The recent suicide bombings in Israel have delayed the late-March withdrawal of 450 Jewish settlers from Hebron, the last of seven Palestinian cities that Israel has occupied. But that Jewish enclave and a handful of smaller communities such as Bat Ayin -- a hilltop community five miles from Bethlehem -- are scheduled to be uprooted eventually.

While the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas defies the peace process with terrorist attacks, the settlers are waging their own protest by digging deeper roots into the disputed territory of the West Bank.

I have been documenting the lives of the settlers in Hebron and Bat Ayin for two years. They are living out their Zionist dream under pressure. Yeshiva students in Hebron take self-defense as seriously as they take Torah studies. A simple trip to the spring bath or vineyards near Bat Ayin is an armed excursion. Mobile homes in Bat Ayin are crane-lifted into place in defiance of Israeli law.

Although the tide of history is moving against them, the settlers remain unmoved by their government's policies or public sentiment. Arab Hebron -- home of the Cave of Machpelah and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the burial site of Abraham -- was the site of a tragic massacre in February 1994, when Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Islamic worshipers in a mosque.