TEL AVIV, Dec 22: Soldiers from Israel’s top commando unit faced being thrown out of the army on Monday after becoming the latest in a line of servicemen to refuse to take part in missions in the Palestinian territories.

“The 13 officers and reservists who published the refusal letter yesterday will be invited for a personal conversation with their direct commander and each will have the chance to withdraw their signature,” army chief of staff Moshe Yaalon told military radio.

“The severity will be clarified to him and he will be given the chance to take it back and if he doesn’t he will be dropped from reserve duty.”

In their letter to Yaalon and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the group of 13 reservists from the elite Sayeret Matkal unit said that they would no longer participate in a “rule of oppression” and the defence of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We will no longer corrupt the stamp of humanity in us through carrying out the missions of an occupation army ... In the past, we fought for a justified cause (but today) we have reached the boundary of oppressing another people,” the letter said.

One of the signatories, whose name was given only as Major Avner, told the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot daily that their protest was a wake-up call.

“We want to say: ‘Guys, bad things are happening to us. There is a problem, and you had better realize it quickly, otherwise you will be left without soldiers’,” Avner said.

The letter comes some three months after 25 pilots also refused to take part in bombing raids in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. They were all subsequently grounded.—AFP