Hundreds of Jewish settlers are engaged in violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers who get in their way, Israel's top general in the occupied West Bank said in remarks published on Thursday.

"In the past, only a few dozen individuals took part in such activity but today that number has grown into the hundreds. That's a very significant change," Major-General Gadi Shamni said in an interview with the Haaretz newspaper.

"These hundreds are engaged in conspiratorial actions against Palestinians and the security forces. It's a very grave phenomenon," he said, accusing settler leaders and rabbis, whom he did not name, of encouraging vigilante violence.

Shamni's comments echoed the findings of a recent U.N. report which recorded 222 incidents of settler violence in the West Bank in the first half of 2008 compared with 291 in all of 2007.

Palestinians have long complained of harassment by settlers, including the burning of their olive trees and rock-throwing against farmers.

In an incident on Sept. 13, scores of settlers armed with guns, slingshots, knives and stun grenades attacked the West Bank village of Asira al-Kibliya, wounding three Palestinians.

Settlers and the Israeli army said the Asira assault was triggered by the wounding of a nine-year-old settler boy by a Palestinian whom he had disturbed in the act of setting fire to a house in the Yitzhar settlement while the family was away.

"POGROMS"

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reacted strongly to the settlers' attack, saying he would not tolerate "pogroms" by Jewish extremists who are determined on religious grounds to stop Israel swapping occupied land for peace.

No arrests were made after the attack on Asira.

In the interview, Shamni said Israeli officers and soldiers who have tried to protect Palestinians from attack have been injured by settlers or had their vehicles damaged.

Diverting military resources to keep settlers in line, Shamni said, impairs the army's ability to carry out "security missions" in the West Bank, which include raids against Palestinian militants.

Palestinians say the military often turns a blind eye to settler vigilantism.

Some 500,000 settlers live in the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem. The areas are home to some 2.5 million Palestinians.

"The majority of (settlers) here act normally. We're talking about a hard core of a few hundred activists," Shamni said.

Last week, an Israeli academic who has been an outspoken critic of settlement on occupied land Palestinians want for a state, was wounded by a pipe bomb outside his Jerusalem home.

Olmert said the bombing was evidence of "an evil wind of extremism, of hatred, of violence" threatening Israeli democracy.