ISRAEL:PRIME MINISTER Ehud Olmert used uncharacteristically strong language yesterday to condemn an attack by dozens of settlers on a Palestinian village in the West Bank on Saturday, calling it a "pogrom".
By last night, however, the Israeli security forces had not made any arrests.
Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting, Mr Olmert said there would be "no pogroms against non-Jewish residents", employing a term used largely to describe violent anti-Semitic mob attacks on Jews in Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The settler rampage through the village of Assira al-Kabaliya came after a Palestinian infiltrated the settlement of Yitzhar on Saturday and stabbed a 10-year-old boy, wounding him lightly.
Dozens of settlers from Yitzhar, which is considered one of the most radical of the settlements, then rampaged through the village, firing their guns, hurling rocks and smashing windows.
Palestinian doctors said four residents of the village suffered gunshot wounds.
Asked about the attack on the village, a spokesman for the settlers at Yitzhar was unrepentant.
"There are people who find the way to show the Arabs that it doesn't pay," he said, referring to the knife attack.
There were reports yesterday that youths from Yitzhar were seeking to establish another illegal settlement outpost near Assira al-Kabaliya.
Mr Olmert said cases in which settlers were "taking the law into their own hands and lashing out with violence and brutality is unforgivable, and will be dealt with by the law enforcement authorities."
The prime minister, whose ruling Kadima party will choose his successor in a leadership primary on Wednesday, also told ministers yesterday that the idea of a "Greater Israel" was over.
"There is no such thing," he said, referring to the belief held by many of the settlers that the West Bank and Gaza should also be part of sovereign Israel.
Mr Olmert's remarks came as the Cabinet discussed a proposal to offer monetary compensation to settlers who are ready to leave their homes in those parts of the West Bank that Israel would be willing to cede in a future peace deal with the Palestinians.
Referring to his hawkish past, when he supported the Greater Israel idea, Mr Olmert told ministers that he once believed "that the land between the Jordan River and the [Mediterranean] sea was all ours.
"But ultimately, after a long and torturous process, I reached the conclusion that we must share it with those who live here with us."