KIBBUTZ METZER, Israel - For nearly half a century, this farming collective has stood apart from much of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For all that time, the people here in Israel's north and their Arab neighbors have shared in each other's weddings, funerals and harvests.
Yesterday, the members of the kibbutz mourned five people shot to death Sunday by a Palestinian gunman, putting the community's belief in peaceful coexistence to a powerful test.
"We're not disappointed by our stand for peace," said Yitzhak Rotem, 57, who found one of the bodies where it lay on a path under a shade tree. "But this is painful."
Taly Boker, 34, a good friend of one of the women killed, Revital Ohayon, conceded that it would be difficult to promote a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after such an incident. But she said she was determined to try.
"We haven't tried peace yet," she said. "How do we know what it will be like with peace? It's very easy to hate. We should take this pain and build something good with it. It's very hard to do. We have got to do something that doesn't lead to more blood and more killing."
Israel's political leaders, who are in the midst of an election campaign, came here vowing a harsh military response. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met at the kibbutz with his defense minister and army chief of staff, and, according to a senior military official, agreed to launch a broad military operation in the West Bank targeting the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Tulkarm.
"There is no competition as to who will bring peace faster. We all want peace," Sharon said. "Terrorism does not distinguish between children, women, men, settlers, soldiers. It makes no distinction. What we have seen here today is another example of whom we are facing."
Early today, troops backed by dozens of Israeli tanks swept into a Palestinian refugee camp in Tulkarm, Palestinian officials said, in an apparent hunt for suspects in the kibbutz attack. The incursion began about 3 a.m., and there were no immediate reports of injuries. The Israeli army had no comment.
Screams of children
The attack in Metzer occurred shortly before midnight, when a gunman crawled under a border fence surrounding the kibbutz's wheat and banana fields near the West Bank and walked along the meandering paths linking many of the houses.
Police said he first killed Tirza Damari, 42, who was out for a stroll with her boyfriend. The gunman then shot the community's administrator, Yitzhak Drori, 44, who drove up in his car after hearing shots.
The gunman then burst into Ohayon's house and found her in a corner of her children's bedroom, trying to shield her sons Matan, 5, and Noam, 4, as she shouted over a cellular phone to her former husband.
Avi Ohayon told reporters that he heard the children scream and one of them cry out "Momma" before the sound of gunfire. The mother and her children were shot in the head; the boys died in her arms.
Six bullets pierced the wood paneling above one of the small beds, where a blood-soaked pillowcase and Noam's pacifier remained. The room was otherwise orderly, with books, puzzles and stuffed bears on the shelves.
Kibbutz members placed candles yesterday on a stepladder near the front door of the small, white house. Photos of the children were pasted to a wall near two small songbirds in a hanging cage. Laundry still hung on a drying rack on the patio.
The handful of families who established this kibbutz in 1953 supported the community by growing avocados and bananas, and tended a herd of dairy cows. Now, 400 people live here, farming or working in a kibbutz-owned factory that manufactures water pipes and tubes for fiber-optic cables.
The community is determinedly secular and liberal, founded on the belief that Arabs and Israelis can live in harmony. Its residents advocate an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and an end to Jewish settlements there.
The shootings were the first significant attack since Sharon scheduled parliamentary elections for January and formed a right-wing caretaker Cabinet last week. Sharon's aides said last night that Israel's response to the shootings would be in line with previous operations, in which the army has targeted militants and imposed curfews.
'Disgraceful' terror
The Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant faction of Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack. Fatah officials are in Cairo, Egypt, trying to persuade the radical group Hamas to end suicide bombings that target civilians in Israel.
Top Palestinian officials have urged that all attacks inside Israel stop and that operations be directed instead against soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. Yesterday's shootings proved particularly embarrassing and gave the Israeli officials reason to accuse Arafat of failing to enforce his own directives, either through inability or by design.
The Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened more attacks, while the Palestinian Authority offered an unusual condemnation.
"Harming Israeli and Palestinian civilians and turning them into targets of terror attacks is disgraceful," it said in a statement. Palestinian officials said the gunman might have mistaken the Israeli kibbutz for a West Bank settlement.
'Like brothers'
Members of the kibbutz preferred to talk yesterday of cooperation, not confrontation. When harvest time comes, they said, the kibbutz allows Arab-Israeli neighbors from Meisar village to cut the wheat. In return, the Arabs make bread that is distributed free to families in both communities.
When Israel started to build a fence between the West Bank and Israel, Metzer residents protested that it into the West Bank and cut off Palestinians in the village of Qafin from their olive groves.
That spirit has fostered respect. Six elders from Meisar walked to Metzer to offer condolences. Dressed in traditional white headdresses, they kissed and shook hands with their Jewish neighbors and mingled with the mourners.
"They are more like brothers, not neighbors," said Jamal Yousef, 58, of Meisar. "It is like this killing happened in our place."
Yoav Ben-Naftali, 57, turned to Ahmed Hussein, 71, shaking his head in disbelief. "We don't deserve this," he told his Arab neighbor in Hebrew.
"No, no," Hussein answered.
"It hurts," Ben-Naftali said.
"In good and bad," Hussein replied, "we will always remain inseparable."