Pressure has increased on over 50 Israeli Army reservists refusing to serve in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Chief of the Israeli Army said that that he suspected political rather than moral concerns were behind a letter of petition.
The letter was published a week ago and, in it, the reservists announced their decision not to serve in the occupied territories. "If there is someone who is organising a campaign on an ideological basis...in my eyes this is more than refusal to serve. This is incitement to rebellion," Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz told Army Radio.
The army has suspended the organisers of the petition, reserve officers Yaniv Itzkovich and David Zonshein. They said, in the letter, that they believed the "price of occupation means the loss of the IDF's semblance of humanity and the corruption of Israeli society in general".
It is the most concerted opposition to military policy to come from the army's own ranks in more than 16 months of bloodshed. A counter-petition has now been set up by reservists ready to serve in the occupied territories. One of the organisers claimed that 5,000 people had signed it.
The army, which relies on reserve soldiers to bolster its regular conscripts, is concerned about this development. All Israelis are called to serve in the army at the age of 18.
Exceptions are made for the large majority of Arab citizens and the ultra-Orthodox, who object to military service for political and religious reasons respectively. Male reservists aged up to 45 serve for up to four weeks per year.
Many of these are sent to the West Bank and Gaza. About 200,000 Jewish settlers live in fortified enclaves beside 3 million Palestinians on land that Israel has occupied since 1967.
