For 28 days in October, Noam Kuzar sat in Military Prison No 4. The bespectacled 19-year-old soldier had violated one of the most vaunted principles of the Israeli experience.
He had refused an army order to deploy in the West Bank.
Since the start of Israel's confrontation with Palestinian stone-throwers and gunmen three months ago, a small but growing number of Israeli soldiers has been refusing to serve in the mostly Palestinian-ruled West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Like Kuzar, several ended up in jail, having turned against the deeply entrenched, half-century-old call to the duty of serving in their country's army.
"My whole life I've been against the Israeli army and the state being in the occupied territories," Kuzar says.
"What right did I have to be there? I couldn't do something I so strongly object to."
In a country where almost everyone is required to perform military service, many Israelis regard resisters as traitors or cowards. But some are uncomfortable with the kind of duty increasingly thrust upon infantry soldiers confronting riots and demonstrations where Palestinian children are on the front line.
The resistance of a handful of regular soldiers and a larger number of reservists reflects changes in the way some Israelis view their once-unassailable army - and changes in the army's role.
Ishai Menuchin, a paratrooper in the Israeli army and veteran of the Lebanon war, spent much of the past month pounding the pavements. At Jerusalem's central bus station on Friday mornings, where soldiers congregate to go home for the weekend, he hands out pamphlets urging recruits to think carefully about whether they want to serve in what he calls an occupation army.
A war to protect Jewish settlements, the pamphlet declares, "is not our war!"
"Hey, soldier. Where are you headed?" the pamphlet reads. "On your way to serve in the occupied territories? . . . Maybe to prevent the Palestinian people from declaring independence? Maybe to put down the new intifada? Or could it be for all-out war?"
Reaction to Menuchin's pamphlets has been mixed. Most soldiers accept a copy, maybe read it, occasionally comment on it. A few have become very angry, Menuchin said, and have torn it up.
However, the reception is in marked contrast to the 1980s, when Menuchin first embarked on his mission as conscientious objector. Leading resistance to the war in Lebanon, Menuchin was beaten up by right-wing "patriots" and ended up in hospital.
"Occupation, by definition, is an undemocratic act," he says. "There is no solution but a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I am not willing - and more and more Israelis are not willing - to take part in a military solution."
Most objectors have no problem with serving in the army, and if Israel were threatened by an external war from, say, Syria or Iran, they would not hesitate to report for duty. The problem is wars of occupation, Menuchin said. Like almost every Israeli male he continues to perform his reserve duty of 30 days a year.
But the 42-year-old psychologist refuses to be sent to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Menuchin runs a left-wing organisation - called Yesh Gvul, which means "There is a limit" - that helps conscientious objectors.
During the war in Lebanon, Menuchin says, 170 soldiers were imprisoned and more than 3,000 signed a petition in protest. During the first intifada, he says, about 2,500 declared their refusal to serve, with about 200 landing in jail.
Menuchin says that during the current Palestinian revolt, more than 30 reservists and seven regular soldiers have refused duty. He says five of the seven regular soldiers were put in jail for terms ranging from one to 28 days.
The Israeli army could not provide statistics on conscientious objectors or on the number of young men who have been jailed.
In a statement, the army said soldiers who apply for release as conscientious objectors are referred to a committee that examines the petitions.
Lieut Gen Shaul Mofaz, the army chief of staff, recently told a conference that the number of reservists eager to work in the West Bank and Gaza had in fact reached record numbers since the latest intifada began.
Israel prides itself on having as a centrepiece of its society a "citizens' army" whose members are from all walks of life, the rich, poor, natives and new immigrants, left- and rightwingers. Consequently, effort is sometimes made to accommodate soldiers, and especially reservists, into units that suit their talents and allow them to avoid tasks they might oppose on political grounds.
But with no external wars to fight, the average infantry unit these days is inevitably going to be stationed for a longer period in the West Bank or Gaza, Menuchin says.
"My refusal is part of a public-education campaign the duties of citizens in democratic society," Menuchin says. "You should not do everything just because the government and commanders decide. You have to think and criticise. . . It is important to democracy to criticise."