Added Mordechai Tamarkin, a doctor who commutes every day to work in Tel Aviv: "The intifadah is something that is forgotten about - for two weeks, we haven't had it."
But most here assume that the intifadah - a general uprising by Palestinians against Israel's control over the occupied territories it captured during the Six-Day War in 1967 - will resume once the Israeli military lifts a 24-hour curfew.
Israel imposed the curfew on the territories just after war broke out in the Persian Gulf.
The question here is whether Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza strip will become more, or less, secure once the war is over.
Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman, for one, is more confident than ever.
Thanks to Saddam Hussein, Nachman said, "the entire world knows that the true problem is not the relationship between Jews and Palestinians in (the occupied territories) but the threat to the existence of the only Jewish state in the world by Arab countries."
Conservative settlers like Nachman have long argued that keeping the occupied territories is vital to Israel's security.
Liberals contend that the reverse is true, arguing that continued occupation of the territories represents the biggest threat to peace in the country.
In recent days, they have said that Hussein's missiles to Tel Aviv prove that the West Bank provides no security at all.
Nachman couldn't disagree more.
"All the B-52s and all the Tomahawk missiles do not succeed at putting an end to Iraqi efforts," Nachman said.
"Without a ground attack, there will be no victory by the Americans. . . . No tank can come to Tel Aviv if it doesn't pass Ariel and what you call the West Bank."
Nachman, 48, aggressive and self-assured, was one of 40 original settlers who pitched two large tents and brought their families out to these barren, rocky hills on the West Bank. That was in 1978.
