Reservists from elite unit refuse to serve in West Bank, Gaza

JERUSALEM -- About a dozen reservists from the Israeli army's top commando unit declared Sunday they would no longer serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reflecting growing unease with Israel's hard-fisted policy in the Palestinian areas.

Thirteen reservists, including three officers, from "Sayeret Matkal" made their declaration in a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to Israeli media.

"We cannot continue to stand silent," they wrote, charging that Israeli military activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are depriving "millions of Palestinians of human rights" and endangering "the fate of Israel as a democratic, Zionist and Jewish country."

"Sayeret Matkal" is the top commando unit in the Israeli military and its most prestigious. Ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was once its commander, and another former premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, also served in the force, known for daring operations outside Israel's borders. Its soldiers rarely serve in the Palestinian areas.

Sharon's office had no immediate comment. A military spokesman released a one-sentence statement criticizing the soldiers for "using their uniforms and the name of the unit where they serve as a lever for publicizing their political views."

The military would not respond to a question of how many reservists serve in the "Sayeret Matkal."

The 13 signatories represent a tiny fraction of the unit, Channel 10 TV said. Its military reporter, Yinon Magal, complained that reservists from both units were "taking the name of their unit in vain."

More than three years of Palestinian-Israeli violence has stretched nerves thin among Israelis and further fractured the consensus over the military, once the unquestioned pinnacle of Israeli society.

A bitter response came from Effie Eitam, a general in the reserves and head of the pro-settlement National Religious Party. He said the letter "shows a breaking point in the Israeli society, and without recognizing the historic and moral underpinning of our right to the Land of Israel, the wave of refusal will continue and may even grow."

"Those who signed are not worthy of being called soldiers," he said.

Support for the armed forces partly unraveled during Israel's long guerrilla war in Lebanon, which ended with a unilateral pullout in May 2000 as Israeli casualties mounted.

The unrelenting violence in the West Bank and Gaza, punctuated with bloody Palestinian attacks, including suicide bombings, inside Israel has led Israel's government to order its forces to retake large parts of the West Bank handed over to Palestinian control under interim peace accords.

Explaining that it needed to keep Palestinian attackers at bay, the military set up hundreds of roadblocks and declared closures and curfews all over the West Bank, decimating the Palestinian economy and severely harming the society.

Palestinians demand that Israel withdraw from all the West Bank and Gaza, where they want to create a state.

In September, 27 reserve and retired pilots wrote a similar letter, refusing to take part in air strikes in the West Bank and Gaza. Several hundred Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in the Palestinian territories and have been sentenced to prison terms. Others have quietly worked out alternate service with their units.

The letters from the commandos and pilots are especially noteworthy, however, because those selected for the units are considered Israel's finest.

An outcry followed the pilots' letter, and condemnation was widespread. Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz grounded all 27 but reinstated a few who retracted their signatures.

However, Zehava Galon of the dovish Meretz Party praised the signers.

"Now (the government) cannot obscure the fact that the military is operating illegally in the territories," she said.