By Laurie Copans
The Associated Press
July 30, 2001

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli army said Monday that a group of soldiers beat a Palestinian traveling in a taxi, forced the passengers to beat each other, and slashed the tires of a vehicle.

Responding to a complaint by an Israeli human rights group, the army acknowledged the soldiers "acted with brutality toward passengers" and said it was investigating the July 23 incident outside the West Bank city of Hebron.

According to witness accounts compiled by the human rights group B'Tselem, three jeeps with soldiers detained 12 Palestinian passengers in two taxis.

After letting an elderly man, a woman and a child go, the soldiers told the taxis to drive through an olive orchard to a hidden spot where two soldiers beat one man until he was barely conscious, the B'Tselem report said.

"Move, let me show you how to beat," one soldier said to another when he wanted a turn at hitting the Palestinian, according to the report.

Pointing guns at the Palestinians, the soldiers forced the eight remaining men in the two taxis to beat one another.

"With tears falling from his eyes, the young (Palestinian) man started to beat us with his fist on our faces and heads," passenger Khaled Rawashdeh, 36, said in the report. Rawashdeh said soldiers pointed a gun to the man and told him to beat harder.

Four of the Palestinians needed hospital treatment afterward, the report added.

An army statement acknowledged that a soldier made passengers hit one another, and another soldier slashed the tires of a taxi.

The army statement referred to only one taxi, not two. Neither the army statement nor the B'Tselem report gave any motive for the soldiers' actions.

The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, condemned the soldiers' actions, saying such cases cause the army great damage, the Haaretz newspaper reported Monday.