Mideast peace hope after 1,000 days of carnage

AS the Palestinian uprising passed the 1,000-day mark amid unabated bloodshed, hope was emerging that an agreement

Opinions diverge on whether the intifada was really started by the controversial September 28, 2000 visit to east Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound by then opposition leader Ariel Sharon, often considered the spark which set the region ablaze.

However, the ensuing clashes, which claimed their first victims on September 29, clearly rung the death knell for the 1990s Oslo peace process, and swept in a new level of confrontation between the two sides.

Deep into the intifada's third year, international efforts for a political settlement are at their peak, amid hopes that the US-backed peace road map can put an end to the rampant destruction, which has caused the deaths of almost 3,400 people.

The unprecedented flurry of diplomatic activity has nevertheless failed to silence sceptics on both sides.

Detractors warn that the security agreement currently in the works between the sides is too reminiscent of a previous deal which collapsed last year after only a few weeks.

Some Israeli officials still favouring the military option charge that a truce with hardline Palestinian groups will only buy armed groups, such as Islamic radicals Hamas, time to reorganise themselves.

Some Palestinian voices have also charged that Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister since March 2001, is only paying lip service to the US-championed peace initiative and does not intend to deliver on his pledge to honour the plan's call for the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Tuesday also marked the anniversary of last year's landmark June 24 speech by US President George W Bush, which spelled out the White House's vision of an Israeli and a Palestinian state living in peace, one of the underpinnings of the road map.

In testament to the growing optimism, the Israeli tabloid Maariv carried an editorial on Tuesday entitled: "1,000 days End May Be in Sight".

Meanwhile, the media was carrying some of the most memorable and often grisly pictures from the intifada.

The two events which inflamed tempers early on were the widely-played footage of the young Mohammad al-Durra, who was shot dead in his father's arms in the Gaza Strip on the second day of the clashes, and the October 2000 lynching of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah.

Among the countless Palestinian suicide bombings which rocked Israel, two also stand out as turning points in the conflict.

The first was the June 2001 Dolphinarium bombing, which shocked international opinion and marked the beginning of a long series of suicide attacks. The second was the March 2002 attack known as the "Passover massacre", which triggered the army's massive invasion of the West Bank.

International attention also remained focused on the conflict when the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah were besieged in the spring of 2002.

Yesterday, developments in the parallel negotiations for a truce by Palestinian armed groups and a security agreement between Israel and the Palestinians offered hope the cycle of bloodshed may be drawing to a close.