The violence began on Thursday after the soldiers removed a bus from the illegal outpost of Adi-Ad near the Yitzhar settlement, which is situated south of the Palestinian city of Nablus in the northern West Bank.

Earlier in the day settlers attacked Palestinians, vandalized their property and set crops on fire in the village of Burin, also near Nablus, as Palestinian sources claimed that Israeli soldiers just watched and did nothing to stop the settlers.

On Wednesday, an Israeli policeman was assaulted at a police station by the family of two settlers who had been arrested following previous disturbances.

On Friday, in another confrontation a settler from the Shiloh settlement managed to seize a gun from an Israeli soldier which he then proceeded to fire into the air.

The same day, in an even more serious incident, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) accused a settler from the Havat Gilad outpost, west of Nablus, of pulling a knife out and pressing it to the throat of another Israeli soldier's neck as well as snatching his helmet and running away with it.

This latest outbreak of settler violence followed an attempt last month by about 1,000 settlers, some throwing rocks, to stop army bulldozers tearing down illegal structures at the Havat Gilad outpost. Five police officers were injured and eight settlers arrested during that altercation.

The operation to remove the structures at the outpost sparked a row in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) with right wing members of parliament calling for Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's resignation.

Outposts are tiny settlements, normally comprising just a few trailers, most of which are considered illegal by the Israeli government. All West Bank settlements and outposts are illegal under international law.

Clashes have been breaking out between settlers and Israeli soldiers and police over the years as settlers set up outposts, which are then torn down and evacuated by the IDF, only to be rebuilt and re-inhabited by settlers once the security forces have left.

While military officials viewed the latest developments in a very serious light and said a red line had been crossed and that the matter would be seriously dealt with, other military commanders had even harsher words for the behavior of the settlers.

Col. Amir Baram, an outgoing commander from the northern West Bank, told IDF officers and officials from the State Prosecutor's Office during a meeting that urgent efforts were needed to deal with settler leader "provocateurs."

Baram cited the extremist mayor of the Kedumim settlement, Daniella Weiss, as one of the "provocateurs."

He further accused teachers at radical yeshivas, or Jewish seminary schools, in the West Bank of organizing protests and sending their students on to the streets to riot against Palestinians and security forces.

Baram focused in particular on two yeshivas in the northern West Bank whose students have been party to crimes against Palestinians in the area.

One of the schools, Dorshei Yihudcha, is headed by Rabbi Yitzhad Shapira, who is one of the rabbis who signed a manifesto in support of two Israeli settler youths who took part in a brutal attack on two Palestinians on Holocaust Remembrance Day in May.

"This is a regular method," added another senior military officer. "When they want to riot, they stop classes and send the students in an organized fashion onto the roads. The frustrating side of all this is that teachers are involved. These are government employees."

Baram also outlined the drain on financial resources and on Israel's security forces, which have been forced to rescue delinquent and "problematic" settler youths who study at the yeshivas and who go into neighboring Palestinian villages to start trouble.

"Two boys recently went into a northern West Bank Palestinian village to set fire to Palestinian cars, but they were caught and beaten, and the army had to extricate them," he said.

The Yesh Din human rights organization said in a statement issued in response to the violent clashes, "The law enforcement authorities' ongoing failure to deal with Israeli citizens in the West Bank is what created the reality in which settlers feel they own the place."

Meanwhile, the settlers have vowed to continue their campaign of intimidation, with one settler commenting that for every attempt to evacuate an outpost "we will exact a price throughout the area. The tiniest evacuation will result in incidents all day long, so it will be clear we don't give up easily."

The intent of the settlers is to create a balance of fear and to press the point that each time a single structure is destroyed the settlers will respond in kind so as to harass the security forces and spell out that such acts will lead to a general escalation in the area.