JERUSALEM - An Israeli intelligence officer who feared a planned air strike would kill innocent Palestinians foiled the attack by holding back information critical to the mission, the Maariv newspaper said on Monday.

The officer's act of disobedience this month was the latest in a series of actions taken by Israelis opposed to the tough tactics Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has employed against a Palestinian uprising for statehood.

Maariv said the officer, a lieutenant in an elite intelligence unit, delayed passing on information for an air raid planned against a Palestinian city after 22 people were killed on January 6 in a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

The officer, who was not identified, told a military tribunal he acted out of conscience, saying innocent people would have been killed and calling his orders illegal under international law, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper did not specify the information he withheld.

The court tribunal rejected his argument and transferred him to a less prestigious intelligence unit, Maariv said.

Asked about the report, the army spokesman's office confirmed an intelligence officer was removed from his post after disobeying a direct order and impairing a military operation, but the spokesman declined to give details.

The army has refused to sanction conscientious objection, saying Israel's security would be harmed if soldiers were allowed to opt out of service while the country was locked in violence with the Palestinians that shows no sign of abating.

NO "SELECTIVE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION"

In December, the Supreme Court said it could not back the idea of "selective conscientious objection" by eight reserve soldiers who had refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Last week, an Israeli state prosecutor mentioned her fears about her son's pending military service with Sharon as prime minister as having motivated her to leak information of a criminal probe of the Israeli leader over election funding.

Israelis vote in a general election on Tuesday, and Sharon's right-wing Likud party holds a commanding lead in opinion polls.

Sociologist Oz Almog of Haifa University said some left-wing Israelis, dismayed by the weakness of Israel's peace camp, were striking out on their own against the establishment.

"This kind of conscientious objection is important and it is good that we have it," Almog said of the reservists who refused to serve on occupied land.

"Even though it is on the edge, it makes you think, and we need it because the edges define the middle," he told Reuters.

But he said he believed such behaviour was "the exception to the rule" and the "deciding majority of the people" did not accept such dissidence.

Copyright © 2002 Reuters Ltd

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