KFAR ADUMIM, Israeli-Occupied West Bank — Shkediya Cohen's life runs on a familiar suburban rhythm. She has a husband who works long hours; four children who bound in and out of the house on missions of their own; a beat-up, bumper-stickered car, and a big black dog who recently ate the family rabbit.

But Cohen's living-room window opens onto the Judean Desert, to a West Bank moonscape of tawny mountains that she cherishes as part of the biblical Land of Israel and loves as home.

Her mundane tasks are imbued with that meaning. She is where she is, she said, for a sacred reason: "By living here, I have the feeling I'm an active part of the Land of Israel. My father always taught us that the Land of Israel is for the people of Israel together with the Torah of Israel. Those are the three things that have been joined over the ages.

"We live here because Jews should live here," she said.

Of 125,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many moved onto occupied territory for the cheap apartments and easy loans offered by a government intent on holding the land. But for those like the Cohens--and they appear to be the majority in outlying settlements--the move was an expression of ideology first and only secondarily the search for choice real estate.

Now, they may be facing the ultimate test of their beliefs.

The Cohens have had more than a dozen years to set down roots in Kfar Adumim, a hilltop village of about 150 families between Jerusalem and Jericho. They built their house while living in a trailer for four years, planted their shrubs, added a third story.

When they began, they were seen as part of the solution, performing a national service by securing a strategically key spot.

Now, as settlers, they are more often portrayed in Israel as part of the problem, as obstacles to peace. Israel's peace agreement and subsequent talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization point toward the creation of a Palestinian state; among Israelis, the settlers have become the loudest, most violent opposition to the Israeli-PLO pact.

"It's very convenient for the government to have settlements" to bargain with the PLO, Cohen said. "But who pays the price and what for? So that in five years we have to get up and leave? Before, there was a feeling that we were building the Land of Israel."

Kfar Adumim these days is a bewildering mixture of small-town quiet and brewing disaster, its very foundations suddenly in danger of giving way.