To Israeli Settlers, Clash Is Sign of Worse to Come : Mideast: Arab attack on illegal Jewish encampment sparks outrage from both sides. Fourth suspect held in killing of Palestinian.

To Jewish settlers here, the terrible event that happened this weekend on a hilltop overlooking their West Bank enclave was not the fatal shooting of a young Palestinian but that emboldened Arabs dared to take on their community.

As Israeli police on Monday arrested a fourth suspect in connection with the killing, stunned residents insisted that the dozens of Arabs who destroyed the settlers’ illegal encampment should be jailed--not the Jews who shot at the Palestinians.

“Until now, the Arabs were afraid to come in here,” said Osnat Sharon, 36, a Beit El resident and mother of five. “In the last few years, they [the Arabs] were not afraid of the army anymore, but they were afraid of us. Now they are not afraid of us anymore. The minute the police arrest a person who acted in self-defense, next time they [the Arabs] will come to my house.”

To Beit El residents--and much of the country--the fatal hilltop confrontation is an omen of worse violence to come as Israel prepares to redeploy its troops in the West Bank under the second stage of the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.

On national television Monday night, leaders of the settlers’ Yesha Council warned that if the government does not stop “pogroms” like the Palestinian destruction of Beit El’s camp, Israeli settlers will retaliate against Arab villages.

Palestinian leaders responded that if the Israeli government does not control the settlers, Arabs will take the law into their own hands too.

Although settler leaders say they are committed to nonviolent civil disobedience, the potent fusion of anger and fear, of religious righteousness and centuries-old hatred between Arabs and Jews, suggests that this all could come to pass in the West Bank.

Like most of the more than 120,000 Jews in 128 West Bank settlements, Beit El residents live shoulder to shoulder with Arabs who covet the same craggy red land.

The settlers are unyielding in their view that the land they call by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria belongs to Jews and that the hilltops they are occupying around West Bank settlements are strategic outposts to guard their communities.

Certainly, from the top of the hill where the shooting occurred, all of Beit El is in range below. But who needs the high ground if there is to be peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

“There is no peace,” said Sharon, a devout Jew whose face shows displeasure when she speaks of Arabs. “They can be our neighbors, but to give up everything, this is not peace. . . . We don’t have to give them a country; we don’t have to give them independence. The Arab mentality is that they respect you if you are strong and smash you if you are weak.”

The settlers’ world is a seemingly incongruous mixture of siege mentality and show of strength.

To get to Beit El, 10 miles north of Jerusalem, one passes an army checkpoint at the Green Line, the pre-1967 border of Israel that signals the beginning of the West Bank. Buses carrying Jews into the predominantly Arab region are accompanied by a military vehicle with armed soldiers and emergency communications gear.

Beit El is a community of 600 suburban houses and mobile homes surrounded by a barbed-wire fence with armed guards at the entrance. An Israeli army base sits snug up against its side. Residents’ cars have reinforced glass--protection against Palestinian-hurled rocks. Many, if not most, settler men carry pistols on their hips or automatic rifles over their shoulders whenever they leave.

Sharon’s half of the community is devout. The women don hats and long skirts; the men wear skullcaps. The average family has five to seven children who go to schools segregated by gender, according to Jewish law; boys and girls even swim in the public pool during separate hours. Families look more to their rabbi for leadership than to any civil authority.

The community is its own universe. As Sharon speaks near a playground in the town square, neighbors pass on their way to mailboxes and to buy milk and bread at the grocery. Children on bicycles and skateboards circle the synagogue.

Beit El’s relations with the West Bank’s Arab majority are divided into two eras--before and after the intifada, the seven-year Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation.

Before the intifada, Sharon, a 16-year resident here, recalls taking her children into the nearby Arab town of Ramallah to shop with no fear at all. But the first sign of the uprising for Sharon was when her husband’s Arab mechanic warned him not to bring his car into Ramallah for repair.

Since then, Sharon has never gone into Ramallah, where Palestinians burned tires and threw rocks at Israeli soldiers Monday in anger over the Beit El killing.

She fears even having to stop on the highway between home and Jerusalem, as she did the other day. “I stopped the car for just a minute to clean the window and I was so scared. It was less than one minute,” she said.

Why does a woman stay in such hostile terrain? Sharon leans forward and states with determination: “Because this is my home.”

Her 8-year-old son was playing with a friend on the hilltop Sunday when the Arabs began marching toward the vacant encampment. He ran to warn the community.

According to journalists who were present, the Palestinians were armed with banners and Palestinian flags. But the settlers saw “murderers” marching with axes and hoes up a hill 200 yards from the swimming pool where their children played. “If my son had stayed up there a few more minutes, you would have come to visit me while I was sitting shiva ,” mourning over his body, Sharon contended.

On Monday, police arrested Zeev Lipsky on suspicion of firing the automatic weapon that killed the Palestinian victim. Settlers say one of them fired in the air to defend the community. They did not see an Arab hit by gunfire and doubt any Palestinian was fatally shot on the hill. They have turned their anger on the army, which they say had been tipped to the Arab plans but failed to warn the community or to protect it.

Yoav Barak, general secretary of the Beit El settlement, lamented the violence, yet added the outcome was not all bad. “I am not in favor of killing anyone, even if he is not acting appropriately,” Barak said. “On the other hand, I don’t think it is a bad message if the Arabs tell each other that if they do behave badly they will have to pay the consequences.”

When Sharon talks about Arabs and Jewish land, about the army and her son who came so close to an Arab mob, she nearly quakes with emotion. She is fed up with the dazzling word of peace, she says. Events have left her angrier than ever. “If the Arabs come again, we will shoot them,” Sharon said. “And not in the air.”