Violence on Both Sides Attacks like these have also driven some of the most extreme right-wing settlers to respond with violence.

Today Gush Emunim, the right-wing settlers' movement, decided to act on its own to begin new settlements, now that it seems likely that Likud will control the next government.

Through their searching conversation, she realizes that she has omitted in her study of Israel both the Arabs and the right-wing settlers.

In Israel, the group that most resembles the founding socialist Zionists, with their frowzy clothes, collectivist vision and unyielding dedication, are the right-wing Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

But then one young cadet, from the intelligence corps, stood up and asked if the Prime Minister did not think that the extreme right-wing Jewish settlers in the territories were helping to incite the violence.

Paradoxically, Mr. Sharon, the hope of the right-wing settlers and their supporters, is one of the few leaders who could enforce a mass evacuation policy if required by a peace agreement.

The factory workers of Mitzpe Shalem and the winemakers in Katzrin tend to be secular Israelis making products whose hedonistic appeal is far out of step with the generally right-wing and very religious settlers.

We meet right-wing Israeli settlers, radical Palestinians, fundamentalist Christians awaiting the Rapture and a host of freelance mystics, cult members and would-be saints.

It is fair to say that the elections make the prospect of eventual statehood seem more realistic, a point not lost on militant right-wing Jewish settlers.

Binyamin Kahane, a radical right-wing settler and son of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, was killed today along with his wife in an ambush shooting in the West Bank.