JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to combat West Bank settler violence Sunday as the cabinet mulled an unprecedented plan to compensate Israelis for quitting parts of the occupied territory. At what could be his last cabinet meeting before his Kadima party votes on Wednesday to choose his successor, the once-hawkish Olmert said Israel must give up parts of the West Bank and reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. "The idea of a 'Greater Israel' is over. There is no such thing. Whoever says so is just misleading himself," Olmert said, according to a senior official at the meeting. "I used to think that the land between the Jordan river and the 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." The patchwork of Jewish settlements criss-crossing the West Bank, home to more than 450,000 Israelis, is considered one of the main obstacles to the peace process. The Israeli cabinet, meanwhile, discussed the most detailed plan ever offered to compensate settlers for leaving their homes in parts of the West Bank. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon presented a plan to offer settlers up to $300,000 to leave homes built east of Israel's controversial separation barrier in the occupied territory. "Everything east of the fence will not be under Israeli rule," Ramon told reporters after the meeting. The initiative drew immediate fire from across the political spectrum, and its success seems doubtful given Olmert's imminent departure. Ramon however said he intended to take the plan to parliament "within weeks." Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who heads the peace talks with the Palestinians and is a front-runner to replace Olmert, came out against the plan, which she said would weaken Israel at the negotiating table. The Palestinians, who have slammed the separation barrier as an "Apartheid wall" and demanded a state in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, have also rejected such ideas in the past. But Ramon insisted the project, which Olmert openly supports, would aid the peace process. "Such a statement, that the Israeli government does not intend to continue ruling territories east of the barrier, will strengthen Israel in the peace talks with the Palestinians," Ramon said. Meanwhile, Israel expressed outrage on Sunday after a mob of Jewish settlers rampaged through a Palestinian village in the West Bank to avenge the stabbing of a nine-year-old boy in a nearby settlement. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned Saturday's settler attack on the village, during which four Palestinians were shot and wounded, and vowed to halt settler "pogroms" in the occupied territory. "This phenomenon of taking the law into their own hands and of brutal and violent attacks is intolerable and will receive the strictest and most severe treatment," Olmert told reporters ahead of a weekly cabinet meeting. Jewish settlers stormed into the village of Asira al-Qibliya after an intruder burned down a mobile home and stabbed and lightly wounded a nine-year-old boy in the Yitzhar settlement - an extreme right-wing bastion. Olmert said the stabbing attack was "serious and severe, and our security forces are dealing with this issue." But he sharply condemned the actions of the settlers, saying they had attacked the village, fired live rounds and "hurt Palestinian residents, with no reason to believe that any of them are linked in any way to the attack." US arms sales climbing rapidly WASHINGTON (Agencies) - The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq and Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies. From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005. The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada, through dozens of deals that senior Bush administration officials say they are confident will both tighten military alliances and combat terrorism. "This is not about being gunrunners," said Bruce S Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. "This is about building a more secure world." The surging American arms sales reflect the foreign policy tides, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader campaign against international terrorism, that have dominated the Bush administration. Deliveries on orders now being placed will continue for several years, perhaps as one of President Bush's most lasting legacies. The US is far from the only country pushing sophisticated weapons systems: it is facing intense competition from Russia and elsewhere in Europe, including continuing contests for multibillion-dollar deals to sell fighter jets to India and Brazil. In that booming market, American military contractors are working closely with the Pentagon, which acts as a broker and procures arms for foreign customers through its Foreign Military Sales program. Less sophisticated weapons, and services to maintain these weapons systems, are often bought directly by foreign governments. That category of direct commercial sales has seen an enormous surge as well, as measured by export licenses issued this fiscal year covering an estimated $96 billion, up from $58 billion in 2005, according to the State Department, which must approve the licenses. About 60 countries get annual military aid from the US, $4.5 billion a year, to help them buy American weapons. Israel and Egypt receive more than 80 percent of that aid. The US has also recently given Iraq and Afghanistan large amounts of weapons and other equipment and has begun to train fledgling military units at no charge; this assistance is included in the tally of foreign sales. But the most arms exports are paid for by the purchasers without United States financing. The growing tally of international weapon deals, which started to surge in 2006, is now provoking questions among some advocates of arms control and some members of Congress. "Sure, this is a quick and easy way to cement alliances," said William D Hartung, an arms control specialist at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute. "But this is getting out of hand." Congress is notified before major arms sales deals are completed between foreign governments and the Pentagon. While lawmakers have the power to object formally and block any individual sale, they rarely use it. Representative Howard L Berman of California, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he supported many of the individual weapons sales, like helping Iraq build the capacity to defend itself, but he worried that the sales blitz could have some negative effects. "This could turn into a spiralling arms race that in the end could decrease stability," he said. The United States has long been the top arms supplier to the world. In the past several years, however, the list of nations that rely on the United States as a primary source of major weapons systems has greatly expanded. Among the recent additions are Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Georgia, India, Iraq, Morocco and Pakistan, according to sales data through the end of last month provided by the Department of Defense. Cumulatively, these countries signed $870 million worth of arms deals with the US from 2001 to 2004. For the past four fiscal years, that total has been $13.8 billion. In many cases, these sales represent a cultural shift, as nations like Romania, Poland and Morocco, which have long relied on Russian-made MIG-17 fighter jets, are now buying new F-16s, built by Lockheed Martin. At Lockheed Martin, one of the largest American military contractors, international sales last year brought in about $6.3 billion, or 15 percent of the company's total sales, up from $4.8 billion in 2001. The foreign sales by Lockheed and other American military contractors are credited with helping keep alive some production lines, like those of the F-16 fighter jet and Boeing's C-17 transport plane. Fighter jets made in America will now be flying in other countries for years to come, meaning continued profits for American contractors that maintain them, and in many cases regular interaction between the United States military and foreign air forces, Mr. Lemkin, the Air Force official, said. Sales are also being driven by the push by many foreign nations to join the once-exclusive club of countries whose arsenals include precise, laser-guided missiles, high-priced American technology that the United States displayed during its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Persian Gulf region, much of the rearmament is driven by fears of Iran. The United Arab Emirates, for example, are considering spending as much as $16 billion on American-made missile defense systems, according to recent notifications sent to Congress by the Department of Defense. The Emirates also have announced an intention to order offensive weapons, including up to 26 Black Hawk helicopters and 900 Longbow Hellfire II missiles, which can knock out enemy tanks. Saudi Arabia, this fiscal year alone, has signed at least $6 billion worth of agreements to buy weapons from the United States government - the highest figure for that country since 1993, which was another peak year in American weapons sales, after the first Persian Gulf war. Israel, long a major buyer of United States military equipment, is also increasing its orders, including planned purchases of perhaps as many as four American-made coastal warships, worth $1.9 billion. In Asia, as North Korea has conducted tests of a long-range missile, American allies have been buying more United States equipment. One ally, South Korea, has signed sales agreements with the Pentagon this year worth $1.1 billion. So far, the value of foreign arms deliveries completed by the United States has increased only modestly, reaching $13 billion last year compared with an average of $12 billion over the previous three years. Because complex weapons systems take a long time to produce, it is expected that the increase in sales agreements will result in much greater arms deliveries in the coming years. (All dollar amounts for previous years cited in this article have been adjusted to reflect the impact of inflation.) The flood of sophisticated American military equipment pouring into the Middle East has evoked concern among some members of Congress, who fear that the Bush administration may be compromising the military edge Israel has long maintained in the region. Not surprisingly, two of the biggest new American arms customers are Iraq and Afghanistan. Just in the past two years, Iraq has signed more than $3 billion of sales agreements - and announced plans to buy perhaps as much as $7 billion more in American equipment, financed by its rising oil revenues. Lt Col Almarah Belk, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said that making these sales served the interests of both Iraq and the United States because "it reduces the risk of corruption and assists the Iraqis in getting around bottlenecks in their acquisition processes." Over the past three years, the United States government, separately, has agreed to buy more than $10 billion in military equipment and weapons on behalf of Afghanistan, according to Defense Department records, including M-16 rifles and C-27 military transport aircraft. Even tiny countries like Estonia and Latvia are getting into the mix, playing a part in a collaborative effort by 15 countries, mostly in Europe, to buy two C-17 Boeing transport planes, which are used in moving military supplies as well as conducting relief missions. Boeing has delivered 176 of these $200 million planes to the United States. But until 2006, Britain was the only foreign country that flew them. Now, in addition to the European consortium, Canada, Australia and Qatar have put in orders, and Boeing is competing to sell the plane to six other countries, said Tommy Dunehew, Boeing's C-17 international sales manager. In the last year, foreign sales have made up nearly half of the production at the California plant where C-17s are made. "It has been filling up the factory in the last couple of years," Mr. Dunehew said. Even before this new round of sales got under way, the United States' share of the world arms trade was rising, from 40 percent of arms deliveries in 2000 to nearly 52 percent in 2006, the latest year for which the Congressional Research Service has compiled data. The next-largest seller was Russia, which in 2006 accounted for 21 percent of global deliveries. Representative Berman, who sponsored a bill passed in May to overhaul the arms export process, said American military sales, while often well intended, were sometimes misguided. He cited military sales to Pakistan, which he said he feared were doing more to stoke tensions with India than combat terrorism in the region. Travis Sharp, a military policy analyst at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-proliferation, a Washington research group, said one of his biggest worries was that if alliances shifted, the US might eventually be in combat against an enemy equipped with American-made weapons. Arms sales have had unintended consequences before, as when the US armed militants fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, only to eventually confront hostile Taliban fighters armed with the same weapons there. "Once you sell arms to another country, you lose control over how they are used," Sharp said. "And the weapons, unfortunately, don't have an expiration date." But Lemkin, of the Pentagon, said that with so many nations now willing to sell advanced weapons systems, the United States could not afford to be too restrictive in its own sales. "Would you rather they bought the weapons and aircraft from other countries?" he said. "Because they will."