U.S. Doctors Report Israeli Soldiers in Epidemic of Violence

A member of an American medical team that visited the West Bank and Gaza Strip said today the doctors saw evidence that Israeli soldiers were beating Palestinians in an “uncontrolled epidemic of violence.”

Dr. H. Jack Geiger, a member of the Boston-based group Physicians for Human Rights, told reporters that the abuse of Palestinians had become systematic and “the norm” in the occupied territories, where unrest broke out Dec. 8.

U.N. officials say 51 Arabs have been killed by Israeli soldiers and civilians since the unrest began.

Geiger was one of four U.S. doctors who spent four days visiting hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in a fact-finding mission sponsored by the rights group.

‘Uncontrolled Epidemic’

“We collected medical evidence of an uncontrolled epidemic of violence by the army . . . on a scale and severity that might not be clear to the public,” said Geiger, a medical professor at City University of New York.

“The numbers, rate and scope of the beatings and trauma we have seen cannot be considered deviations or aberrations. They come closer to being the norm,” he told reporters.

Geiger said he saw six Palestinians permanently paralyzed in one or more limbs as a result of beatings, including one who was paralyzed from the neck down.

The three other doctors on the fact-finding mission were Jennifer Leaning, director of emergency services for the Harvard Community Health Plan in Boston; Leon Shapiro, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, and Bennett Simon, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Mass.

Report Called ‘Simplistic’

Shapiro and Simon are also on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School.

An army spokesman said the doctors’ report was “simplistic.” He said there had been cases of excessive beatings in the past, but added, “It’s been brought under control.” He spoke on condition of anonymity.

An Israeli newspaper said today that Israeli reserve soldiers reported seeing members of one brigade detain 17 Palestinians in the West Bank village of Halhoul on Monday, tie their wrists and beat them with clubs and rifle butts until they couldn’t walk.

According to the leftist newspaper Al Hamishmar, the soldiers said the Golani brigade members then dropped the Palestinians in a garbage dump.

No Reports Received

The army said it had no reports of beatings in Halhoul on Monday.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin last month ordered soldiers to use clubs instead of gunfire to disperse protesters, saying it would save lives.

Arab protesters in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan today stoned an Israeli bus taking residents to work, the army said. The driver fled, and the youths set fire to the bus. There were no injuries.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah today, soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse about 50 Arab protesters.