Rabbis Tell Israeli Soldiers to Disobey Orders : Mideast: Religious Zionists challenge peace process by calling on troops to refuse to vacate West Bank bases.

In a stepped-up crusade against the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, rabbis of the religious Zionist movement Wednesday decreed that Jewish soldiers should disobey orders to vacate West Bank army bases.

Their religious ruling, which proponents said could affect thousands of soldiers but especially targets members of the military who are devout adherents, carries no legal weight--and it drew sweeping condemnation from political leaders and other important religious figures here.

But the influential rabbis lent moral support to the Jewish settler movement during a week of mounting conflict with the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which is preparing to hand over several West Bank cities to the Palestinians by the end of the year.

In the West Bank, 42 settlers were arrested Wednesday after clashing with police during an attempt to extend the community of Efrat and to blockade the highway from Jerusalem to Hebron. The settlers vowed to intensify their campaign to prevent the expansion of Palestinian rule in the area that they call by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria.

“We see a moment of crisis, and we are angry,” said Eve Harow, a member of Efrat’s town council. “The government clearly has decided this area is going to be given to a Palestinian state. I would rather go up against our police and army than Palestinian police.”

As leaders of the West Bank settlers met in Efrat to plan their next moves, 15 rabbis of the national religious parties and the Hesder religious schools gathered at the Jerusalem home of former Chief Rabbi Avraham Shapira. After hours of debate, they issued their edict that Jewish law forbids soldiers and civilians from participating in the evacuation of any army base in the West Bank.

“There is a Torah prohibition to removing [army] camps and giving them to the Gentiles,” said Rabbi Haim Druckman, head of the Hesder Yeshiva movement. “It is life-endangering and also a danger to the existence of the state of Israel.”

In response, Israeli President Ezer Weizman angrily canceled a scheduled meeting with the rabbis and Rabin called their ruling illegal.

“It is unbelievable in Israel, a democracy, that some small number of rabbis should take upon themselves the right to act against the law, to call on soldiers to refuse a legitimate order. We will not accept it, we will not allow it,” Rabin said.

He said he undertook peace negotiations and the 1993 agreement with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on the basis of a strong, disciplined army. That agreement committed Israel to withdraw from West Bank lands captured in the 1967 Middle East War and turn power over to the Palestinians.

Arafat’s Palestinian Authority took control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho in May, 1994. Palestinian and Israeli leaders have said they are close to an agreement implementing the next stage of the accord, although Arafat said Wednesday that he did not expect them to meet their own July 25 deadline.

The rabbis who issued Wednesday’s decree--considered the religious leaders of the settler movement--had declared the peace accord null and void in May, 1994, and issued another decree that Jewish law prohibits the dismantling of settlements in the West Bank.

But the army is such an emotional, unifying issue for most Israelis that even opposition Likud Party Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, an opponent of the peace accord, criticized the rabbis’ ruling and said soldiers must follow military orders.

Other religious authorities also joined the cry against the rabbis’ decree. The current Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, for example, said it is unjust of the rabbis to “place such a heavy burden” on young soldiers.

Elaborating on Rabin’s comments, government spokesman Uri Dromi said the ruling “undermines not only the basis of the army--discipline--but also the whole democratic nature of Israel. . . . This is the first time where you have a sort of dual loyalty. Who do you obey, your commander or your rabbi?”

Virtually all Israelis serve in what they consider to be a citizens army. There were few conscientious objectors in the country’s many wars until Israel invaded Lebanon in June, 1982. Then, dozens of soldiers refused to serve in what was termed Israel’s first war of choice.

After the Palestinian intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation, erupted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December, 1987, dozens of soldiers again refused to serve--this time in the occupied territories. But in those two cases, the protesters were not organized or sanctioned by religious leaders.

On Tuesday, reservist Joshua Reger became the first soldier to refuse to serve in the West Bank because he feared he would have to participate in redeployment. He was sentenced to 14 days in jail.

Leaders of the settler movement--who estimate that there are 140,000 Jews in the West Bank, though the government puts their number closer to 122,000--hope the ruling will prompt thousands of religious Israeli soldiers to refuse to vacate West Bank army bases.

Many of the soldiers they are targeting belong to special units of strictly observant Jews from the Hesder Yeshiva movement who study Jewish law and serve together in the army--often in the occupied territories where many also live.

In Efrat, residents continued their efforts to build housing, despite a government ban on expanding settlements in the West Bank.

Despite the efforts of police, the settlers managed to get one trailer past the police roadblock and to install a family on the craggy hillside on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

The settlers have plans to build 300 Jewish apartments and a shopping center on the hill with a view of Jerusalem in the distance.