Combat volunteers up in Israel

Number of conscripts volunteering to serve in Israeli combat units rises to 10-year-high.

TEL AVIV - The number of conscripts volunteering to serve in Israeli combat units has risen to a 10-year-high, Yediot Aharonot said on Friday.

A total of 73 percent of conscripts called up in the second quarter wanted to join combat units, compared with 67.2 percent last year, the newspaper said.

The low was 66.3 percent in 1997.

The daily cited army officials as saying this was partly a result of the turn-of-the-year offensive against the Gaza Strip, seen by Israel as a 'victory', and also proved recruiters' work in schools was bearing fruit.

The paper also published figures showing about 36 percent of young Israelis were exempted from serving in the armed forces, including a high percentage of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Military service is generally obligatory for Jewish Israelis. Arabs who make up 20 percent of the 7.5 million population are exempted. An exception is made for the Druze -- followers of a non-mainstream sect of Islam.

Israel's war on Gaza killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and wounded 5,450 others.

Among the dead were 437 children, 110 women, 123 elderly men, 14 medics and four journalists.

The wounded include 1,890 children.

The war also left tens of thousands of houses destroyed, while their residents remained homeless.

Israel, which wants to crush any Palestinian liberation movement, responded to Hamas' win in the elections with sanctions, and almost completely blockaded the impoverished coastal strip after Hamas seized power in 2007, although a ‘lighter’ siege had already existed before.

Human rights groups, both international and Israeli, slammed Israel’s siege of Gaza, branding it “collective punishment.”

A group of international lawyers and human rights activists had also accused Israel of committing “genocide” through its crippling blockade of the Strip.

Gaza is still considered under Israeli occupation as Israel controls air, sea and land access to the Strip.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza's sole border crossing that bypasses Israel, rarely opens as Egypt is under immense US and Israeli pressure to keep the crossing shut.

Fatah has little administrative say in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and has no power in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, both of which are Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel in 1967.

Israel also currently occupies the Lebanese Shabaa Farms and the Syrian Golan Heights.