JERUSALEM -- A Jerusalem court on Wednesday convicted three Israeli settlers for attempting to blow up an Arab girls' school in Jerusalem last year to avenge Palestinian attacks against Jews.

Shlomo Dvir, Yarden Morag and Ofer Gamliel, all from the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin, were convicted of attempted murder and illegal weapons possession in connection with the failed attack in the Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of A-Tur in April 2002. Sentences will be passed later.

The convictions come against a background of concern over the emergence of a new Jewish "underground," reminiscent of settler vigilantes who attacked Palestinians in the mid-1980s.

The court found that Dvir and Morag parked an explosives-laden trailer outside the main entrance to the school before dawn and set a timer for 7:25 a.m., just as students would be arriving. The attack was aborted when a passing police cruiser became suspicious of the men and found the trailer contained two bricks of explosives, cooking gas canisters, a clock, battery, detonator and fuse.

Gamliel was found to have helped plan the attack.

The judges rejected the defendants' claim that the explosive device was for demonstration purposes only, and there was no intention of harming students at the school.

They said the defendants meant to carry out a large-scale terror attack, to avenge Arab attacks against Jews that began with the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in September 2000.

After the verdict was read, Morag and Dvir expressed regret for their action. They had no intention of appealing, they said. "We're sorry," Morag said.

"We'll serve our time in jail," Dvir told reporters. "It's no big deal. Anyway it's better than being blown up at a bus stop," he said, in a reference to Palestinian suicide bomb attacks.

Five men were recently arrested for allegedly plotting violence against Arabs, mostly in the area of Hebron, where 500 Jewish settlers live in three tiny enclaves, surrounded by 130,000 Palestinians. Three were released last week.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said it knows of 15 killings of Palestinians in the past three years in which Jewish militants are suspected. Israeli officials say the number is at least six.

Palestinians charge that few prosecutions have resulted from nearly three years of violence, in which 2,468 people have been killed on the Palestinian side, including armed militants and many innocent bystanders. On the Israeli side, 858 people have been killed, most in suicide bombings and shooting attacks.