Israel to Punish 11 in Bloody Raid on Arab Town

The Israeli military announced Thursday that an inquiry has decided on disciplinary action against four army officers and seven border police officers for misconduct during a raid on the West Bank town of Nahalin in which five Palestinians were killed.

The findings, approved by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, came from three weeks of interrogation of border police, soldiers and village residents who witnessed the April 13 incident. Their publication was designed as a response to widespread questions about the clash, one of the most violent of the 17-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The investigators, headed by an unidentified brigadier general, found that the seven border police officers “lost control” and violated army regulations by opening fire with live ammunition against rock-throwing youths without first trying to meet the situation with rubber bullets.

‘Firing All Over the Place’

“They were firing all over the place,” said Col. Raanan Gissin, the army’s foreign press spokesman who presented the panel’s conclusions at a news conference.

Gissin would not say exactly what the seven did, citing a separate investigation by the border police to determine further disciplinary action that he said could include criminal charges.

The seven officers cited for misconduct will be assigned outside Gaza or the West Bank pending the outcome of that investigation, the report said. The captain in command inside the village, the major who commanded the company and the lieutenant colonel in command of the district also will be removed from commands in the occupied territories but face no further disciplinary action, it said.

In addition, the colonel commanding the Israeli army brigade in the Judea district of the West Bank will receive a reprimand, the report added.

Gissin said a border police unit of about 25 men entered the village at 5 a.m. After meeting stone throwers on the outskirts, he said, the troops drove the attackers back with tear gas and rubber bullets without casualties.

A second unit entered about half an hour later from another road, he added. It came under attack from more stone throwers and responded with live ammunition immediately, causing all the casualties.

Meanwhile, an opposition member of Parliament said Israeli troops in the West Bank had broken the arms and legs of bound Palestinian prisoners and left them lying in an orchard.

Writing in the Haaretz newspaper Thursday, Yossi Sarid quoted unnamed officers as saying they were ordered by a lieutenant colonel to arrest 12 Arabs in the village of Hawwara and break their limbs. The officers told Sarid they entered the village with 40 soldiers one night in January, 1988, arrested the men--who they said offered no resistance--and took them bound hand and foot to a nearby orchard, where the beatings took place.