SHILOH, West Bank - Israel's West Bank settlers have been ratcheting up their violence, defying their own government and flouting international public opinion.

But on Monday, a settler group launched a PR offensive, taking a busload of foreign journalists on a tour featuring a fine glass of Merlot in a boutique winery and a visit to a poshly appointed house overlooking the site where the biblical Israelites housed Moses' stone tablets.

"Here you see the miracles and the prophecies actualized in front of you," said settler Tamar Yonah Feld, portraying Jewish settlement in the West Bank as a fulfillment of God's will.

The settlers said they were trying to show the world they're regular folks trying to live peaceful lives. But the bus' bulletproof windows, the ubiquitous barbed wire and the watch towers guarding the settlers' homes betrayed an existence that is anything but normal.

Despite the wine, a mouth-watering lunch and an earnest video on the land's Jewish roots, the interaction with the visitors was often heated.

Journalists peppered the settlers with questions like "Don't the Palestinians have a right to a state?" and "How can Israel hope to remain both Jewish and democratic if it continues to rule over another people who will soon outnumber Israelis?"

The answer to the first question was invariably no, because, the settlers said, Arabs already have enough states. Responding to the second question, some settlers said Israel doesn't really need to be democratic. Others said they expected Jews from around the world to flock to Israel to ensure a Jewish majority in the lands controlled by Israel.

Eliana Passentin, a 35-year-old mother of six who was raised in San Francisco, invited the 15 or so reporters into her home in the settlement of Eli, offering cookies and blue pens that read, "From Eli with friendship."

To get to the house, the reporters were driven past a swimming pool, basketball and tennis courts, a Jewish seminary, kindergartens and a poster bearing the face of Meir Kahane, the slain extremist leader who advocated the forcible expulsion of Arabs.

Passentin's house, featuring modern furniture and fine tiles cemented into built-in benches, overlooks ancient Shiloh, for which a modern settlement nearby is named, and where tradition holds the ancient Israelites kept the tabernacle with Moses' tablets. Passentin said her dining room was situated to make maximum use of that view.

"We love living here. We love this land," she said.

Later, the reporters were taken to the ancient site to watch a video and hear an archaeologist describe the Jewish connection to the land.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and other Arab lands in the 1967 Mideast war and, after initially holding off, eventually began moving its people into the territories. Today nearly 300,000 Jewish settlers live among 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to about 180,000 Israelis living in east Jerusalem neighborhoods also captured in 1967.

Much of the world and a sizable portion of the Israeli public, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, now say many of the settlements will have to be dismantled to make room for a Palestinian state.

That's not going to happen, said Avi Roeh, the head of the local government that conducted Monday's tour.

"Governments come and governments go," he said. "What we're doing here is something that's permanent. We intend to stay."

The need to protect the settlers from Palestinian militants is one of the main reasons Israel imposes heavy restrictions on freedom of movement for Palestinians. The settlements, interspersed among Palestinian communities across the West Bank, are easily recognizable with their red-tile roofs, manicured gardens and neat rows of cookie-cutter houses.

The existence of the settlements and the hardships they have caused Palestinians - including a road system designed to keep Israelis and Palestinian motorists apart - have drawn comparisons to apartheid.

But settler David Feld, who identified himself as a former colonel in the U.S. air force, said any Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would lead to more violence from Palestinians. As evidence, he pointed to the Gaza Strip, where a 2005 Israeli pullout was followed by a takeover by Hamas militants and an increase in the number of rockets launched at southern Israel.

"Now you don't see a single Jew in Gaza and what did we get in return? Bombs, bombs and bombs," he said.

The settlers' biggest fear is that they will meet the same fate as the 8,000 evicted Gaza settlers as a result of current peace talks between Israel and the Western-backed Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.

So in addition to Monday's tour, they have taken out radio ads and put up billboards highlighting the ancient Jewish connection to Judea and Samaria - the biblical term for the West Bank. At the same time, however, other settlers less concerned with their image are conducting a more ominous campaign, with young extremists stepping up their attacks on Palestinians and even hurling abuse at Israeli soldiers, who would be in charge of kicking the settlers out if it ever came to that.

The settlers sought to put a happy face on things, however. At the settlement of Ofra, the reporters were taken to a dark, stone-walled cellar in a boutique winery and offered samples of $40-dollar bottles of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.

Yoram Cohen, the 47-year-old proprietor, said he wasn't concerned at all about someday being forced to leave - or the fact that many foreigners are reluctant to buy Israeli wine made in disputed territory like the West Bank.

"I don't live with worrying. I live with living," he said.