WHILE Binyamin Netanyahu moves towards Israeli elections fought over how to break the Palestinian intifada, one of his relatives is serving a seventh consecutive jail term for refusing to serve in the Israeli army.

Yonatan Ben-Artzi, the Israeli Foreign Minister’s nephew by marriage, has become a hero among Israeli “refuseniks” after spending 169 days in military jail because he will not carry out the three years’ military service that is compulsory for Israelis when they reach 18.

Mr Ben-Artzi, 20, a mathematics and physics student at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, has been declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International after losing a protracted struggle through the Israeli legal system to be declared a conscientious objector on the grounds of pacifism. His father, Matanya Ben-Artzi, the elder brother of Mr Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, claims that his son is being singled out because of the publicity surrounding his court case and because it coincided with a high-profile letter sent by 62 high school students to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, in August last year refusing to serve and accusing the military of “acts of oppression” against Palestinians.

“He is being victimised because he is the initiator of a new movement which is very menacing to them. He is seen as a hero by his peers and a good part of them may follow suit,” Mr Ben-Artzi Sr and his wife, Ofra, told The Times last night. “The first time he was jailed we thought it was the usual thing, 90 days or so, but as it rolled along we realised that the army regards him as an enemy on the scale of the Palestinian resistance.”

Mr Ben-Artzi Sr, a mathematics professor, dismisses his brother-in-law’s Likud-led coalition as a “governing junta”.

At his military trial in the National Induction Centre at Tel Hashomer last August, Mr Ben-Artzi argued that he had believed in non-violence since childhood and that grew into “a comprehensive political and philosophical conception”. The army’s Conscience Committee rejected his arguments and sent him to Military Prison 4 near Haifa. Each time that he completes a term of up to 35 days, he again refuses to serve and is sent back to jail, with just one night to see his family.

The overwhelming majority of Israelis carry out national service, seeing it as a national duty, especially at a time when Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers have killed 700 Israelis since the intifada erupted in September 2000.

A spokesman for Mr Netanyahu’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the 20-year-old could stay in jail for the remainder of his service but said that each case was judged individually. The military had given Mr Ben-Artzi ample opportunity to make his case but he had failed to convince them that his motives were pacifist, he said.

Amnesty International said that it regarded Mr Ben-Artzi as a “prisoner of conscience” because he refused to perform armed service for ethical and moral reasons and had been imprisoned for those beliefs.

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