No Place for Mortals.(Arab-Israeli conflict in Hebron)

Above the dashboard of Bus No. 160, which travels the 50-minute route from Jerusalem to Hebron, somebody had pinned to the fabric a button with a little red heart in the middle, reading "I LOVE THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST." I had just pointed this out to my wife, Nika, with whom I was visiting from Seattle, when a rock the size of a grapefruit, hurled by an unseen Palestinian, hit a window of the bus precisely at her elbow.

We had come to Israel to look at some of the historical sites associated with the patriarch Abraham, the first monotheist, discoverer of the One God. Of these Abraham-related places, Hebron is the foremost. According to Biblical tradition, he lived there for 35 years, and along with his wife Sarah was buried there. For several days after arriving in Jerusalem, Nika and I questioned friends about how insane we would have to be to contemplate a visit.

In the early winter of 2000, Israelis traveling by car in the West Bank were being wounded or killed by Palestinian drive-by shooters almost every day. Hebron is in the West Bank, the big chunk of real estate that Israel has been thinking about turning over to total Palestinian control. I had figured that a guided tour with military escorts-a routine precaution in the besieged Jewish land-would probably be our best bet. But those friends who didn't immediately tell us we must give up all hope of seeing Hebron suggested the counterintuitive idea of taking the public bus. For unlike other buses it happens to be bulletproof.

It was certainly rockproof-the one that somebody threw at Nika bounced off without a problem. But the very day that she and I gathered our courage and got on the bus for Hebron, one of the two chief rabbis of Israel was riding in another "bulletproof" bus when he was ambushed by Palestinians whose automatic weapons easily shattered the windows. (The rabbi was unhurt.)

Happily our ride south from Jerusalem was unmarred by gunshots-though we were struck by the quiet. Israel is a noisy nation. Israelis will shout at the slightest provocation; their radio talk shows basically consist of people screaming at each other. But despite the standing-room-only crowd of civilians and off-duty soldiers, Bus No. 160 was utterly silent. As the vehicle wound through terraced rocky hills, everyone listened for the crack of rifle fire (best-case scenario, probably harmless) or (more unusual) the hiss of an anti-tank missile like the one that had struck a busload of Israeli schoolchildren some weeks before.

Most of our fellow passengers were headed for Kiryat Arba, a fortified Jewish settlement. Immediately adjacent, Hebron is the home of 20,000 Arabs but only 700 Jews. One of the latter, David Wilder, spokesman for the city's Jewish community, was waiting for us at the bus stop outside the ancient compound containing Abraham's resting-place.

In Palestinian eyes, those 700 Jews may be the most offensive group of individuals on the planet. A goodly portion of Palestinians share a fantasy of seeing all Jews expelled from the land of Israel, but they give marginally less thought to the predominantly Jewish areas like the one on the coast around Tel Aviv. The Palestinian mind is focused above all on Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Other Jewish settlements in the West Bank are at least set off at a distance from Arab towns. In Hebron the Jews occupy a neighborhood, dotted with Israeli military posts, that is distinguishable from the rest of the city only if you're looking at a map. As long as any Jews remain in Hebron, it's hard to see how Palestinians will ever accept a permanent peace.