Waiting for Justice.(May Itmeizi)

May Itmeizi is still waiting for justice. The 20-year-old Palestinian woman watched three of her relatives die two years ago in a drive-by shooting attack near the West Bank town of Hebron. She says Jewish settlers were responsible for the crimes. Though members of the family filed successive police reports and were ready to hand over the bodies of the dead--including a 4-month-old boy--for autopsies, police turned up nothing for months. Even the news last week that a Jerusalem court sentenced three Jewish settlers to long prison terms for a different attack on Palestinians failed to raise hopes in the Itmeizi home. "I would like to see the criminals punished. But I have my doubts," Itmeizi says.

She might be in for a surprise. Israeli police now believe that a handful of settlers arrested in recent months might have been involved in violence that has killed at least seven Palestinians in the West Bank in the past three years, including the Itmeizis. Though authorities admit key pieces of the puzzle are still missing, the investigation already marks the widest net cast over settlers since fighting erupted in the West Bank and Gaza in September 2000. One of the suspects has led police to a stockpile of arms hidden in caves in the West Bank, including rifles, grenades and even rocket launchers. West Bank police commander Shahar Ayalon says that while the shooters have not been identified yet, ballistic tests have linked some of the rifles to the attacks on Palestinians. "I was shocked to see so many guns and so much ammunition," Ayalon said, poring over photographs of the cache in his Jerusalem office last week. Even human-rights groups, like B'Tselem, which often accuse police of being soft on settlers, say the investigation is serious.

Ayalon calls the group a "retribution cell" because some of the settlers have themselves been victims of Palestinian violence-- shootings and bombings like the Haifa restaurant attack last Saturday that killed 19 Israelis. One of the settlers, Yitzhak Pas, was indicted last month for possessing explosives. A resident of the settler community in Hebron, Pas watched his 10-month-old daughter die in her stroller after being shot by a Palestinian sniper two years ago. He was also wounded in the attack. "He's not involved in all this," Pas's wife, Oriya, says in her modest Hebron home. "He wouldn't have done anything that would put him in prison for a ...