By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday likened a rampage by armed Jewish settlers in a Palestinian village to a pogrom and said Israel would not tolerate such attacks in the occupied West Bank. Dozens of settlers, some firing weapons, assaulted Palestinians and damaged houses in the village of Asira al-Kabaliya on Saturday after a Palestinian stabbed a 9-year-old boy in a nearby Jewish outpost. His wounds were not life threatening. Three Palestinians were shot and wounded in the settlers' attack, medical officials said. "In the State of Israel, there will be no pogroms against non-Jews," Olmert said in broadcast remarks at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting. "(This) is an intolerable phenomenon, and it will be dealt with in the strongest way by Israel's law enforcement authorities," he said of the assault on the village -- in which no arrests were made. The word "pogrom" has particular significance in Israel, where it is used mainly to describe violence against Jews in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "(The settlers) started to throw stones at houses. They broke windows and shot at people here and there who came out of their homes to try to protect their neighbours," Mohammed Arouf, resident of Asira al-Kabaliya, said in Hebrew on Israel Radio. Yigal Amitai, a spokesman for the nearby Yitzhak settlement, said the Palestinian who stabbed the boy had come from Asira al-Kabaliya. Asked whether Yitzhar settlers had taken the law into their own hands, he said: "I think it's time for Israel to stop playing the victim, and start being the aggressor." However, Zehava Galon, a legislator from Israel's left-wing Meretz party, accused Israeli authorities of failing for years to punish settlers who break the law. "LAW OF THE JUNGLE" Amos Harel, military affairs correspondent for Israel's Haaretz newspaper, said the "law of the jungle" applies in the West Bank. "The settlers are in danger -- let's not get that wrong. They face daily risks, and their way of settling accounts is very violent and built on deterrence," Harel wrote. Some 500,000 Jews live among 2.5 million Palestinians on West Bank land captured by Israel in a 1967 war, including Arab East Jerusalem. In his remarks to the cabinet, Olmert noted that settlers, at a West Bank outpost built without government permission, had broken the hand of an officer on Wednesday during an army operation to confiscate construction equipment. Olmert, the focus of a series of corruption investigations, is due to resign later this week after his Kadima party holds an election to pick a new leader on Wednesday. But he could stay on as caretaker prime minister for weeks or months until his successor forms a new government, or failing that, an early national election is held. Olmert has pledged to use the remainder of his tenure to continue to pursue a peace deal with the Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview published on Sunday he will remain in office until 2010. Abbas's Fatah faction says Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections should be held together in 2010. Hamas, which defeated Fatah in parliamentary elections in 2006, says Abbas's term ends on Jan. 9, 2009. (Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch and Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Solar panels are seen on a farm belonging to Moshe Tenne in Israel's Negev desert September 9, 2008. Tenne built a solar energy station on his farm in the Negev desert ...
