Israeli Teens Reportedly Beat Prisoners

An Israeli army sergeant took a group of Jewish teen-agers on an unauthorized tour of a temporary army detention center near the West Bank town of Ramallah earlier this year during which he allegedly encouraged the students to beat Palestinian prisoners, it was revealed here Sunday.

Yair Tsaban, a member of the Knesset (Parliament) from the leftist Mapam Party, said in an interview that he has evidence that one or more of the Jewish teen-agers did strike prisoners. And he said he had written to both Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Education Minister Yitzhak Navon on Sunday seeking further inquiry into the incident.

Israeli military sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the sergeant had been tried and punished for taking the Jewish youth group into the detention area but said that an army “investigation did not in any way corroborate findings of beatings or participation in beatings.” The sources said they considered the investigation closed.

Misconduct Alleged

The incident is the latest of several alleging misconduct by Israeli troops during the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which has rocked the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since last December.

It surfaced on the same day that an Israeli military court jailed another sergeant for his role in a widely publicized February incident in which troops forced four Palestinians from a village near Nablus to lie on the ground while a bulldozer buried them under a mound of dirt. Other villagers later pulled the four to safety.

Master Sgt. Charlie Danino was sentenced to four months in the brig and demoted to private for “negligence and improper behavior” in connection with the burial incident. Two other soldiers had previously received four- and five-month terms respectively.

According to military sources, the latest incident occurred between Feb. 7-12 while Jewish students from an official paramilitary youth group were assigned to an army camp near Ramallah for an annual training session.

Pre-Military Training

The youths are members of Gadna, a national organization in which virtually all Israeli Jewish high school students get pre-military training. Israeli Arabs are excluded from the organization.

A section of the army camp near Ramallah had previously been converted into a temporary detention center to help absorb the prison overflow caused by massive arrests of Palestinian protesters connected with the uprising.

Military sources confirmed that while there, the youths “were invited to go in the detention area to look at the detainees. They may have witnessed various processes inside the detention camp.”

Tsaban said that at least two of the youths later admitted having “beaten” Palestinian prisoners at the encouragement of the Israeli troops, although one subsequently retracted his confession.

Army Probe

The military sources said that the principal of their high school first reported something amiss with the student visit to the camp in a letter dated March 8 but that the letter did not reach Education Minister Navon until March 28. An army investigation opened April 24, and findings were presented May 4, the sources added.