THEY came with their sofas, their bookcases, their babies, even their baby beds. Overnight, the would-be pioneering families moved into seven mobile homes at Artis Hill, on the edge of the settlement of Beit El, attempting to establish a new neighbourhood. And throughout yesterday, about 200 of their supporters danced and prayed that they would be allowed to stay.
Three weeks ago, after a mother and son from Beit El, Ita and Ephraim Tzur, were gunned down by Palestinian militants in a drive-by shooting, the settlers had hoped the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, would officially authorise the Artis Hill neighbourhood in memory of the victims.
But Mr Netanyahu - under intense American diplomatic pressure, and with his own security chiefs warning him of the likely furious Palestinian reaction - refused. So yesterday the settlers acted unilaterally.
Again conscious of the impact on peace talks, Mr Netanyahu sent the army to evacuate them, by force if necessary. But in the event the fathers, mothers and their uncomprehending infants went quietly, and agreed that the mobile homes would go too on Sunday. In return they won the vague promise of an imminent meeting with the Israeli defence minister to discuss settlement expansion.
Mr Netanyahu may have felt his firm handling of what could well have become yet another focal point of Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be rewarded with the completion of the bedevilled deal on Hebron. But despite the unflagging efforts of the US mediator, Mr Dennis Ross, who held yet more lengthy meetings with both sides yesterday, the accord remains tantalisingly just out of reach.
The sole point now at issue appears to be Mr Arafat's demand for a date from Mr Netanyahu for the completion of the next phase of the peace accords: Israel's withdrawal from minor West Bank Palestinian villages, which will bring hundreds of thousands more people under Palestinian rule.
The Prime Minister is said to have met Mr Arafat's demand for a Palestinian "liaison" officer to be stationed at the Cave of the Patriarchs, and to be willing to commit himself to starting the rural pullback within six weeks, but he is not prepared to pledge a completion date.
And here, yesterday, another complicating factor entered the equation. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who has been advising Mr Arafat on negotiating tactics, appeared on Egyptian state TV urging Mr Arafat not to sign on these terms. And Mr Arafat heeded the call, deepening Mr Ross's diplomatic headache, and deferring the accord.
Meanwhile, Israel has rejected Syrian allegations that its Mossad agents planted the bomb aboard a bus in Damascus on New Year's Eve that killed nine people and injured 44. The Prime Minister's office called the charge, carried by Syrian state media, "a gross lie". The Clinton administration blamed Damascus for making "wild and irresponsible allegations".
Despite further exchanges of fire in south Lebanon, the pro-Iranian Hizbullah and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army yesterday went ahead with an exchange of bodies of fighters killed in previous clashes between them.
Hizbullah handed over two SLA corpses to the Red Cross in Beirut: the SLA, similarly, transferred two Hizbullah bodies to the Red Cross in southern Lebanon.