http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/18/international/middleeast/18MIDE.html?todaysheadlines=&pagewanted=print&position=top

November 18, 2002

On Hebron Ambush Site, a New Settlement Rises

By JAMES BENNET

EBRON, West Bank, Nov. 17 — It is because they believe that Abraham bought a cave to entomb himself and his family here 4,000 years ago that religious Jews feel they must live in Hebron
now.

It was because 12 Israelis were killed in an ambush here on Friday night that Naaman Menachan, a 20-year-old yeshiva student, came to a recently bulldozed Palestinian orchard on Saturday evening with a
submachine gun across his chest and a sleeping bag over his shoulder.

In Hebron, where the political and religious divisions are animated by death, a new settlement was born on Saturday. Following the tradition of their tenacious movement, settlers converted sorrow and anger into territorial gain, building a rough outpost near the site of the Friday ambush. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon endorsed the settlers' aims during a visit to Hebron today.

In the first 24 hours of the settlement's life, its builders went from pitching tents to hooking up water lines and a generator and, tonight, to discussing where to get closets and carpeting. By dusk, Israeli boys were laughing and playing soccer on a field where they had never dared to venture before, as soldiers set up a seven-foot-high concrete barrier around the new community.

Held under curfew for a second day, Palestinians watched the bustle silently from surrounding rooftops, then withdrew into their houses as night fell.

Nowhere else in Israel and its occupied territories do Israelis and Palestinians live as close together and as far apart as in Hebron.

The Hebrew root of "Hebron" is the same of that of "to unite," and the Arabic name of the city, El Khalil, is based on the word for a close friend. Yet peaceful coexistence died bloodily here decades ago, to
be replaced by fear and seemingly irreconcilable claims. This is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's frontier, and perhaps its future.

Gazing at the darkened Palestinian houses, Mr. Menachan tried to envision the city in 20 years. "What I hope is, no Arabs," he said, as a fire made of brambles and olive branches crackled nearby. "If they
continue to make trouble, no Arabs, and a Jewish city. If they're good people — if they know this is our land, that God gave it to us — they can stay.

"If they behave like animals," he added, nodding at the site of the shooting, "then not."

About 150,000 Palestinians live in Hebron. Inside the city, near the Cave of the Patriarchs, venerated by Jews and Muslims as Abraham's tomb, 450 Jews live in an intently guarded settlement that was
started in 1979.

Less than half a mile away, at Hebron's edge, is another religious settlement, Qiryat Arba, with about 7,000 residents. It was established after the 1967 war, when Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan
and Jews returned to the city for the first time in 20 years.

The ambush on Friday took place along an exposed road between those two settlements, in the Israeli-controlled section of the city. The Israeli Army initially said the attack was on Jewish worshipers, but it appears to have been directed at security forces who guard settlers. Three security guards from Qiryat Arba were killed, along with five members of the border police and four soldiers, including the
commander of forces in Hebron.

By sundown on Saturday, when the Sabbath ended, settlers were grieving and seething. More than 1,000 of them gathered next to the road, where a Palestinian orchard had recently been bulldozed after another attack. The dirt had been graded as though in preparation for building.

In between somber psalms, speaker after speaker called for the creation of a new settlement on the spot to join Qiryat Arba to the settlement inside Hebron.

"There won't be just a Jewish neighborhood here," declared Benny Elon, a member of Parliament. "There will be a Jewish town here."

After the rally, some youths tried to run into Palestinian Hebron, only to be turned back by Israeli forces. In a turbulent crowd, they pounded on the doors of nearby Palestinian houses and then smeared the
pale stone with blue graffiti: "Every Arab killed — for me it's a holiday," and, over and over, "Vengeance."

What happened down on the field, by contrast, was calm and purposeful.

A man in running shoes, jeans and a prayer shawl strode to the edge of the clearing and began praying intensely, bending rapidly back and forth at the waist over his prayer book. The outpost took shape
around him during the next four hours, as midnight approached.

A truck pulled up and, without a word, the driver unloaded a water tank the size of a small car beside the praying man, who did not look around. Steps away, two dozen young people formed a bucket
brigade and began pulling stones from an old wall beside another orchard, passing them along to build an enclosure behind a green trailer.

First a lean-to appeared, then three silver tents were pitched. Benches were set up, and a rabbi began leading a group in prayers and songs. A flatbed truck arrived carrying a red container for conversion to
a shelter.

The work proceeded even though those working at the site did not have a formal permit to build a new settlement and did not know who owned the land.

Children gathered by the olive-tree bonfire to watch. "Because people died here, we must be here," said Sophie Guveri, 15.

To a stranger, the children told stories of Arab deceit and cruelty: there was the Palestinian who cleaned for the mayor and stole maps of Qiryat Arba; there were the Palestinians who abused their jobs in an
Israeli metal shop to make weapons.

And then there was the attack on Friday. David Frank, 16, lived next door to one of the Qiryat Arba guards who was killed. He recalled watching each morning as the man lingered to play with a young son
before reluctantly leaving for work. "Friday morning I saw him with his child, and now he's gone," the teenager said. "We can't leave. We'll stay here together."

A small community of Jews lived alongside an Arab majority in Hebron for hundreds of years. But as the national aspirations of the two peoples began to grow in the 20th century, so did the violence. In
1929, Arabs rampaged here, killing 67 Jews, including women and children, and burning Torah scrolls. Jews drew profoundly different lessons from that massacre, said Avraham Burg, the speaker of the
Israeli Parliament. Until the riot, Mr. Burg's family had lived here for seven generations.

He said his mother, then a baby, survived because her grandfather's Arab landlord posted himself in the doorway and took a savage beating to protect the family. But other family members who hid with
Mr. Burg's great-uncle were killed. Now, he said, his family was split.

"Half will never believe any Arab — you will find them in each settlement," he said. "And half of my family you will find in the peace camp, looking for the individual Arab who will overcome the mob
and make peace with us."

Asked if Jews and Palestinians could coexist here, Mr. Burg said, "It's impossible, and it cannot become possible. We're talking about a deeply religious city that attracts the fundamental emotions on both
sides. It attracts extremism, intolerance and inability to compromise."

In 1980, just after Jews moved back into Hebron, six Israelis were killed, also on a Sabbath eve.

In 1994, a doctor from Qiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, originally of Brooklyn, opened fire on Muslims at prayer here. He killed 29 and wounded 150 before he was beaten to death. He remains something
of an underground hero here.

The Palestinian mayor of Hebron, Mustafa Natsheh, said the settlers "have no intention at all to coexist with our people." The "original Jews of Hebron" would be welcome to return, he said, provided that
Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war, when Israel declared independence, were granted the right to return to homes in Israeli cities like Haifa and Jaffa.

"The settlers are not the original Jews of Hebron, and these people are trying to create tension and chaos," he said. "They look on us as their enemy."

Mr. Natsheh seemed unsurprised by the new settlement, calling it the realization of an old plan to link Qiryat Arba to Hebron.

At the funeral today of the three settler guards, Zvi Katsover, a leader of the Hebron settlement, suggested that the settlers had capitalized on an opportunity provided by the attack on Friday night. "We have
created a new settlement outpost, and it would have been a historic sin not to have made use of this occasion," he said.

Today, the water tank was supplemented by a sink, connected to a pipe run from Qiryat Arba. Israeli children yanked up radishes from a Palestinian field, until Israeli police officers shooed them away.

This evening, settlers connected a roaring generator to electric lights strung from a half-dozen shelters. On benches, a group of organizers urgently discussed how to get food, furniture and chemical toilets.
They had not yet turned to the question of a name for the settlement.

"This is how we will avenge our dead," said one of the organizers, Bella Gonen.

Although shut in, Palestinians monitored the construction. Thawre Jabr, 19, lives with her mother and five relatives in a house by the lane where the ambush was laid. She said settlers had tried to break in
and drive the family out. "If we leave, they will take the house," said Ms. Jabr, an architecture student. "They want to make a street just for settlers and take the houses from all sides."

Ms. Jabr is no stranger to the violence of the conflict. She said that her father, who died this spring, served 15 years in jail for killing a settler. Although she feared she would die during the firefight on
Friday, she clearly took pride in the attack. "When they killed them," she said of the Palestinian gunmen, "they tried to liberate our country."

Jewish settlers here expressed no doubt that God deeded them this land.

"This is more ours than Tel Aviv," said Meir Menachem, a teacher of history and Judaism and a leader in Qiryat Arba. "This is the land of the Bible, not Tel Aviv."

Mr. Menachem, 43, said the new settlement would survive if its creators were stubborn enough. "We are a very stubborn nation," he said.

Predicting that Palestinians would vanish from Hebron, he said, "This is our land, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We returned here after 2,000 years, and we don't have any other place to go."

Mr. Menachem said he had buried more than 30 friends since he moved here in 1979.

"Until the Messiah will come," he said, "there will be no peace." He said the Messiah would come soon.