NEWS ANALYSIS : Extremists Square Off in West Bank : Middle East: The actions of Israelis and Palestinians opposed to peace settlement imperil the whole process.

Although the Middle East peace talks have so far gone nowhere, Israelis and Palestinians opposed to the process are marshaling forces to disrupt it through political action and by aggravating tensions in the volatile West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hardened attitudes and dangerous activities reflect a classic convergence of interests between the extremes in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Violence by shadowy Palestinians groups fuels angry calls by Israeli settlers for a crackdown. That crackdown undermines any good faith that might be left in the West Bank and Gaza. The government’s brash plans to colonize the occupied lands, in turn, nourish charges that Palestinian negotiators are selling out their countrymen.

“Already there is turbulence, and the peace talks have made no progress. Imagine what will happen if something concrete really lands on the table,” commented Ehud Sprinzak, a political scientist and author of a new book on Israel’s radical right. “There will be more and more demonstrations, illicit settlements and, if the Arabs make violence, more and more vigilantism. The confrontation is built in.”

Elon Moreh, a cluttered settlement of bungalows and mobile homes that overlooks the big Palestinian town of Nablus, is a crossroad of extremist traffic.

One night last month, gunmen ambushed a car carrying a settler to the main north-south road. He was wounded, and settlers retaliated by uprooting olive groves along the roadside and conducting vandalism raids on nearby Arab villages.

A rabbi at Elon Moreh counseled his congregation to pull up the trees and to shoot Palestinians, if anyone “thinks he can prove in court he was in danger.” The settlers are also organizing caravans into Palestinian towns and villages to force the army to patrol with more vigilance and deprive the Arabs of any feeling that they control the byways of the disputed land.

“It is inconceivable that in our own land we cannot travel on any road we want,” said Elyakim Levanon, one of the newly vocal rabbis who believe that the Bible gives Israel exclusive claim to the land.

Recently, settlers removed a roadblock placed by the army at the entrance to the Palestinian village of Mazraa Sharqiya. They distributed pamphlets warning residents that “we will know how to react if someone tries to attack us.”

The settlers’ campaign is wedded to the drive by the Israeli right wing to keep all of the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli sovereignty. Underlying the campaign to open roads, for example, is an effort to demonstrate that the region can, in no way, be separated from Israeli dominance and put in Palestinian hands.

As a step to peace, Israel’s negotiators are expected to offer Palestinians limited autonomy, under Israeli control. The settlers and far-right politicians fear that any kind of self-rule--even the personal and cultural autonomy envisioned by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir--will lead to a Palestinian state.

“Roads that are closed to us mean de facto autonomy,” complained Rabbi Levanon.

In a manifesto published Thursday, settler groups outlined the link between their aggressive campaign and the larger goal of keeping the land. “New communities will be constructed to bring home the fact that terrorism will not uproot us from our homes and homeland,” the statement said.

The Shamir government has needed little prodding to expand settlements, which officials also view as a means to preclude Palestinian control over their surroundings. Several settlements were opened in the past year, and more than 18,000 homes have been built in the West Bank and Gaza since April, 1990, the fastest pace of construction in the 24 years of Israeli occupation. About 100,000 Israelis live in settlements among Palestinian towns and villages populated by 1.7 million Arabs.

The small right-wing factions in Parliament that give Shamir a slim ruling majority have threatened to withdraw their support if the peace talks turn toward the means of granting Palestinians self-rule. “We have to teach the settlers what autonomy means,” said Elyakim Haetzne, a member of the Tehiya Party. “It means a Palestinian state.”

Attacks on settlers along West Bank and Gaza roads have wakened settlers to the threat to their lives and livelihoods emanating from the peace talks, Haetzne maintained. “People are becoming aware of the real meaning of autonomy.”

Haetzne lives in Kiryat Arba, one the best-known militant settlements in the West Bank. Settlers from there also began a campaign to move through out-of-the way Arab villages to make the point that Israel is in charge. Settler patrols have been formed to fan out onto highways in case of a violent attack.

Haetzne denies there is a move afoot to set up vigilante squads. “We move, armed, anyway,” he pointed out. “So why do we have to set up patrols?”

Besides the makings of a revolt against the peace talks, the settler-right wing alliance is, in effect, protesting the evolution of government policy in the West Bank and Gaza. Two years ago, the government largely pulled back its patrols from outlying areas and focused instead on securing main highways that settlers use to travel through the disputed land. The move reduced tensions in many Palestinian areas because, without the presence of soldiers and settler traffic, the Palestinians lacked targets to strike at.

But the pullback also gave the Palestinians a sense of minor accomplishment because they had at least shed a sliver of the occupation. The settlers bitterly agree, claiming that the army, by letting Palestinians alone, had permitted armed Arabs to have sanctuary in places where soldiers rarely go.

In the settlers’ minds, recent armed attacks on them by Palestinians prove the government has been lax, despite a toll of more than 800 Palestinian dead in four years of clashes with security forces. About 60 Israeli soldiers and civilians have also died in the violence of the intifada , or uprising.

“The army is losing control,” said Benny Katsover, a settler leader at Elon Moreh.

Most Israeli and Palestinian observers concur that the outbreak of attacks--four settlers have been killed on the roads since October--is linked to rejection by Palestinian extremists of the peace talks and not to Israeli military policy. There is disagreement about whether the outbreak indicates random dissatisfaction with the peace process or is part of an organized campaign to provoke the Israelis into pulling out of the talks.

Palestinians associate the attacks with desperate groups of Arab youths who believe they are on army hit lists and subject to being shot in the street if fingered. “These men believe they are already dead, so they have no trouble taking the risk of taking up arms,” said a Palestinian political scientist.

Israeli experts tie the shootings, as well as a spate of grenade and firebomb attacks, directly to the talks. “There is a concerted effort to hit Israeli targets,” asserted Brig. Gen. Danny Yotam, the new military commander of the West Bank. “There is not a vast number of gunmen, but we expect an increase in these activities.”

In Washington, Jordanian and Palestinian peace negotiators arrived Thursday to resume face-to-face talks with Israel. An Israeli official said the talks could resume as early as Sunday. But the official said this round will be a short one because the Israeli delegation is determined to go home next Wednesday.

Eliakim Rubinstein, Israel’s chief negotiator, who conferred by telephone Thursday with Haidar Abdul-Shafi, the chief Palestinian delegate, predicted that a procedural dispute which hamstrung the talks last month will be settled quickly.

But an Israeli delegate conceded that it will be difficult to make much substantive progress until after Israeli elections later this year. “It is not an easy year to negotiate,” he said.

Meantime, several Palestinian groups have publicly rejected the talks. Two Marxist factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization have linked up with the main Islamic nationalist group, Hamas, to oppose the negotiations.