Israel’s top general defends harassment

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 6

Israel’s top general defends harassment

NZPA-Reuter Tel Aviv The Israeli Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant-General Rafael Eitan, censured by the judicial inquiry into the Beirut massacre in September, yesterday defended orders that he had issued to troops six months earlier to harass Palestinians on the occupied West Bank during a period of violent unrest there.

General Eitan, looking confident and apparently in good spirits, was testifying at the court martial bf seven Israeli soldiers who are accused of brutally mistreating Palestinian youths in the West Bank town of Hebron in March.

It was his first appearance in public since the publication on Tuesday of the report of the commission of inquiry into the massacre by Lebanese Christian militia men of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in two Beirut refugee camps. The report said that General Eitan bore a large part in Israel's indirect responsibility for the atrocity.

The three-man commission said that it would have recommended General Eitan's dismissal, but had refrained from doing so because he

was due to retire in April. “The Chief-of-Staff’s inaction ... constitutes a breach and dereliction of the duty incumbent on the Chief-of-Staff,” the report said. Yesterday’s - trial, and the judicial inquiry, has focused public attention on controversial decisions made by senior Army officers concerning Palestinian civilians. General Eitan, who is 54, was asked yesterday to ex-

plain two documents from his office telling soldiers to “harass the West Bank population.”

The seven accused, including a major who served as deputy military governor of Hebron when the alleged incidents occurred, have said that they were following orders from top Army ranks.

General Eitan said that the orders were legal and were directed against trouble-makers who he said had defied the orders of the Israeli Army and not against innocent bystanders. “This system of harassment, of arresting people, releasing them and then detaining them again a few days later, proved itself in practice,” he said. General Eitan, now forced to end his military career under a cloud, has generally been a popular Chief-of-Staff among soldiers and the public. Politically a Right-winger and a supporter of Israeli West Bank settlements, he has a distinguished combat record. He became the military head of Israel’s Armed Forces in April 1978.