On the evening of January 24, Muhammad and Mahmoud Sbarna dressed in security-guard uniforms, armed themselves with daggers and a toy gun and set out on their mission.

A rapid response team in the West Bank.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

From their home in Beit Omer, a village near Hebron, the two made their way to Kibbutz Kfar Etzion.

Just over a week before, the Sbarnas, Hamas activists in their 20s, had been released from the Ketziot high-security prison in the western Negev. During their stint at Ketziot, where soft-core activists are brought together with some of the most violent Palestinian terrorists, the Sbarnas strengthened their ties and identification with the goals of Hamas.

They served a two-year sentence for stealing several M-16 rifles from the IDF. Now the Sbarnas, distant relatives, hoped to repeat the trick, but this time without getting caught. At about 9 p.m. they cut through the security fence that surrounds the kibbutz without setting off the detection mechanism and made their way to the Mekor Haim high-school yeshiva.

"Good evening," Shmueli Greenberg said as the two walked into a classroom where seven counselors and students were holding a meeting.

Greenberg and the others quickly realized that something was wrong. The two men, speaking Hebrew with a slight Arabic accent, ordered everyone in the room to stand against the wall with their hands up.

They approached Greenberg and Rafael Singer, another member of the group. Singer drew his pistol and shot but it jammed and Mahmoud jumped on him, stabbing him in the back.

Meanwhile, Muhammad pounced on Greenberg.

But the two were outmatched: Elyakim Kovatch, who was also armed, took aim and picked off the two terrorists as they struggled with Greenberg and Singer.

Kovatch, Singer and Greenberg had received counterterrorism training from Mishmeret Yesha. Founded in 1988 by Israel "Izzy" Danziger, a 55-year-old immigrant from Brooklyn, and two other men who are no longer with the organization, Mishmeret Yesha is a grassroots non-profit organization that helps more than 100 settlements throughout Judea and Samaria train and equip their own "rapid response teams" to meet the security challenges of living in the midst of a hostile Palestinian population. These teams receive M-16s and ammunition from the IDF, and bullet-proof vests, communications equipment, various military-grade paraphernalia and extensive counterterrorist training from Mishmeret Yesha.

"Mishmeret Yesha's training gave us the confidence we needed to draw our guns in time to stop those terrorists," says Singer, who was slightly wounded. "I don't know what would have happened if not for the training we received from it."

Mishmeret Yesha's concept was to empower settlement Jews with the means and wherewithal to protect themselves as part of a bid to maintain a strong Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Ideologically motivated settlers from Shavei Shomron and Kfar Tapuah in the north to Bat Ayin, Pnei Kedem and Yeshivat Shavei Hebron in the south are taught how to quickly neutralize terrorist infiltrators.

Residents of several smaller outposts, such as Esh Kodesh, near Shiloh, and Sde Boaz, near Hebron, which is slated to be dismantled, have also received training from Mishmeret Yesha, as has a group of young men who set up a yeshiva in caves near Homesh, one of several settlements in Samaria that were dismantled as part of the Gaza disengagement plan.

Technically, Homesh is no longer under IDF protection. The settlers who come there in the hope of eventually reestablishing Homesh are breaking military law. So are the settlers who live on Esh Kodesh and Sde Boaz. But Mishmeret Yesha's ideology is to help Jews protect themselves wherever they may be.

THE IDEA that a cadre of settlers adhering to a heady ideology that combines religious faith with fervent nationalism is roaming the hilltops of Judea and Samaria armed with M-16s and trained in counterterrorism might be a disturbing thought for Israelis who would prefer to fold up the 40-year-plus settlement enterprise.

Danziger is well aware of the initial impression Mishmeret Yesha makes on some people. "People think we are talking about a bunch of crazy messianic vigilantes with guns or a breakaway militia. But what we are doing saves lives. And it is all in cooperation with the IDF." (See official IDF response.)

Military experts say that Mishmeret Yesha's teams of crack troops fill a vacuum left by the IDF.

"It takes at least 10 minutes for the IDF to respond when an infiltration incident occurs. An armed terrorist can kill a whole lot of people in 10 minutes," says Rabbi Moshe Hager-Lau, a reserve colonel who serves as assistant division commander for reserve forces in Judea and Samaria. He is also head of the Yatir pre-military yeshiva in the southern Hebron Hills, and goes everywhere with an M-16 slung over his shoulder.

"Besides the time factor a local rapid response team also has the advantage of being able to quickly identify who belongs and who doesn't, which reduces the number of casualties. It does not take a lot of skill to throw a grenade at an infiltrator. The idea is to be able to pick him off once he's embedded himself in the settlement population."

Marc Prowisor, head of the Shiloh-bloc Security Council and a private security consultant, concurs. "The IDF began supporting rapid response teams in 1992 or 1993," he says. "But they became indispensable as Arabs began infiltrating settlements after the second intifada started."

According to Prowisor, settlers suddenly found themselves alone in the face of a major threat. "But the IDF could not provide the training necessary to prepare the teams to react to real life scenarios. That's where Danziger and Mishmeret Yesha come in."

ISRAEL DANZIGER, a short, stocky man with prominent blue eyes and an equally prominent nose, pushes aside two buckets full of 5.56 mm. M-16 shells, remnants of a recent training session, and a pile of bulletproof vests to make room for me in his pickup. Danziger, director of operations for Mishmeret Yesha, is taking me to a shooting range outside Efrat where Mishmeret Yesha is training a group from Yitzhar, one of the most ideologically hard-line settlements in Samaria.