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A few miles away, near Ramallah, a Jewish settler was severely burned by a Molotov cocktail lobbed through his car windshield. Fellow settlers responded by rampaging through Anabta while it was under curfew, smashing windows and wrecking cars before Israeli soldiers ordered them away. In the town of Tulkarm, rumors of further settlers' invasions the next day sparked violent protests that left one Palestinian dead. In Gaza, another died of his wounds, bringing the death toll to 43. Defense Minister Rabin angrily called the settlers a "burden" on hard-pressed security forces. But clashes continued throughout the territories, from remote villages in the north of the West Bank to the cities and camps of Gaza. Reopened only one day, all 800 West Bank schools and universities were recessed indefinitely.

As the violence continues, Israeli soldiers are growing hostile and frustrated. Beset by fatigue, rain and midwinter cold, many say they are fed up with their mission in the territories. "It's a horrible routine," complained one young conscript as he plodded through the daily ritual of forcing striking merchants to open their shops. Slamming up the shutters and using crowbars to crack flimsy padlocks, the soldiers move wearily down the main street of Ramallah every morning through a silent crowd of grinning Arabs. As soon as the unit passes, the shops are quickly shuttered again. The process goes on all day, and many troops wonder why they even bother. "We do what we're told," said one soldier. "We're just puppets on a string."

The soldiers spent their four months of basic training learning to fight enemy armies, not to police occupied lands or control riots. The troops have also labored under a series of ambiguous orders as their bewildered generals struggled to find policies that worked. Though Israeli leaders insist that the soldiers are supposed to open fire only when their lives are endangered and beat Palestinians only when confronted, inexperienced conscripts find it hard to define those conditions precisely. And while military leaders now insist that there was no blanket order to administer indiscriminate beatings, the soldiers in the field and the Palestinians in the hospitals give tangible evidence otherwise. Though some troops are only too eager to inflict pain on an Arab, others recoil from the actual process of breaking limbs and splitting heads. Major General Amram Mitzna, commander of Israel's West Bank forces, acknowledged that his troops are troubled by such duty, and so is he. Said Mitzna: "I don't feel so well when I wake up in the morning."

To deal with such qualms, Israel has in recent weeks sent teams of psychologists into the occupied territories to counsel the troops. In a confidential report being prepared by the army, the psychologists warned of grave long-term trouble for the defense forces if the situation goes on. Says one psychologist: "I predict and I assume that if the phenomenon of soldiers using violence in the territories will go on for a long time, it will cause serious problems."