A month after it was declared, the Palestinian militant groups' truce is as fragile as ever, equally threatened by Israel's failure to press on with the peace roadmap and the Palestinian Authority's attempts to implement it.
Armed Palestinian militants have conditioned their suspension of attacks on a release of all 6,000 prisoners held by Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon demands the PA crack down on these same militants before taking significant steps.
Caught in the middle on that equation, the truce declared by four major militant groups on June 29 is coming under huge strain almost daily.
With Israel only approving the release of a small number of prisoners, some of them administrative detainees who were due to be freed soon anyhow, the two major signatories of the truce -- Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- have repeatedly threatened to resume their attacks.
On Saturday, Islamic Jihad issued a statement warning "the Zionist enemy that its continuing aggressions are going to force us to start the countdown to ending the truce." Hamas has issued similar threats in recent weeks.
Palestinian minister of state for security affairs Mohammad Dahlan also warned Sunday that Israel's failure to withdraw its troops from more Palestinian cities could "cause a renewed deterioration in the region".
While Hamas and Islamic Jihad want to see Israel deliver on some of its roadmap commitments, attempts by Palestinian prime minister Mahmud Abbas to implement his own obligations towards the same blueprint are proving just as dangerous for the future of the truce.
On Saturday, the Palestinian security services arrested 18 militants holed up in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, in a bid to comply with US and Israeli demands for a crackdown on wanted gunmen.
The move, unprecedented since the roadmap was launched at the June 4 Aqaba summit, sparked a furious reaction by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which immediately threatened to end its truce.
"We have ordered the resumption everywhere of our attacks and in particular suicide operations," the Brigades said in a statement distributed in several West Bank towns.
Another statement issued the next day assured the group was still committed to the "hudna" (Arabic for truce), but the movement's loose hierarchical structure and ambivalent attitude towards a ceasefire has somewhat blurred the picture.
On Sunday night, the group claimed responsibility for a shooting attack which wounded an Israeli woman and three children near the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem.
And on Monday morning, a member of the hardline faction was shot by Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank as he was allegedly laying a bomb to ambush them.
Yet, while Israel announced a freeze on any plans to transfer security responsibility to the Palestinians for more Palestinian towns, the ceasefire did not appear in immediate danger of collapse.
With Abbas under huge international pressure to bring calm back to the region, militant groups enjoying respite from military operations and the Israeli state feeling the financial strain of its army deployment, all sides have an interest in preserving the truce.
In an editorial entitled "Hudna intoxication", the Haaretz newspaper explained Monday that the truce, however fragile it was, was giving all sides time to sound each other out, predicting it would survive further hitches and be extended after it expires on September 29.
"If the hudna goes on, Israel will continue to provide a steady dribble of goodwill measures and both sides will wait -- at least until after the American presidential elections of 2004," the daily said.
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