Israeli Army Under Fire for Take-No-Prisoners Tactic : Mideast: Furor over ‘kill verification’ case sparks concern that military units have become death squads.

In the nasty little war Israeli soldiers continue to fight against Muslim guerrillas in southern Lebanon, they take no prisoners.

When an enemy falls, apparently shot, they do not approach until they have shot him again and are certain he is dead. The reason is plain: Too many Israeli soldiers have been shot by wounded guerrillas and by guerrillas faking injury to lure the troops closer.

On Dec. 19, seeing a body face-down on the path ahead, an Israeli patrol that had just been ambushed by the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon assumed in the heavy winter rain that the man was a guerrilla and shot him again at almost point-blank range to make certain he was dead.

But the man was the soldiers’ own commander, Maj. Kiwan Hamed, 30, a highly regarded officer from Israel’s Arab Druze minority, and he may not have been dead when his troops carried out the “kill verification,” as the Israeli military calls the tactic.

Another of the “friendly fire” incidents that have plagued the Israeli army over the last three years, Hamed’s death and its handling by top military commanders, who covered up how he was killed are raising troubling questions here after the case’s exposure by local newspapers:

* Is the army practice of kill verification really justified by battlefield circumstances? Or are wounded men, who might be taken prisoner, routinely being killed? Does not the practice of kill verification turn the undercover army units operating in the occupied West Bank into death squads, as human rights groups have repeatedly charged?

* Why was Hamed’s family not told the full circumstances of his death as army policy requires? Maj. Gen. Amiram Levine, the northern front commander, told the Hameds that the major was killed by the Hezbollah guerrillas. Levine explained later that he told the family that because they were Druze, an offshoot of Islam, and had “very special” religious beliefs different from those of Jews.

As the controversy grew late last week, Lt. Gen. Amnon Shahak, the new army chief of staff, appointed one of his predecessors, Moshe Levy, now retired, to investigate both Hamed’s death and the way it was handled.

Shahak also reaffirmed army policy of telling the families of fallen soldiers the full circumstances of their deaths. Few matters are as sensitive as this in a nation where almost every Jewish family has members serving in the active armed forces or in the reserves.

The army said Hamed was shot at close range while leading his unit in a counterattack against Hezbollah guerrillas after an ambush near the village of Al Tireh in Israel’s self-declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon.

On Friday, two Israeli papers, Kol Hair in Jerusalem and Kol-Bo in Haifa, quoted an unidentified soldier in Hamed’s unit as saying the major was shot in the head as part of kill verification after he was mistaken for a guerrilla.

“Outside the building (a house in Al Tireh) we saw a man, and we opened fire,” the soldier told the papers. “The man fell. We went close, a few soldiers, and saw that he was lying on his side. One carried out the verification killing procedure as we were taught in many exercises--to shoot a wounded guerrilla in the head to make sure he is dead.”

The firefight continued in heavy fog and rain. Only afterward did the soldiers realize that they had shot their commander, Kol Hair said.

Reconstructing the firefight from interviews with the soldiers, Kol-Bo reporter Mordechai Alon said that, reacting to the Hezbollah ambush, Hamed had stormed ahead, his troops had lost sight of him, and only later did they find his body.

“We really don’t know whose fire killed him,” Alon said.

Alon also questioned Levine about the army’s decision not to tell the full story to the family.

In a taped interview with Alon, Levine replied that the details might hurt the “special sensitivities” of the Druze Arab family. Druze leaders said they did not know what “sensitivities” Levine was referring to.

Levine, one of the army’s most controversial commanders, later said his comments were “taken out of context in a wicked and hurtful manner.”

Israel Radio quoted him as saying Hamed had been fatally wounded in the head by the guerrillas and “after his death may have been also hit by fire from our forces.”

He said he gave this account to Hamed’s family in December, but as the controversy grew he visited the family again Friday to offer a fuller explanation.

Nissim Isha, the father of a soldier shot to death at “zero range” three years ago by an army undercover unit in similar “friendly fire” circumstances, recalled how his family had learned the truth of his son’s death only from other soldiers.

“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) do not tell the truth about kill verification, not in the case of the Druze officer and not in the case of my son,” Isha said.

A military source, speaking on condition that he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, denied that the army has a policy of killing fallen guerrillas.

But Yossi Peled, a retired general and former commander of the northern front, told state-run Israel Radio that Israeli soldiers do indeed follow “the concept that after a charge you verify that all are dead” to ensure against a surprise attack.

The Israeli human rights group B’tselem complained earlier to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that the army’s undercover units appear to be operating under shoot-to-kill orders and do not attempt to capture Palestinians they are searching for.

In October, television footage showed an Israeli soldier shooting a wounded Palestinian in the head in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron.