West Bank Crackdown

The Israelis have long made assertions about the benevolence of their rule over the occupied territories. But those claims have been often disputed by the Arabs, particularly the nearly 700,000 Palestinians on the Jordan River's West Bank. During the Israeli plunge into Lebanon, complaints from West Bank Arabs about rough treatment at Israeli hands reached a crescendo, as units of the 2,200-member Israeli garrison there carried out arrests and other measures apparently intended to discourage any unrest. There were a few demonstrations, to be sure, but the Israeli crackdown was indiscriminate. Said a Western diplomat in Jerusalem: "There is a widespread feeling that we haven't seen this kind of repression here for years, if ever."

Perhaps the worst incident occurred at Beit Jala (pop. 8,200), five miles south of Jerusalem. One day last week, residents reported, about 50 Israeli troops rolled up in trucks and surrounded a school. Headmaster Louis Rabbo complained that he was "shoved rudely" by the soldiers when he tried to protest. The troops ordered the pupils, all in their early teens, to close their windows, then hurled beer-can-size canisters of U.S.-made CS antiriot gas into the packed classrooms. One student, Mohammed Azzeh, 13, was studying Arab literature in a second-floor classroom when a soldier appeared, ordered the windows shut and added, "Don't be afraid." Two CS canisters then went off. The students in second-floor classes were so frightened that they leaped 18 ft. to the rocky ground below. Ten, including Azzeh, were hospitalized with fractures; several, according to the head of the local hospital, will have lifelong limps. Though military authorities at first denied the incident, it was confirmed to TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff by a score of local residents. Two days after the event, reports Neff, one classroom still bore the stench of gas.

At nearby Beit Sahur, where the local mayor said a similar assault occurred, the schoolchildren were luckier; their school had no second floor, so no students were injured as they tried to escape the gas fumes. A few miles away at all-Palestinian Bethlehem University, where a handful of students were protesting the Lebanon invasion by throwing stones over the wall to the street beyond, Israeli troops hurled gas canisters into the buildings. Of 150 students present, 26 were rounded up arbitrarily and fined $500 apiece.

There were reports that soldiers harassed Palestinians in at least five villages near Ramallah, a large Arab town (pop. 20,000) north of Jerusalem. The troops would move into a village after dark and round up all males above the age of 13, then force them to stand in the street or do exercises for hours at a time. On at least one occasion, a group of 100 men were taken to the local military headquarters to pick weeds for most of the night. "If we didn't move fast enough," reported a 17-year-old student from Bir Zeit College, "they beat us with their fists and sticks. One soldier told me, 'Your hair is too long.' I said, 'Why do you say that? Don't Jews have long hair?' He said, 'We do, but you shouldn't because you are not human beings.' " The argument ended, said the student, when two soldiers clipped off his hair with a pair of lawn shears. Several other students were given the same treatment.

At 1 a.m. on Thursday, seven Israeli troops and plain-clothes officers entered the home of Raymonde Taweel, 36, wife of a Palestinian banker and herself an author and journalist who had been held under house arrest for four months in 1976. They seized her passport, photographs and a P.L.O. flag and took her to prison. The charge: "Terrorist activities and creating public disturbances."

The severity of the Israelis could only further increase tensions in the area. "There were no demonstrations in Beit Jala," declared Mayor Daoud Bisbara after the gas attack on the local school. "The Israelis behaved like barbarians."

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