Three Israeli soldiers have testified that they were told army orders to break the bones of Palestinian detainees came from the upper echelons of the military. The soldiers _ reserve Sgts. Guy Neeman, Amiram Avirosh and Ronen Ferber _ were called as defense witnesses in the court martial of Col. Yehuda Meir, the former commander of Israeli troops in the Nablus area of the West Bank. Meir, 38, who left the army last year, is charged with ordering soldiers to break the limbs of Palestinians taken into custody in the West Bank villages of Beita and Hawwara in January 1988. The trial began last month. Col. Menashe Finkelstein, the army's chief prosecutor, suggested in cross-examination that orders to break bones originated from officers in the field. But last month, Meir was quoted by the Hadashot newspaper as suggesting the orders originated from someone with a higher military rank. ``The entire leadership of the Israeli defense forces from the defense minister through the chief of staff and other commanders ... will have to answer questions they may wish to silence,'' he was quoted as saying. At the third session of his trial, Meir sat impassively, often smiling to himself, as the three soldiers detailed the brutal actions in Beita on Jan. 19 and in Hawarra two days later. According to Avirosh, the Beita incident began when soldiers went to investigate a firebomb attack. He said Meir appealed to village leaders for calm, but gangs of youths blocked the roads and hurled stones. He said the soldiers rounded up 12 Arabs who were handcuffed and in some cases blindfolded, put on a bus and driven out of town. After several miles they were ordered off and ``beaten very badly,'' he said. He said the company commander, identified only as Eldad, told the soldiers after the incident, ``it was not easy for him to give us this order.'' Avirosh recalled Eldad said ``it was immoral, but the order came from high up, I think he said from the defense minister.'' Avirosh referred to Yitzhak Rabin, who resigned as defense minister last month when the Labor Party pulled out of the ruling coalition and brought down the government. On Jan. 19, 1988 Rabin told a news conference the army had orders to quell riots with ``force, power and blows.'' He has denied he authorized soldiers to break prisoners' bones. Rabin's spokesman, Eitan Haber, said Rabin gave permission only to beat demonstrators during pursuit. ``He never said that we should break bones,'' Haber said. ``To beat, to hit, but not to break. He never said break.'' Ferber said the next day the company commander told the unit:``we are going someplace for an unusual action for the purpose of breaking arms and legs. ``He said this was part of a new iron-fist policy and these were not his orders but came from further up. I felt that he himself was unhappy with them.'' According to the testimony, the village leader in Hawwara rounded up Palestinians wanted by the army. Then, enroute to the detention center, the detainees were taken from the bus and beaten with sticks and rifle. Afterward, Ferber said Eldad told the soldiers ``all the other methods that were tried before hadn't worked so we thought that breaking arms and legs would be a longer-lasting deterrent.'' The next day, the unit was told the policy had been nullified.
