ARABS-ISRAEL - Aug. 20- Observers Will No Longer Patrol Hebron.

The Chief of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) Karl-Henrik Sjursen of Norway says the international monitors in the area will no longer patrol the city's Jewish enclave. He says the halt to patrols "is because of the great number of attacks committed by some of the settlers. Our observers have been kicked, spat at, dragged from their cars and had boulders thrown at them". (The announcement deals a heavy blow to a seven-year-old experiment that never really worked - the only international monitoring force active in the West Bank to which Israel and the PA jointly consented. The 85 monitors - Danes, Swedes, Swiss, Norwegians, Italians and Turks - were first deployed after a Jewish settler killed 29 Palestinians at prayer in Hebron in 1994 and have been on patrol continuously since mid-1996. From the start they have been held in low esteem by Hebron's 120,000 Palestinians as well as the 450 Jewish settlers who live in the Palestinians' midst under heavy guard by the Israeli Army. The settlers suspected them of colluding with the Palestinians; the Palestinians regarded them as ineffectual. The monitors have no firepower. When the uprising erupted last September, they were a particular target of the Hebron settlers, a militant community that has brawled not only with Hebron's Palestinians but also with Israeli soldiers. The settlers accused the TIPT of spying for Palestinian gunmen). Saida Keller, a Swiss spokeswoman for the TIPT, says: "We have a mandate to give a feeling of security to the Palestinian population because of the massacre in 1994. But when our security is not guaranteed we can't give a feeling of security to others".