JERUSALEM, June 28: A young Israeli soldier who disobeyed orders to take part in demolitions of deserted buildings in a Jewish settlement in Gaza was sentenced on Tuesday to 56 days in jail, the army said.

The sentence handed down at a military disciplinary hearing against Corporal Avi Bieber was seen as setting a precedent for punishment of soldiers who balk at orders to remove settlers during a pullout from occupied Gaza due to begin in August.

A senior army official convicted Avi Bieber, 19, on three counts of refusing to carry out an order, threatening and insulting a commander and giving media interviews against army regulations, an army spokeswoman said.

“I didn’t come to Israel to beat up Jews,” Mr Bieber shouted at reporters on Sunday as fellow soldiers scuffled with rightist Jews trying to prevent a bulldozing of abandoned bungalows his engineering unit had been ordered to demolish.

Mr Bieber, born in the United States and brought to Israel as a boy, was led away by other soldiers from the scene of the clashes and placed under military arrest.

Soldiers and police dragged away the protesters.

Israeli authorities fear that a recent influx of ultranationalist supporters into settler enclaves could make evacuations more difficult and increase the chance of violence.

Mr Bieber’s attorney, Shai Galili, said before the verdict was read that his client ‘will not get a fair trial’ because the army wanted to use him as an example to try to dissuade other soldiers from refusing to evacuate settlers.

“They want to convict Avi at any price,” Mr Galili told Army Radio.

The commander of Israeli forces in Gaza, Brig Gen Aviv Kochavi, played down any notion of widespread dissent in the ranks over the pullout and noted that 150 of Bieber’s comrades had taken part in the demolition. —AFP