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HEBRON, West Bank -- After a quick prayer, Avi Shapiro and 12 other Jewish settlers put on their religious skullcaps, grabbed their semiautomatic rifles and headed toward Highway 60.

There, they pushed boulders, stretched barbed wire and set tires afire to form a barricade that, they said, would stop even the biggest of Palestinian taxis. Then they waited for a vehicle to arrive.

As they crouched in a ditch beside the road, Shapiro, the leader of the group, gave the settlers orders: Surround any taxi, ''open fire'' and kill as many of the ''blood-sucking Arab'' passengers as possible.

''We are doing what (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon
promised but has failed to do: drive these sons of Arab whores
from the Land of Israel,'' said Shapiro, 42, who moved here
with his wife and four children 3 years ago from Brooklyn. ''If he
won't get rid of the Muslim filth, then we will.''

Claiming they have been abandoned by Israel's government and determined to rid the West Bank of Arabs, vigilante Jewish settlers are shooting and beating Palestinians, stealing and destroying their property and poisoning and diverting their water supplies, Israeli and Palestinian officials say.

Though Jewish extremists have lashed out before -- most notoriously in 1994 when a U.S. settler, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down 29 Arabs in a nearby mosque -- never before have they struck with such frequency, Israeli officials say. And nowhere has the violence been as intense as in this disputed city, believed to be the burial place of the Biblical prophet Abraham.

Nearly 450 right-wing Jews, all of whom are armed and claim a Biblical right to the land, live here among 120,000 Palestinians. Many, like Shapiro and his colleagues, are ready to strike at any time.

Israeli and U.S. officials have warned Sharon that if the violence against Palestinian civilians increases, it could enflame already high emotions and lead the entire region into war.

''It only takes a spark to light a very big fire here,'' says Yossi Sarid, a left-wing Israeli opposition leader. ''This is a city that is cursed.''

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