Israeli Undercover Units Accused of ‘Shoot-to-Kill Policy’ : Mideast: Rights group says many Palestinians slain were throwing stones or painting graffiti. Peres calls measures ‘necessary.’

Israeli undercover units in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have turned into virtual hit squads with a “license to kill” Palestinians they believe to be active opponents of the Israeli occupation there, a New York-based human rights group charged Monday.

Middle East Watch, reviewing the deaths of more than 120 Palestinians killed by the special units over the 5 1/2 years of the intifada, concluded that no more than 40% were actually on Israeli “wanted” lists--and that most of the rest were painting graffiti or throwing stones when they were shot dead.

In the most comprehensive study of its kind, Middle East Watch concluded that the undercover squads ignored Israeli law and international norms restricting the use of lethal force but were blessed in doing so by their commanders and by broadly construed “rules of engagement” allowing them to shoot to kill and to shoot on sight.

The effect, said Kenneth Roth, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch, the parent body of Middle East Watch, has been to “turn arrests into killings,” and permission to shoot at a fleeing suspect’s legs is “really authority to use lethal force in almost any circumstance.”

In some cases documented by Middle East Watch researchers, Roth added, the units received orders in advance to kill suspects, thus carrying out assassinations, and in others they conducted summary executions of suspects they had captured.

Examining 20 of the deaths in detail, the yearlong study concluded that there was “a pattern of unjustified, state-sanctioned killings” that has grown alarmingly in the last year and a half.

Middle East Watch urges the Israeli government to limit far more strictly the use of lethal force and to prosecute members of the security forces who violate those rules; it specifically proposed that police and soldiers be allowed to fire at a fleeing suspect only if he poses an imminent threat to life.

Middle East Watch also urges the Clinton Administration to press Israel for policy changes and, in doing so, to use the leverage of the $3 billion in aid the United States gives Jerusalem each year.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, commenting in advance of the report’s release, said the whole question of human rights in the occupied territories could be resolved quickly through granting autonomy to the Palestinians.

“We wish them self-government and their own way of handling terrorism and crime,” Peres said. “Israel has no actions (in the occupied territories), only reactions. Israel is forced to take necessary measures against terrorism and violence there.”

Although Middle East Watch had extensive discussions with Israeli military and civilian authorities while preparing its study, government officials said Monday that they were not prepared to comment on the 187-page report until they had studied it fully.

The report confirms the findings of surveys by Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups in 1991 and 1992, but it goes beyond them to provide testimony from Israeli witnesses, including soldiers who served in the units, as well as from Palestinians, on what it calls “a shoot-to-kill policy.”

According to the report, the undercover units have regularly killed Palestinian suspects in ambushes when they could have easily captured them. They frequently, almost as a practice, open fire without warning or give a warning almost simultaneously with opening fire, the report charges. And in a number of cases the “wrong” person has been killed in a firing free-for-all.

Although the squads’ operations are depicted as closely targeted on the most dangerous Palestinian guerrillas, most of those wounded or killed have been youths caught during routine patrols as they painted graffiti, enforced commercial strikes or were throwing stones, according to the study.

The study charged that Israeli “rules of engagement” appear to have been interpreted in the field to permit security forces to open fire on any masked person engaged in a wide variety of protest actions, although the majority are not armed. Moreover, soldiers who had belonged to the units said that they had been trained to shoot almost without question.

Of the 120 cases surveyed, only in two were prosecutions reported--a unit commander was demoted one rank, following the death of one man, for ordering his soldiers to shoot at fleeing suspects, and a junior officer was jailed for three months following the death of a 12-year-old boy.

Although initially small elite units, the undercover forces now are said to number as many as 500 soldiers and police.