And in a carefully calibrated reconstruction of the first weeks of the nearly eight-month-old conflict, the committee said the outbreak of the deadly clashes could not be attributed solely to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's well-guarded stroll past Jerusalem's ancient mosques last September, as some Palestinians have said, nor to a preconceived effort by the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to unleash a bloody popular uprising, as Israeli officials have asserted.