In a petition published by the top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot, 34 reserve officers living in West Bank settlements, including four battalion commanders, claimed that the planned dismantlement of the Gaza Strip's 21 settlements was "illegal".

"We think that any order to carry out disengagement is a patently illegal order... Such an order must not be carried out by a soldier, according to the state laws and the IDF (army) code," the officers told their commander in the letter.

The estimated 8,000 settlers living in the Gaza Strip are scheduled to be evacuated in June this year, as part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to unilaterally "disengage" from the Palestinian territory.

The Israeli army issued a swift response to the fresh challenge posed to its dismantlement plans when Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon ordered the general in charge of the West Bank to summon the officers "for clarification".

"Any officer who continues to express the views stated in the letter will be dismissed from his duty and expelled from the Israel Defence Forces," the army said in a statement.

"The IDF views with full severity the use by reserve officers of their rank and duty in the IDF as a platform for publicizing their political views, and will deal decisively with acts of this kind," it added.

One of the petition's signatories, reserve lieutenant colonel Yitzhak Shadni, told army radio that Sharon "does not enjoy the necessary popular legitimacy" to implement his plan.

"Arik (Sharon) once was our hero, we gave him our votes but he did exactly the contrary of what he promised," the officer said.

The petition comes a day after the country's attorney general ordered an investigation against two settler activists who called on soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate the Gaza settlements.

One of the activists is Noam Livnat -- the brother of Education Minister Limor Livnat -- who launched a movement aimed at gathering the signatures of 10,000 soldiers pledging to refuse such orders.

He believes that if enough signatures are collected, the army will have to scrap its operation to remove the settlements.

This disobedience campaign is backed by the council of rabbis in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and the Gaza Strip, which has also urged soldiers to refuse orders to expel settlers from their Gaza homes.

On Wednesday, Sharon -- who has vowed a zero-tolerance policy in dealing with evacuation refuseniks -- hit back at the growing movement against dismantling the settlements.

"Those who are calling for orders to be disobeyed are destroying the thing that is most sacred to Israeli society. It is a crime against all of us," he told public radio.

Also on Wednesday, an off-duty soldier who had urged his colleagues to disobey an order to remove settlers from a Jewish settlement outpost in the northern West Bank was slapped with a four-week prison sentence.

Violent clashes erupted in 1982 when then defence minister Ariel Sharon ordered bulldozers to raze the Sinai settlement of Yamit, as part of the implementation of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

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