Thousands of Palestinians Beaten, Doctors Report

Thousands of Palestinians--far more than Israel claims--have suffered serious injuries in beatings by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, a doctors’ peace group charged Tuesday.

Physicians for Human Rights, which sent a fact-finding delegation of four doctors to Israel for eight days in February, also said that medical relief efforts are being hampered by curfews and under-funding in the occupied territories.

The Boston-based group campaigns against torture and what it defines as human rights abuses.

Its report, released Tuesday, alleges “an essentially uncontrolled epidemic of violence” in the occupied territories, including systematic beatings by Israeli forces and use of live ammunition, tear gas and rubber bullets.

“Our conclusion is that there are a large number of instances here of excessive force being used. . . ,” said Dr. Jonathan Fine, the group’s executive director.

165 Palestinians Killed

Since the uprising began last Dec. 9, 165 Palestinians have been killed, along with one Israeli soldier and an Israeli teen-age girl.

Dr. Jack Geiger, of the City University of New York medical school, a member of the fact-finding mission, said the group’s “most conservative” estimate of the number of serious injuries by mid-February was 2,500 and that the figure would be far higher now.

At that time, Dr. Yitzhak Sever, chief medical officer for the West Bank civil administration, told the doctors there that 250 Palestinians had been reported injured as a result of the uprising.

Geiger said that in four days, he saw 103 serious injuries, 72 of which were new injuries. “Our minimum figure now for the number seriously injured so far would be 6,000,” Geiger said.

“There was no way these injuries could have occurred in that pattern without it being a deliberate policy,” Geiger said.

Israeli officials defend the tactics employed in the occupied territories as a legitimate response to Palestinian unrest.