Since the start of the second Palestinian uprising more than four years ago, many children have died in the gunfire. But it is the harrowing image of a terrified 12-year-old boy, shielded in vain by his father, that carries the iconic power of a battle flag.

Egypt and Tunisia issued postage stamps of the boy, Muhammad al-Dura, crouching against his father and under attack from a fusillade of bullets in September 2000. Egypt named a street in his honor, and suicide bombers invoked the boy as a martyr in videotaped farewells.

Far from Gaza's street battles, in France, the scene is a picture worth a thousand arguments. Here, debate seethes about whether the televised footage of Muhammad al-Dura was genuine, misinterpreted or — as an American academic put it — artfully staged "Pallywood" theater...

...A 2002 German documentary, "Three Bullets and a Child: Who Killed the Young Muhammad al-Dura?" tried to address lingering questions about whether the boy was killed by Israelis or Palestinians.

Last week, the debate gained fresh momentum after a prominent French editor and an independent television producer broke ranks in the country's media circles and wrote a cautious article in the newspaper Le Figaro, expressing some doubt about the photo's authenticity.

"That image has had great influence," said Daniel Leconte, a former correspondent for France 2. "If this image does not mean what we were told, it is necessary to find the truth." ...

...When the report was first broadcast, France 2 offered its exclusive footage free to the world's television networks, saying it did not want to profit from the images.

The scenes were filmed by its Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu Rahma, who was the only one to capture images of what Mr. Enderlin characterized then as the killing of a child by gunfire from an Israeli position. Mr. Enderlin was not present during the shooting.

Esther Schapira, a German producer in Frankfurt, said she tried unsuccessfully in preparation for her 2002 documentary to see a master copy of the tape and was astonished when France 2 did not share it because European stations commonly exchange material. "If there is nothing to hide," she said of France 2's initial reluctance, "what are they afraid of?"

When critical articles started appearing in publications like The Atlantic Monthly in the United States, Mr. Enderlin wrote letters insisting: "We do not transform reality. But in view of the fact that some parts of the scene are unbearable, France 2 was obliged to cut a few seconds from the scene."

In many ways, Mr. Enderlin argues, the video has become a cultural prism, with viewers seeing what they want to see. "It's a campaign," he said, "because the video was used as a symbol by the Palestinians as a propaganda tool."

Richard Landes, a Boston University professor specializing in medieval cultures, studied full footage from other Western news outlets that day, including the pictures of the boy.

"We could argue about every frame," he said. But after watching the scenes involving Muhammad al-Dura three times, he concluded that it had probably been faked, along with footage on the same tape of separate street clashes and ambulance rescues.

"I came to the realization that Palestinian cameramen, especially when there are no Westerners around, engage in the systematic staging of action scenes," he said, calling the footage Pallywood cinema.

As questions were raised, some France 2 executives privately faulted the channel's communication. Last week, they showed The International Herald Tribune the original 27-minute tape of the incident, which also included separate scenes of rock-throwing youths.

The footage of the father and son under attack lasts several minutes, but does not clearly show the boy's death. There is a cut in the scene that France 2 executives attribute to the cameraman's efforts to preserve a low battery.

When Mr. Leconte and Mr. Jeambar saw the full footage, they were struck that there was no definitive scene showing that the boy had died. They wrote, however, that they were not convinced that the scene was staged, but only that "this famous ‘agony' that Enderlin insisted was cut from the montage does not exist." ...