Israeli teenagers to defense minister: We won’t dismantle settlements, outposts

Israeli teens: We won’t dismantle settlements

JERUSALEM — About 200 Israeli teenagers soon to be drafted sent a letter to Israel’s defense minister on Thursday, saying they won’t enforce any military orders to dismantle settlements in the West Bank because that violates Jewish law.

The threat is the latest sign of a growing tolerance for military insubordination in religious and nationalist circles, something that was unthinkable just a few years ago. The rebellion has been touched off by a recent Israeli government decision to slow Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.

Several influential rabbis have urged religious soldiers to violate orders to knock down unauthorized building.

Although insubordination still is not a widespread phenomenon, it has the military worried. Eager to quash a potential rebellion, it has punished defiant soldiers, issued stern warnings to rabbis who promote insubordination and expelled one seminary from a program that combines religious study and military service.

In Thursday’s incident, the Israeli teenagers said their paramount loyalty is to Jewish law. Opponents of the settlement slowdown say Jewish law forbids the destruction of Jewish construction, even if it hasn’t been unauthorized by the government. Orthodox Jews also believe that God promised the West Bank to the Jewish people in the bible.

“The way the government is acting, the freeze in the West Bank, and the use of violence to implement is very disrespectful toward the Bible,” Hanani Lieberson, one of the teenagers who signed the letter, told Army Radio.

The letter urges that soldiers not be used to carry out anti-settlement orders.

There was no immediate comment from Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to slow construction in the West Bank has provoked a great furor in the largely religious settler community. Netanyahu enacted the limitations under U.S. pressure to try to entice Palestinians to resume peacemaking.

The Palestinians have refused to return to the negotiating table, saying the settlement restrictions are insufficient because they exclude east Jerusalem and 3,000 homes already being built in the West Bank.

The Palestinian claim all of the West Bank as part of a future state, with east Jerusalem as their capital.