Israeli commandos refuse to serve in W.Bank, Gaza ( 2003-12-22 09:11) (Agencies)
Thirteen fighters in Israel's most celebrated
commando unit have publicly refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip because they believe the army's operations there are immoral,
Israeli media reported.
The commandos announced their refusal to serve in a letter sent to Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, who has come under increased pressure to halt efforts to
quash a three-year-old Palestinian uprising and instead engage in peace treaty
talks.
A Palestinian family
looks through a hole in a wall in their home caused by the Israeli army in
the West Bank town of Nablus. Fifteen members of the Israeli army's top
commando unit have written to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refusing to
carry out missions in the Palestinian territories, private television
reported. [AFP/File]
"We will no longer be party to an oppressive rule in the territories and the
disregard for the human rights of millions of Palestinians," the 13 Sayeret
Matkal reservist commandos wrote in their letter, according to local television
stations.
"We will no longer be a defensive wall against settlements," added the
letter, in a reference to Jewish settlements in lands Israel occupied in the
1967 Middle East war.
The Sayeret Matkal, or General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, is Israel's most
elite commando unit and has often been compared to the U.S. military's Delta
Force or the British army's SAS.
It has carried out some of the Israeli army's most daring missions including
the rescuing of 106 passengers taken hostage by Palestinian guerrillas at
Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976.
During the uprising, the Sayeret Matkal has been involved in raids to arrest
senior Palestinian militant commanders behind a suicide bombing campaign against
Israel.
The commandos' letter followed a petition earlier in the year from 27 air
force pilots -- all but nine of whom had retired -- as refusing to carry out
missions against Palestinian militants in which civilians could be killed.
The 13 signatories to the commando letter were all identified as being
reservists, but it was not clear how many were still involved in active military
duty.
Sharon's office declined to comment, but military officials described the
letter as political, noting that it was sent to Sharon and not military
commanders.
"It is very serious that reserve soldiers are using their military past and
the name of the unit in which they served as a vehicle to publish their
political views," an army spokesman said about the letter.
One of the signatories, identified as Zohar, told Channel One Television:
"This is not a political letter...we spoke of the phenomena of occupation which
corrupts."
The commandos' letter joined the pilots' letter as the most high-profile acts
of defiance by members of the armed forces since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon,
when a tank brigade commander resigned rather than invade Beirut, after saying
he saw children through his field glasses.
Some of Israel's top military and political figures served in the Sayeret
Matkal, including former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu,
whose elder brother was killed in the Entebbe rescue operation.
Israeli television stations said it was likely that those signatories still
in active service would be dismissed from the unit. The air force removed the
nine combat pilots still in active duty after they signed their protest letter
in September.