Rabbi HaCohen is generally against soldiers' refusal of disengagement-related orders, even though he totally negates the withdrawal. He says, however, that there is no rabbi who permits manning a checkpoint against Jews on the Sabbath.
"There is absolutely no dispensation to permit the desecration of the Sabbath under these circumstances," Rabbi HaCohen told Arutz-7's Amatzia HaEitan yesterday. "Whoever receives such an order to man the checkpoints on the Sabbath, should refuse. To make sure that there is no problem at all, we asked the Yesha Council and the organizers of the efforts to enter Gush Katif to announce clearly that there will be no anti-disengagement activity on the Sabbath - and they did. Therefore, there is no danger at all that the fences will be broken down and that terrorists will be able to go out, etc."
Rabbi HaCohen noted, as did Chief IDF Rabbi Yisrael Weiss earlier this week, that there had been a clear army directive not to desecrate the Sabbath for this purpose. "Chief of Staff Dan Halutz promised that the commander of Regiment 35 who broke this order and ordered his soldiers to travel to the checkpoint on Sabbath afternoon will be tried in a military court," Rabbi HaCohen said. No word on this trial has been publicized, however.
Rabbi HaCohen said he met with Chief of Staff Halutz and told him clearly, "It's you who decides what is considered a life-threatening situation, but not every routine military activity is in that category. There are many routine activities that are simply not permitted on the Sabbath. Only something that is life-threatening, or has even a small probability of such, is permitted. Checkpoints with no security justification may not be placed... If there is a need to guard the equipment at a checkpoint, then the soldiers can remain there over the Sabbath - but not operate the checkpoint, and not travel to it."
Rabbi HaCohen is very much in favor of the hesder arrangement, in which student-soldiers combine Torah study and army service in a five-year program. Unlike many of his colleagues, he favors having the students serve in battalions comprised also of non-hesder and non-religious soldiers.
"We must be careful not to tear apart the army," he told Arutz-7, "but the government, too, and the commanders must be careful in the orders they give... I am concerned at the situation in which Jews are uprooted from their land, and the army is used for non-military missions such as placing a siege on a Jewish community within pre-1967 Israel - not that it matters to me on which side of the Green Line [the 1967 armistice line] it is on. These are problems of ethics and values of the first degree, and they are of great concern."