New York Times
January 29, 2002
By Joel Greenberg

JERUSALEM, Jan. 28 -- More than 50 combat officers and soldiers in the Israeli Army reserve have said they will refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, setting off heated debate in Israel over the limits of civil disobedience.

The statement, which was published in the liberal newspaper Haaretz last week as Israelis began their weekend, condemned military actions against the Palestinians during the last 16 months of violence.

It asserted that people on both sides of the conflict were paying in blood for what it called Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and its war to protect Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"The price of occupation is the army's loss of its human image and the corruption of all of Israeli society," the statement said. "We will continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel's defense. The mission of occupation and repression does not serve this goal and we will not take part in it."

The 52 signers are members of army reserve combat units, including paratroopers, who have served in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the current Palestinian uprising. Many Israeli men serve a month or more of army reserve duty every year after completing compulsory military service.

Organizers said they hoped to collect 500 signatures and form a broad grass-roots movement that would reflect what they said was growing unease among many army reservists about their duties in the confrontation with the Palestinians.

The statement said that during their service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the signers had received orders "that have nothing to do with the security of the state and their only purpose was perpetuating control over the Palestinian people."

Such orders "destroy all the values we have absorbed in this country," the statement added.

Those orders have included demolition of homes, firing heavy machine guns into civilian neighborhoods in response to Palestinian mortar fire, shooting at stone-throwing boys, and blockading villages, the signers of the statement said.

"We're talking about patently illegal orders," said Yaniv Itzkowitz, a reserve lieutenant who was one of the organizers of the declaration.

The statement drew criticism from cabinet members like Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh, a general in the reserves, who warned that the call to resist service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could lead to anarchy. "There are people who think precisely the opposite, so every group with an opinion will decide for itself which missions it carries out and which missions it doesn't," Mr. Sneh said. "This would spell the end of the country. There is a democratically elected government, and it gives orders to the army. The army does not choose its missions."

In a similar vein, President Moshe Katsav asked, "What would happen tomorrow if a group refused to follow orders for opposite reasons?

"You can't right a wrong -- if someone thinks there's a wrong -- by breaking the law," he said.