Arab Slain; Jewish Militants Claim Responsibility : West Bank: Fatal shooting is first terrorist attack by Israeli extremists opposed to peace with the Palestinians.

Masked gunmen wearing Israeli army uniforms and claiming to be soldiers fatally shot a Palestinian outside his home in the West Bank town of Halhoul on Friday in the first Jewish terrorist attack since the Israeli-Palestinian peace process began.

A little-known Jewish extremist group called Eyal claimed responsibility for the killing and vowed to carry out further attacks against Arabs as the two sides near agreement on expanding Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank.

The attack appeared to be retaliation for an Arab’s fatal stabbing of a Jewish settler outside his home near Ramallah earlier in the week. But the group made no specific mention of that killing.

Israeli officials have feared that increasingly militant protests by Jewish settlers against the peace process could lead to violent actions against Palestinians.

On the other side, Islamic extremists opposed to the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accord have killed dozens of Jews by sending suicide bombers onto Israeli buses.

The Israeli army said an initial inquiry into Friday’s killing confirmed that the gunmen had been in uniform, but it said that no soldiers were on duty in the Halhoul area when the attack took place. The area is under Israeli army control.

The statement said Israeli police will investigate the killing of 23-year-old Salman Zamaare.

Five masked men, at least one of them wearing a gas mask, arrived on foot in the Arab town near Hebron shortly after midnight and began knocking on doors in search of men, according to Israeli television and newspaper reporters who visited the town. The armed men claimed to be soldiers and were checking identity cards against a list of names. They beat several residents.

The gunmen took Zamaare’s father out of one of the houses and tied his hands. When Zamaare arrived on the scene, two of the gunmen fired and killed him.

Zamaare’s family was active in the mainstream Fatah faction of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. The slain man’s body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag and carried through town in a martyr’s funeral.

Israel Radio said the underground group Eyal sent messages to several Israeli journalists saying its people killed Zamaare in the struggle against the PLO.

Eyal is a Hebrew acronym for National Jewish Organization. It is thought to be a branch of the outlawed Kach movement, which opposes the peace accord and advocates the ouster of all Palestinians from Israeli-held territory.

Kach activist Baruch Goldstein killed about 30 Muslim worshipers in Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs in February, 1994, before survivors beat him to death. The site, known to Muslims as the Ibrahim mosque, is believed to be the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is holy to both Jews and Muslims.

Arafat spokesman Marwan Kanafani implicitly blamed Friday’s attack on radical Jewish settlers. Speaking on Israeli television, Kanafani said he hoped that “the Israeli government will take its responsibility and deal in such a way that will give these settlers the clear message that . . . we are going to implement peace.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also condemned the killing following another unsuccessful round of peace talks with Arafat in the Egyptian resort of Taba on the Gulf of Aqaba.

“It is a disastrous thing which is as harmful as the terrorists on the other side. The state must do everything in its power to bring them to justice,” Peres said.

Peres and Arafat are stymied in the negotiations over the issue of control of Hebron, where about 400 Jewish settlers live among 100,000 Palestinians.

Israeli Environment Minister Yossi Sarid said the two sides face “a crisis in the talks” over Hebron. Israel has said it will not withdraw soldiers from Hebron, while the Palestinians say Israeli troops must evacuate in order for the Palestinians to hold elections.