JERUSALEM (IPS) — Israelis were perturbed when new recruits at a recent passing-out parade at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the remains of Judaism’s holiest site, suddenly unfurled banners reading, ‘Our Sons Do Not Evacuate Jews’.

Israel’s President Shimon Peres (R) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend the annual memorial ceremony for Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, in Sde Boker, southern Israel November 23, 2009. REUTERS/Tsafrir Abayov

The concern became more acute last week. After the demolition of two hilltop settler houses in the occupied West Bank, six religious soldiers from the same brigade deployed placards at their base, declaring their intent to refuse to remove any more settlements if ordered to do so.
The bulk of the Kfir brigade is composed of religious Jews from settler communities. Their national service combines military duties with religious studies.

Both acts were privately filmed, and the material was disseminated by settler activists to Israeli TV networks. The dissident soldiers were swiftly punished, some to 30-days incarceration, others to confinement to barracks.

The two incidents have exacerbated public concern over politicization in the Israeli army.

Settler rabbis retort that it is senior army officers who are in fact “contaminated by politics” since they are willing to give up land in the West Bank which nationalist religious Jews consider as “God-promised to the Jewish nation.”

Many of the settler soldiers rely on ideological rabbinical precepts compiled by ultra-nationalist rabbis who oversee their studies while they are doing their national service.

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed of the Har Bracha ring of settlements near the major Palestinian town of Nablus is an important source of inspiration. He provides religious answers to the conscripts on how to be loyal to “nation, land, army.”

“It is prohibited for any soldier or officer to participate in the strictly forbidden act of expelling Jews from their homes and to hand over any portion of the Land of Israel to enemies,” he writes in one of his religious tracts. “Those doing so violate several commandments of the Torah.”

In his book, “Revivim,” Melamed responds to the question, “Will that not cause the army to collapse?”

“If many refuse, no such order will be given,” writes the rabbi. “At most, senior commanders will have to resign. It would be good if this happened. The majority of the senior officers are contaminated by politics.”

A day after the latest incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “refusing to obey orders means the breakdown of the state. We will do everything possible to put an end to it. We survive because of our army, and the army relies on its ability to give orders and to have them obeyed.” There will be “zero-tolerance” for soldiers refusing to obey orders, Netanyahu said emphatically.

But words apart, neither the political nor army leadership is acting resolutely to stop the drift.

The prime minister directed his tough talk against “any” insubordinate soldiers — attempting to create a moral equivalence between protesting right- wing settlers and left-wing “conscientious objectors” who oppose serving in the Occupied Territories.

“The equivalence is false,” said the daily Haaretz in an editorial. Calling the settlers’ protest “a revolt,” the editorial said, “This is nothing but a cover for blatant activity within the army by radical rabbis, some of whom openly flout the rule of law.”

Speaking of the serious problem of divided loyalties, the father of one of the protesting soldiers declared, “Not for nothing is our army called the Israeli Defense Forces. Its job is to defend Israel, not to remove Jews from their homes in the Land of Israel.”

That threat of divided loyalties within the army has haunted Israeli society for many years.

Now, however, not just left-wing and liberal Israelis are beginning to wonder what lies behind the protest: that it is not so much politicization of rank- and-file soldiers, but the kick-off of a settler strategy aimed at deterring the government from taking any action against the settlements — be they so-called “illegal outposts” or so-called “approved settlement communities.”

As if to corroborate that, a settler group calling itself “The Organization for Saving the Nation and the Land” announced that it would pay any protesting soldier from their fold NIS1,000 (around 260 dollars) for every day spent in a military prison.

Even so-called “moderate” settler ideologues put the Netanyahu government on warning that there should be no repeat of the evacuation of the Gaza settlements enforced four years ago by the previous right-wing government under Ariel Sharon.

“Everyone, soldiers, politicians, the media and the legal authorities, all agree that the army must not be politicized,” says Yisrael Harel of the Ofra settlement. “The protesting corporal and sergeants in the two recent incidents have only a marginal role in that politicization. The parties primarily responsible are the same people who set the army against civilians — the prime minister and his defense minster.”

The question of the politicization of the army has become a real issue in Israeli society.

Literally in the first days after Israel’s creation in May 1948, then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion ordered the nascent army to fire on a ship chartered by ultra-nationalists who were trying to smuggle into the country both Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe and weapons to arm their underground.

Ben-Gurion was determined to ensure loyalty to only one national army. Dozens were killed in the attack off the shore of Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion had made his point.

And, it helped his successors to keep at bay, even in turbulent times, the specter of ideological infighting within the army.

The specter began to resurface with the start of colonization of Palestinian lands in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israel war. Religious philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz then warned that Israel would be eaten up from within like a “cancer” by the Occupation.

In contrast to the perceived dangers of an army no longer united in purpose, the power attributed to the settlers — often described as a “state-within-a- state” — is somewhat a political scarecrow.

For all the public “fear” of the ever-growing political strength of the settler movement, that “power” is used, sometimes perversely, by the government itself, to suggest that rolling back the settlement enterprise, and the 300,000 Israelis who live in the West Bank, may already be impossible.

The real question about the future of the settlements is an unresolved political question: has Netanyahu the political will, like Sharon, to one day order the withdrawal of settlers from occupied territories?

Is he the leader who has reportedly promised President Barack Obama that he is ready for “major concessions” in the context of a peace bid with the Palestinians?

Or, is he the leader who told settlers worried by the Obama demand for a settlement freeze, “Ultimately, we’re all interested in the same thing, but one must act wisely.”

Meanwhile, the settlers continue to exploit the long ambivalence of successive Israeli leaders about the settlements, an ambiguity which might make it every day harder for Netanyahu to take them on — if ever he were to opt to lead Israel in that direction.