SHVUT AMI OUTPOST, West Bank (AFP) - Littered with leftover pizza and mattresses, the dilapidated house on an occupied West Bank hill is a squat for 20 teenage Jewish settlers determined to sink the peace process. The school-age youth, none older than 18, have illegally occupied the abandoned Arab house deep inside the northern West Bank on and off for two months -- chased away by Israeli police only to return when no one is looking. Naming their wildcat outpost Shvut Ami -- "the return of my people" -- their aim is to torpedo the peace process as Israelis and Palestinians began formal negotiations on Wednesday for the first time in seven years. Under international law, all settlement activity in the West Bank is illegal, yet nearly half a million Israelis live in enclaves throughout the West Bank and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel from the Arabs 40 years ago. The fate of the settlements -- which the Palestinians want dismantled as in the Gaza Strip in 2005 but the largest of which Israel wants to annex -- is one of the biggest obstacles to any peace agreement. At a petrol station at the foot of Kedumim, a government-authorised settlement on the neighbouring hill, the teenagers closely monitor the comings and goings of soldiers in their jeeps. "With the help of God, we will return. We have water, electricity and gas supplied by people supporting us in the area. And the cold doesn't bother us," said Daniel Landersberg, an 18-year-old with a bum fluff and a baby face. "In 10 years, there will be a neighbourhood there," he goes on, determinedly. "We are going to sink the peace process," he adds, after pausing for a moment. He insists Jewish settler organisations have not "manipulated" the teenage group, merely "aided and supported" their efforts. "You know the young grow up quickly here, they mature very young. It was teenagers who fought in the war of independence in 1948," says Sarah Eliach, deputy head of Yesha, the main settler lobby group. A resident of Kedumim she is closely watching developments. Her neighbour, Shoshana Shilo, who works for the council, has just been stopped by police for helping teenagers to uproot olive seedlings planted by a Palestinian farmer. A US Consulate official -- dressed to the nines in a dark three-piece suit -- has also made the trek out from Jerusalem to find out what's going on. He makes tentative inquiries as Shilo screams "flee! flee!" at a passing UN car. "Tell (US President George W.) Bush and (US Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice this land is not for sale," she turns and tells the diplomat as he prepares a speedy but discreet exit. Like most settlers in the West Bank, the two women oppose any agreement with the Palestinians entailing their eviction from land they believe is God given and ending their dream of a modern-day Israel with Biblical borders. "We are the vanguard of the fight," says Shilo. "It's a fight between Jews and Arabs, a conflict of civilisation that must not be lost or the entire Jewish nation will pay the price." Working in his olive orchards across the way, farmer Mahmud Sliman says that for the moment it is Palestinians in the area who are paying the price. "The settlers throw stones at the Palestinians and plunder the olive trees," he sighs in a break from his work. Having no illusions about a positive outcome to the peace talks, he was not even aware that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have begun again. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2007121...aelsettlers;_ylt=Ar6M0o5NfwcQd7PlRc807Ws7Xs8F