| http://www.smh.com.au/news/0201/28/world/world3.html
Soldiers rebel over Palestinian policy Jerusalem: Fifty-two Israeli combat reserve soldiers have announced they will no longer fight in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying military actions there are nothing to do with providing security for Israel and are intended to control and degrade Palestinians. In an advertisement in Israeli newspapers, the soldiers, some with the rank of major, said Israel's stringent travel bans, which confine many Palestinians to their communities, needlessly punished the Palestinians. Israel says the closures are needed to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants. "We declare that we will not continue to fight a war for peace in the [Jewish] settlements [in the West Bank and Gaza Strip]," the advertisement said. "We will not continue to fight on the other side of the Green Line with an intent to control, expel, starve and degrade an entire people." The Green Line refers to the invisible line separating Israel from the territories it captured in the 1967 Middle East war. The soldiers wrote that they decided to stop serving in the Palestinian areas when it became clear to them that army orders "had nothing to do with security, and their only intent is to control the Palestinian people forever". Such public criticism of the military by soldiers has been relatively rare in Israel, although over the years some groups of soldiers have refused to serve, including during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and during the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in 1987-1993. The advertisement marked the first time since the outbreak of the current round of fighting in September 2000 that a large group of soldiers had announced it was refusing to serve in the Palestinian areas. Israeli men do three years of compulsory military service and then do reserve duty for about a month every year, until the age of 40. Channel Two television in Israel reported that several soldiers who joined the group said they had been ordered to degrade Palestinians without reason. In one case, soldiers were ordered to demolish homes or greenhouses of Palestinians just because a Palestinian militant passed near the property on his way to attack Israelis, the report said. "In another 10 to 15 years from today people will look back, take their heads in their hands and say, 'What did we do?'" said Noam Livne, explaining why he had decided to refuse to serve in the Palestinian areas. The army said in a response quoted by Channel Two that it weighed "ethical considerations against operational ones when making decisions" on security. The head of Israel's National Security Council, Major-General Uzi Dayan, said the formation of the group concerned him. "We have to allow these discussions, but I say that it shouldn't be expressed in a refusal to serve." |
