The settlers in the territories are fed up with having to confront a new peace plan every few months. They have had it up to here with the tension and the anxiety generated by the talk about painful concessions that have to be made for the sake of peace. They have neither the interest nor the energy for a new round of battles. They are convinced that they will bring about the death of the new plan, as they did with others, when they sent tens of thousands of people into the streets. Now the guillotine is poised over their heads again, in the form of the American "road map," and wielding the guillotine is none other than the person considered the chief architect of the settlement project. The settlers are stunned that Ariel Sharon has given his consent to the U.S. plan.

Dozens of members of the Council of Jewish Settlements of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District (known as the Yesha Council) met on Monday of this week in order to prepare for the struggle that will be launched after the road map is presented. There was an ominous atmosphere in the meeting, which was closed to the press. "We wanted to discuss things among ourselves," said the chairman of the council, Benzi Lieberman. "The situation is very bad."

Lieberman and his colleagues are battle-weary. It's been almost three years since they declared an uncompromising war against the peace plan presented by the then prime minister, Ehud Barak, at Camp David.

"After the shock of Camp David, it will take a major disaster to make people deeply anxious," one of the settlers' leaders admitted. "Barak placed 100 settlements to be removed on the negotiating table. Fortunately, nothing came of it - not because of Barak but because the Arabs are stupid and didn't agree to accept the gift he was handing them on a platter. We were saved by their stupidity."

This time the settlers were prescient and met for marathon sessions to look for ways to repulse the latest peace offensive. For fear of being viewed as chronic peace refuseniks, they looked for alternatives that would reflect their mood.

"People are always asking us what we propose," Yehiel Hazan, a new Likud MK and a resident of the West Bank city of Ariel, said at the emergency meeting this week. "I made the point that we have to come up with proposals of our own, so we will be able to tell the public `yes' and not only `no.'"

Are the settlers talking about a true peace plan or a bluff? It depends on whom you ask. Most of the participants tended to agree that it's a bluff, but none of them was willing to say so openly. "Our true goal is to block the road map," said Yehoshua Mor Yosef, the spokesman of the Yesha Council, candidly. "But we know that the Israeli public isn't enthusiastic about ruling over Arabs, so we are telling them that we have a plan, too."

Shaul Goldstein, the head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, explained that the Yesha Council plan contains a very generous package for the Palestinians. "We are creating an alternative plan, but without maps," he said. "It's a plan that doesn't have a Palestinian state at the center, but does have possibilities for civil rights for the Palestinians."

More dangerous than Oslo

After examining the road map thoroughly, the members of the Yesha Council reached the uniform conclusion that it will be a death sentence for the settlement enterprise. "It's definitely an earthquake," asserted Prof. Aryeh Eldad, a new MK from the National Union during a lunch break between sessions. "If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time there has been agreement between an American president and an Israeli prime minister on the establishment of a Palestinian state."

There was no dispute over the need to launch a relentless battle against Prime Minister Sharon. "I have to admit that I didn't believe Sharon would be worse than Barak," sighs Goldstein, "but Sharon is 1,000 times more dangerous than all his predecessors. This is the first time an Israeli prime minister has agreed to three points: to freeze building in the settlements, to evacuate outposts and to work for the creation of a Palestinian state."

The settlers make it sound like they have been betrayed by a close relative. The more they ponder Sharon's personality, the less they are able to explain the peace gene that has suddenly appeared in him. "I just don't understand him," Goldstein said irately. "The man is out of joint with history. Just now, when everyone understands the danger of Islamic terrorism, he is establishing a state for them."

Goldstein believes that the road map will not win a majority in the Likud Party Central Committee and that it's unlikely Sharon will be able to push it through the Likud Knesset faction: "The Yesha Council will fight him with all its might, just as it fought against [Yitzhak] Rabin and Barak. I have gone through three prime ministers, but Sharon is the toughest adversary because he is one of the family here."

The settlers are concerned about the day on which they will give the order for their legions to take to the streets. They know the settlers are exhausted after two and a half consecutive years of intifada. It's doubtful whether they will find the strength to block Sharon. "It's hard to get people to demonstrate today," admits Yisrael Rosenberg, chairman of the Beit El Council. "Our public is tired and wants to return to normal life. But if they have to go, they will."

The settlers were always suspicious of Sharon's true intentions because of two events, which they found traumatic, in which he was involved. They will never forget his uprooting of the northern Sinai settlement of Yamit in 1982, following the peace agreement with Egypt. And they will not forget the moral and political backing he gave then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the Wye agreement in 1998. Initially, 8 percent of the territory was supposed to go to the Palestinians, but with Sharon's backing, Netanyahu agreed to up 13 percent.

"We will never forget his uprooting of Yamit," Lieberman asserted, to which Goldstein added, "We will never forget these two events. But now we are dealing with a far more serious decree. The road map is far more dangerous than Oslo."

`Founders' syndrome'

In another few days, Tourism Minister Benny Elon (National Union) will make public a plan he has prepared that seeks to resolve the Palestinian question once and for all. Sharon is unlikely to adopt the plan, though. True, it proposes a two-state model, but as part of the plan, the Palestinian state will be established in Jordan and will then, of course, maintain friendly and peaceful relations with Israel. King Abdullah will not have to abdicate and there will be no urgent need to bring about the collapse of the Hashemite regime. Abdullah can become part of the new regime.

Elon saw no need to attend the emergency meeting; He has his own way to torpedo attempts of this kind by prime ministers. His immediate plan is to make a tour of the Bible Belt in the United States in which he will meet with politicians, public figures, lobbyists and thousands of Evangelists whose soul goes out to Zion. This is the new arena of activity for the Israeli right. For everyone who wants to thwart a political move involving Israel and the Palestinians, everyone who wants to organize a petition against the president of the United States, everyone who believes that the Land of Israel belongs in full and forever to the Jewish people - a visit to this community is mandatory.

The Christian fundamentalists have hooked up with their Jewish allies and created a formidable messianic alignment. The events of September 11, 2001, intensified this Jewish-Christian alliance, which includes some 40 million Americans. "I am very much at home among the Christians who support Israel," Elon stated proudly. "These are people who are wild about Israel and believe in the annexation of Judea and Samaria and even in the transfer of Palestinians from the soil of the Land of Israel. Compared to them, I am considered a dove."

These believers are not acting solely for the sake of heaven. While many are motivated by the divine imperative in the Bible, from which they conclude that they should love the Jews, others are driven by messianic fervor. A war of Gog and Magog, they believe, will herald the second coming of Jesus, and the Jews will have to become Christians; those who refuse will be put to death.

But that bridge will be crossed when we come to it. In the meantime, they say, until that critical period arrives, the world can expect good things: Islam will disappear or undergo a radical transformation.

"It's clear that Islam is on the way to disappearing," Elon asserts with certainty. "What we are now seeing across the Muslim world is not a powerful surge of faith but the dying embers of Islam. How will it disappear? Very simply. Within a few years a Christian crusade against Islam will be launched, which will be the major event of this millennium. Obviously, we will be up against quite a large problem when only the two great religions of Judaism and Christianity remain, but that's still a long way off."

Until then the road map is stuck in Elon's throat like a bone. Like his settler colleagues, he too suspected Sharon's intentions from the beginning. His apprehension only increased in the wake of Sharon's interview with Haaretz last month in which he ceded Beit El, Shilo and Bethlehem. Elon, a resident of Beit El, was appalled. "I felt a terrible pain, I even cried," he relates. "I told the others that we will fight Sharon with all our might. He should know that we will cut ourselves off from him long before Israel cuts itself off from Beit El."

Elon has a complex relationship with Sharon, who, he says, suffers from a "founders' syndrome." He refers to people who established the state and fought for it, but were seized by weakness in their old age. Elon is convinced that Sharon's ambition is to leave behind a peace treaty after he dies. "He was the one who established the settlements and the outposts, and now he feels the need to close the circle and evacuate them. We will not let him ... Just as Ashkelon was once Majdal, Ramallah will cease to be Ramallah. It will become Ramat El [`height of God']. I have no doubt that within a few years the refugee camps will no longer be here. The whole people of Israel will return to the Land of Israel."

No empty caravans

Until the arrival of the road map, the settlers were engaged in reordering and rehabilitating their lives. They fortified their homes, placing iron bars in the windows and fences around their houses to prevent Palestinian infiltrations. The past few months saw a decline in the tension and anxiety, and the residents of the settlements readied themselves for the resumption of the routine they were accustomed to before the outbreak of the intifada at the end of September, 2000.

They began driving on the main roads again, and Israelis and Palestinians drove alongside one another, as they had in the past. There were also fewer checkpoints and the wait to get through them was shorter. Israelis and Palestinians feel that life is about to change.

A few hundred meters from Beit El are the high-rise buildings of Ramallah. Until a few months ago, the sounds of gunfire kept everyone on edge. Now it's quiet. Even Ayosh Junction, which was a lethal arena of battle during the intifada, has returned to normality. Some of the buildings whose walls were blown out by Israeli army tank shells have been repaired and the occupants have moved back in.

Despite the hell of the past 31 months, the settlements expanded. New neighborhoods were built and outposts appeared on the nearby hills. In Beit El, 30 families moved into a new neighborhood, whose construction was completed last summer; construction will soon begin of another neighborhood, consisting of 28 dwellings. The new families will join the 900 families that already live in this large settlement on the outskirts of Ramallah.

"I don't have room for even one new family," Yisrael Rosenberg, the head of the Beit El Council, complains. "I don't have even one empty caravan."

The settlements have diverse methods of expanding. Over and above natural increase, political developments and terrorist attacks actually bring about a growth in the population: In the period of the intifada, 15 new-immigrant families from France settled in Beit El. Another group of 80 families is expected soon.

"That's how it is," says David Schawat from France, who settled at Beit El nine years ago, "the Jews are returning home." Similarly, the road map is expected to strengthen rather than weaken the settlements. "The prime minister's miserable remark about Beit El will bring more new immigrants here," he says, "because whenever we are wronged, new people come to live with us."

Matti Ehrlichman, the physician of Beit El, has an answer to all these blows. Whether it's terrorism or the road map, what makes the difference as far as he is concerned is the womb of the Jewish mother. "I have 170 babies in Beit El every year," he exults. "That means there is life, young couples, a reality that is beyond any government plan. If you want to know whether a settlement is a concrete fact or a bluff, check its birth rate - 170 infants mean that Beit El is not just a hill or an outpost or even a settlement: It's a whole slice of life, and that's what counts."

At mid-morning the siren sounded to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. Beit El stopped working. The girls in the religious school placed a large yellow patch in the form of the Star of David on the wall, and in its center the word "Jude." The Jewish past plays a central role in setting the agenda of the settlements. Perhaps that is the secret of their strength.