee chaired by the former US senator, Mr George Mitchell - the demand for a freeze in all building at Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
While he said Israel would not seek to occupy additional land for settlement, he insisted that the "ongoing needs" of the settlers would have to be met - an apparent euphemism for at least a limited programme of additional building at existing settlements.
Although the Palestinian Authority issued no immediate formal response to Mr Sharon's "truce" plea, aides to the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, indicated that there could be no ceasefire agreement without a settlement freeze. While welcoming the American initiative, Mr Jibril Rajoub, Mr Arafat's West Bank security chief, said that the onus was on the Israelis to "stop their attacks" and "stop the settlements".
President Bush applauded Mr Sharon's call for a cessation of violence, and a White House spokesman said the administration now hoped for a "similar statement" from Mr Arafat.
An upbeat Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, said earlier in the day that he envisaged an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue resuming within days. But Mr Peres is an optimist by nature, and it seems extremely premature to suggest that an end to the violence is at hand.
There were clashes all over the West Bank and Gaza throughout yesterday, with Israel sending troops briefly into Palestinian Authority-held areas of Gaza, Palestinians firing mortar shells across the border into Israel, and heavy gun-battles between Gilo and Beit Jala on the southern edge of Jerusalem. There were also Palestinian claims, flatly rejected in Israel, that the army has been dropping "poisoned chocolate" from planes into the Gaza Strip.
The argument over settlement building appears to constitute a major obstacle to long-term ceasefire hopes - as well as a potential major threat to the stability of Mr Sharon's government. Both Mr Peres and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Defence Minister, are now defying the Prime Minister and firmly backing the call for an immediate settlement freeze - and it cannot be long before the argument becomes angry and public.
Mr Peres and Mr Ben-Eliezer will come under tremendous pressure from their Labour party to bolt the government if it does not agree to freeze settlement building.
And Mr Ben-Eliezer, in particular, may find such pressure hard to resist: He is campaigning for the Labour party's leadership, and his main rival, the Knesset Speaker, Mr Avraham Burg, who chose not to join the government, said that it would be "madness" for the government not to endorse a freeze, and pitch Israel into further deadly violence, when there was no life-and-death need for more Jewish homes in the West Bank.
UN Security Council members yesterday called for an unconditional halt to Palestinian-Israeli violence and urged the two sides to immediately implement the Mitchell recommendations.