“Now it is deserted,” he said, noting that many of the assailants had been from the Hebron area.

Gush Etzion, or the Etzion block, a cluster of more than a dozen Jewish settlements, lies south of Jerusalem, in the Bethlehem area. It is often described as part of the Israeli “national consensus,” a chunk of West Bank land seized from Jordan in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 that many Jewish Israelis assume will always be part of Israel, and it holds a special status in the country’s psyche, associated with tragedy and triumph.

The first Jewish settlers arrived in the 1920s. Four communities were established by the 1940s but they were destroyed in the war of 1948 over the creation of Israel. Jordanian forces killed scores of Jews who tried to defend the area and took scores more captive.

After Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war, a group of Israelis, including some descendants of those who had fought to defend it in 1948, re-established Jewish settlements there.

The Palestinians and much of the world consider all settlements in the territories seized in 1967 as illegal and an obstacle to establishing a Palestinian state. While most peace plans envisage exchanges of land that could leave at least part of Gush Etzion under Israeli sovereignty, Israelis and Palestinians have never agreed on the size of the block.

The American student, Ezra Schwartz, 18, of Sharon, Mass., was fatally shot when he and several friends went to volunteer at a park, Oz Ve’Gaon, that had been established in memory of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and murdered last year by Palestinians while hitchhiking in Gush Etzion. The Haaretz newspaper described the park as an unauthorized settlement outpost that is obtaining approval from the Israeli authorities.

Some Jewish clientele have stayed away from the junction recently because of the violence. Tali Netanel, 50, a teacher, and her sister were sitting alone outside the English Cake bakery sipping cappuccinos and eating Hanukkah doughnuts. “There is fear,” she said. “But clichéd as it sounds, we carry on.”