Settlers threaten IDF refusal if pullout takes place
By Nadav Shragai
Haaretz, November 14, 2004
Gaza Strip settlers have threatened to refuse to serve in the Israel Defense Forces if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan is carried out. They have begun circulating a petition, declaring that the security forces have become a tool of "the dictator Sharon."
It marks the first time since the start of the debate on the pullout plan that groups on Israel's right have made a general appeal to refuse to serve in the IDF, and not limit their refusal to taking part in the actual evacuation of settlements.
The signatories, numbering in the dozens so far, declared they would work to persuade other Israelis to join in their threat. They also intend to create a movement for their cause.
In the petition, published on the Katif.net Internet site, the settlers stated that "we are families who live in Gush Katif, some of us were evacuated from Yamit [a Jewish settlement in the Sinai peninsula evacuated after the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in 1979], and are now destined to be evacuated again."
"We have sent our sons to serve in the IDF and especially in elite army units and to risk their lives," the petition said.
"We are hereby warning that if the evacuation plan, called the `disengagement plan,' should be carried out, we would in reaction have to disengage ourselves, our children and our grandchildren from any type of service in the security forces operated by the dictator Sharon as a manpower company to realize his personal aspirations, and making them accomplices to the awful crime of evacuating Jews from their land."
The settlers said they had refrained from considering refusal, despite the IDF policy they branded as "the ongoing spilling of blood in Gush Katif."
However, Sharon's actions "turned him into an enemy who ignored the rules of democracy and ignored the will of the majority of the people," leaving them with no choice but to refuse to serve.
