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Occupied Jerusalem: A new ultranationalist underground is apparently active in Israel and responsible for a bombing that wounded an outspoken critic of Jewish colonies in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday.
The attack on Thursday at the home of political scientist Zeev Sternhell rekindled fears that ideological friction in Israel could explode into internal violence as its leaders pursue a peace deal with Palestinians.
"Security agencies have been ordered to deal with this case, investigate it and act with the utmost speed to bring to justice what appears to be another underground," Olmert told his cabinet in broadcast remarks.
Sternhell, a leading opponent of colony building in the Palestinian territories, was slightly wounded by the pipe bomb that blew up at the gate to his home in occupied Jerusalem.
Olmert compared the bombing with the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish ultranationalist.
"A bad wind of extremism, hate, evil, violence and contempt for state authorities is blowing through certain sectors of the Israeli public and threatening Israeli democracy," said Olmert.
Commenting at Sunday's cabinet session, Defence Minister Ehud Barak echoed human rights groups in saying that settlers who take the law into their own hands in the West Bank rarely face trial and those who are prosecuted receive light penalties.
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