By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM - Six Israeli soldiers are spending their reserve duty guarding a lone settler living illegally in a trailer on a West Bank hill, costing the country an estimated US$43,000 a month, an Israeli legislator said Tuesday.

Ran Cohen from the dovish Meretz party raised the issue with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) on Monday, at a meeting of parliament's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee. Sharon said he would look into the case, according to Cohen.

Dozens of tiny outposts have been set up by settlers in recent years on West Bank hilltops to prevent the handover of land in a peace deal with the Palestinians. In most cases, just a few settlers live in the outposts, which are guarded by troops.

The outpost cited by Cohen is near the Palestinian town of Jenin.

Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for Jewish settlers, insisted that at least five settlers live there. "Next week there will be more settlers than soldiers," he said. "Now that it has been on the news, we'll make sure more settlers go there."

Israel has come under increasing international pressure to remove the outposts, as a first step toward a settlement freeze. Sharon told the parliamentary committee Monday that the outposts would eventually be dismantled, but did not say when.

Successive Israeli governments have moved more than 200,000 settlers into 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites) since capturing the lands — claimed by the Palestinians for a state — in the 1967 Mideast war.

The United States holds that the settlements are an obstacle to peace, and has urged Israel repeatedly to freeze construction, so far to no avail.

Cohen said the Israeli government looks the other way when settlers establish outposts. Money is being wasted on guarding them, at a time when the government is trying to cut billions of dollars from the state budget as part of an austerity plan aimed at combating one of the worst recessions in the country's history, he said.

"We are not talking about the army securing residents. We are talking about a lone settler who is acting insubordinately and he is causing six reserve soldiers to endanger their lives," he added.

Israeli media reported Monday that the six reserve soldiers offered to pool their money and pay for the settler's stay in a hotel in Israel so they wouldn't have to guard him anymore. The settler declined, the reports said.

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