KIBBUTZ METZER, Israel, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Close to midnight the militant kicked open the door to Revital Ohayon´s small apartment in Kibbutz Metzer, 29 miles northeast of Tel Aviv.

He crossed the living room and entered the children´s room. Ohayon, 34, grabbed her little children and tried to shield them. They were screaming. Their voices traveled miles over an open phone line to her ex-husband, Avi, 34, who had just been talking to her.

The gunman pulled the trigger, killing Ohayon and her two sons, 5- year-old Matan and 4-year-old Noam. Some the bullets punctured the gray wood paneling beside a bloodstained bed.

Outside, the gunman shot and killed Tirza Damari, 42, who had been walking with a friend. Kibbutz members covered the bloodstains with sand; a pair of surgical gloves used while trying to save her was still there. The friend fled the attacker and found refuge in the communal settlement´s cowshed.

Kibbutz Metzer´s secretary, Yitzhak Dori, who was on guard duty, rushed over in his car. The gunman shot through the windshield. Dori apparently lost control, crashed into a blue water pipe, reeled back to an electric pole and knocked it down. He, too, was killed.

Within 10 minutes the gunmen killed five people, then crawled under the kibbutz fence and disappeared. Footprints led towards the West Bank village of Qaffin, but a senior security source said there was no evidence that Qaffin residents were involved in the attack.

Police hurried to the Ohayon´s home. Beside a bookcase topped with a big white teddy bear, books and puzzles they found the three bodies.

"The mother was in a position of covering the children," Chief Inspector Meir Eliyahu told United Press International. "We picked them up to see if there is still a pulse. He shot them in the head," the police officer noted.

Monday noon their father took Noam´s pacifiers. "He would fall asleep only with two. One in his mouth, the other in his hand," he related, sobbing.

The armed wing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat´s Fatah Party, the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack in telephone calls to reporters. A senior Israeli security source said orders for the attack came from the West Bank town of Nablus, and the gunman set out from Tul Karem.

Metzer´s 400 residents have been good neighbors to the nearby Palestinian village of Qaffin, half a mile away. On Sept. 26 they took reporters to the pre-1967 boundary line, where Qaffin residents joined them for a news conference in an olive grove.

Together they protested against the Israeli government´s plans to build a security fence well inside the West Bank leaving some 2,500 acres of Qaffin land on the Israeli side. Metzer residents insisted the fence should pass right on the pre-1967 line so that Qaffin´s farmers could also make a living.

That meant Metzer would have to forgo some of its banana plantations to make room for the fence. The kibbutz members said they were ready for it.

A senior security source in Tel Aviv said the attack proved the terrorists are indiscriminate. Six million Israelis offer, he said, "six million targets and they don´t discriminate between one and the other."

Beside the lawn, outside Metzer´s communal dining room, Kibbutz member Sara Milberg told UPI the attack had the same effect as "losing virginity. It happens once," but it is forever, she explained.

Milberg, who immigrated from Uruguay 13 years ago, and other members had believed they had a kind of immunity from attacks. After all, they have had warm ties with their Arab neighbors since the 30 original founders moved there in 1953. Metzer lies across a soccer- sized field from the Israeli-Arab village of Meisar.

Yoav Ben-Naftali, 57, who heads the kibbutz´ plastics plant that produces irrigation pipes and communications lines with fiber optics, said the Jews and Arabs grew up together.

"We don´t treat them like sheep and they don´t treat us as if we were lions. All our lives we played soccer together, learned from them how to grow olives and they learned from us how to grow other things, in greenhouses," he said.

In 1956 Meisar´s residents helped the kibbutz members dig trenches and build bunkers to protect them against attacks from Jordan, who controlled the West Bank. In the 1967 war, when Metzer´s men were drafted, the Arabs offered to harvest the kibbutz crops for free, and promised water and bread if needed, recalled Meisar resident Ahmed Hussein, 71.

The kibbutz members said that if the Arabs are short of flour, they could enter the kibbutz fields, harvest wheat, "and we´ll bake for all of us."

The relationship attracted people such as Revital Ohayon, who taught film editing and rented the apartment three months ago. She was thrilled it had been a kindergarten and the yard still contained old toys such as wooden cars and a sand box. But it was also the atmosphere she liked, a friend, Taly Boker, 34, said.

"She believed in peace," Boker recalled and grabbed a tissue to wipe her tears.

Boker said: "Pain is something on which you can build, do something and not reach extremities. More hate? More blood? We haven´t tried the other options. We haven´t tried peace."

Yitzhak Rotem, 57, a kibbutz electrical engineer, believes Palestinians should have their own state, through negotiations if possible or a unilateral separation if negotiations prove impossible. The border must return to the pre-1967 war lines, he added.

"My son is going to the army next year. I don´t want him to kill children and I don´t want him to get killed over matters in which I do not believe and do not want," Rotem said.

Israelis should give up illusions that their state would return to the size it had been when Solomon inherited King David´s throne, he insisted.

At noon a delegation of Meisar elders in gleaming white Kefiyya Arab headdresses went to the lush green, grieving kibbutz.

Jamil Youssef, 58, from Meisar, and kibbutz member Gabriel Milberg hugged and exchanged kisses the Arab way, touching cheeks.

"We don´t deserve it, huh?" Milberg asked.

"No. No," Youssef answered.

"It hurts," Milberg noted.

"In good times, in bad times, we´ll always remain together," his Arab friend promised.

Policemen, and some kibbutz members armed with loaded M-16s guns were milling around. (Copyright © 2002 United Press International 11/11/02)