But the unidentified woman refused the offer, telling Israeli military radio Wednesday that giving up her house ``would be like selling my son.''

Agents for Moskowitz even offered to give the woman a false identity and buy here a plane ticket abroad to protect her from any retaliation by Palestinian security services, the radio said.

Several Palestinians were murdered last year after allegations they sold land to Jews in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured and annexed in 1967.

Since the 1970s, Moscowitz has bankrolled attempts to settle Jews in historically Arab parts of East Jerusalem by purchasing private property and construction.

The radio said several other Palestinian home-owners in the part of Hebron that remains under Israeli control had been offered large sums ofmoney to give up their property to settlers.

The woman's house is between Tel Rumeida, where half a dozen settlers live in mobile homes, and another district in Hebron where settlers are already established, the radio reported.

A prominent settler rabbi, Shlomo Raanan, was stabbed to death last month in his home in Tel Rumeida, a stronghold for extremist settlers. Since then, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that houses would be built there to replace the mobile homes.

Israel transferred 80 percent of Hebron to Palestinian rule in January 1997 but retained control over the other fifth of the city where 20,000 Palestinians live alongside 400 zealous Jewish settlers.