TEL AVIV, April 1: Israeli army reservists who have refused to serve in the Palestinian territories took out a newspaper ad on Monday to say they will not participate in a “new reoccupation” of autonomous lands.

The group, which claims to represent some 400 reserve officers and soldiers, spoke out while Israeli forces tightened their siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and stepped up operations elsewhere on the West Bank.

“The mobilization of reservists for a new re-occupation of the territories is not an operation destined to defend the interests and borders of Israel and we won’t take part,” said the ad run in the newspaper Haaretz.

“The Israeli government has unleashed a destructive operation whose magnitude and consequences are difficult to estimate,” the group said.

“It’s a fool’s war conducted by an administration that prefers to bury its head in the sand and drag the Israeli army through the mud of the territories,” the refuseniks wrote.

They said the war waged by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government would produce “meaningless losses of civilian and military lives” and lead to an escalation of bloody anti-Israel attacks.

The group drew a parallel with the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon led by Sharon as defense minister and marked by massacres in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps where Israel’s Christian allies killed some 1,500 Palestinians.

“We all know how this will end up. We were in Lebanon. We won’t wait for a new Sabra and Shatila before fighting against this madness,” wrote the dissident soldiers.

The refusenik movement appears to have gathered steam since January 25, when 52 officers and soldiers said publicly they would not serve in the Palestinian territories.

“We will not continue to fight beyond the Green Line (separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip) with the aim of pressing, expelling, starving and humilating an entire people,” the group wrote.

Envoys unable to meet Arafat:: Mediators from the United Nations, the European Union and Russia have failed so far to arrange a meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the Russian envoy to the region told ITAR-TASS Monday.

The Russian, EU and UN envoys failed to make any progress on the issue during talks with US envoy to the Middle East Anthony Zinni.

“Representatives from Russia, the US, the EU and the UN agreed to continue contacts in this direction both within the framework of the four, and with the Palestinian and Israeli sides”, he added.

The Russian, UN, and EU envoys earlier Monday met Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in a bid to calm spiralling Middle East violence.

“The situation in the zone of Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains very difficult. The international mediators are doing all they can to prevent a further escalation which would provoke the worst-case scenario,” said Vdovin.—AFP