Two doomsdays have, for now, been postponed. The threat of a return to an all-out intifada by Palestinian militant factions, after the heaviest fighting seen this year between them and the Israeli army, was averted when both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions said they would return to a ceasefire brokered in March. And the threat of a split in Israel's Likud party was deferred after the party's central committee voted narrowly not to bring forward the leadership primaries that will pit Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, against his main rival, Binyamin Netanyahu. Both events showed a triumph of reason over instinct. The trigger for the violence was an explosion at a Hamas rally in the Gaza strip on September 23rd that killed 21 people. A mishandled Hamas rocket, said both Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which obliquely called it a "work accident".
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