Mourning at Yuppies cafe.(Israeli restaurateurs murdered by Palestinian group Hamas)(Brief Article)

Motti Dayan and Etgar Zeituni considered it just another shopping trip. Last Tuesday the cousins and co-owners of a trendy Tel Aviv cafe called Yuppies ventured into the seething West Bank--defying a ban imposed by the Israeli military--in search of bargains on produce for their restaurant. Joined by an Israeli-Arab friend from Tel Aviv, they browsed in fruit and vegetable markets in Arab villages and then stopped for plates of hummus in the town of Tulkarm. As they stood up to pay their bill, four masked men burst into the restaurant. Ignoring the pleas of the Arab escort, the four hustled Dayan and Zeituni at gunpoint into a waiting car and sped away. Hours later, Palestinian police found the restaurateurs' bullet-riddled bodies dumped on a roadside on Tulkarm's outskirts; a Hamas spokesman claimed responsibility for their executions.

The double homicide deepened the atmosphere of hostility and distrust at a critical juncture in the Middle East conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak immediately suspended high-level peace talks in the Egyptian resort town of Taba and called his representatives home for "consultations." The talks resumed two days later, but Israeli and Palestinian negotiators broke up on Saturday without reaching an agreement. Meanwhile, the body count keeps rising. Two weeks ago a 16- year-old Israeli, Ofir Rahum, was lured to his death in a West Bank ambush by a Palestinian woman who had apparently initiated an affair with him over the Internet. Two days after the restaurateurs' killings, a 45-year-old Orthodox Jew was shot dead by snipers as he drove home from work in East Jerusalem. Likud Party leader and legendary hardliner Ariel Sharon, the probable victor in next week's vote, said that Jerusalem is a city "under siege."

That siege mentality is barely acknowledged on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv, a sun-splashed ...