ISRAEL'S USE OF TEAR GAS SCRUTINIZED

For two days, Ikkram Said, a slender, 27-year-old woman who was four

months pregnant, said she could smell fumes wafting into her courtyard

from outside. Even with the windows closed, she said, her eyes stung,

she coughed constantly and had trouble breathing. Then one day she

noticed blood when she went to the toilet and became frightened.

She had a friend drive her to the camp's United Nations health clinic

and was advised to go to Shifa Hospital in nearby Gaza City. By the time

she got there she had stomach cramps and uterine contractions. Soon

after, she miscarried.

Said's story represents another question mark in one of the most

troubling, elusive and emotive issues to arise during the 23-week Arab

uprising: the effects on the Palestinian population of the Israeli

Army's frequent use of tear gas as a nonlethal riot-control weapon.

Palestinian doctors and officials working for the U.N. Relief and

Works Agency (UNRWA) that operates the refugee camps contend there have

been more than 1,200 injuries, dozens of miscarriages and at least 11

deaths from tear gas since the uprising began Dec. 9. The

Washington-based Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has put deaths at 41

and used that figure in a successful lobbying campaign that last month

led the American manufacturer of the gas to suspend sales to Israel.

While they concede they lack hard data and autopsy results to verify

many of their claims, these sources contend the weight of circumstantial

evidence clearly indicates that tear gas is at least a significant

contributing factor in deaths and miscarriages among a refugee camp

population that, even in the best of times, is in a precarious state of

health.

"There is until now no solid scientific proof, but certainly the

accumulated evidence is strongly incriminating," said Dr. Samir Badri, a

Palestinian who is UNRWA's chief health officer in the Gaza Strip.

"When you see a woman with no previous history of miscarriages or

bleeding, and after exposure to tear gas she bleeds and aborts, you can

say safely it is the gas."

Israeli officials contend the Palestinian claims are based on false

or unsubstantiated information and are designed to fuel a propaganda

crusade that portrays Israel as waging a form of chemical warfare

against a hapless civilian population.

"We have not seen any cases where it could be proven by a coroner

that anybody has been killed due to exposure to tear gas," said Brig.

Gen. Yehuda Danon, the Israeli Army's surgeon general, in a telephone

interview, "and we have no scientific evidence that there have been more

miscarriages following the use of {tear gas}."

Medical experts say the issue is further complicated by the fact that

accurate statistics and unbiased accounts are largely unobtainable in

the chaos of civil unrest and military crackdown that has reigned in the

occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since December.

But within the cross fire of charges and countercharges, interviews

with Palestinian, Israeli and American doctors who have first-hand

experience with tear gas, a reexamination of several cases, and

eyewitness accounts during recent months all point to these facts about

the use of tear gas during the uprising:There is no credible evidence to

support Palestinian claims that the Israelis are using any gas or toxic

chemicals other than the standard chlorobenzylidene malononitrile, known

as "CS," manufactured by Federal Laboratories Inc. of Saltzburg, Pa.

When properly used outdoors, the gas has limited effects that generally

wear off in 15 to 30 minutes.There is, however, much evidence indicating

that on numerous occasions soldiers and police have violated the

manufacturer's printed warnings by firing the gas into enclosed areas

such as rooms or small courtyards. Most experts agree that such misuse

of the gas can be harmful, especially to small children, the elderly,

pregnant women and people suffering from heart or lung problems.There is

debate over the possible long-term health effects of tear gas and

growing concern among human-rights groups and some medical experts about

its widespread use in countries including Israel, South Korea and

Panama.Health conditions in the squalid, overcrowded refugee camps of

Gaza have deteriorated dramatically in recent months due to disruptions

of medical services and child feeding programs caused both by

Palestinian violence and Israeli military restrictions. As a result, the

population is more vulnerable to many kinds of health hazards, one of

which is exposure to tear gas.

Upon close examination, some of the U.N. and Palestinian claims

appear groundless. After a visit to Gaza last month, UNRWA health

director John Hiddlestone told a press conference in Vienna about an

incident in which two young Palestinians were beaten by soldiers and

confined in a room where a reddish aerosal spray was used. "The room was

then shut and after an hour or so two dead bodies were removed," said

Hiddlestone, who said soldiers apparently had used "some very toxic

nerve gas."

Hiddlestone was talking about the death of Basel Yazuri, age 18, who

was killed Jan. 8 in the Rafah refugee camp, according to UNRWA

officials. But Jerusalem Post reporter Bradley Burston, who visited

Yazuri's house shortly after the incident, said that besides the red

powder on the walls and furniture of the room, which apparently came

from an Army smoke grenade, there were also multiple bullet holes

indicating someone had sprayed the room with an automatic rifle.

UNRWA's own report on the incident states Yazuri died from bullet

wounds and that there was no second fatality. The Army contends Yazuri

was shot dead while attacking a soldier with a knife. Arab witnesses at

the scene claimed he was badly beaten before being shot, and the

question of whether Yazuri's death was justifiable homicide remains

open. But no one except Hiddlestone says he was gassed.

In camps such as Jabaliya, tear gas has become part of everyday life

as well as a key element in the mythology of the Palestinian uprising.

Children turn the spent metal canisters into toys or wear them proudly

as necklaces. Dozens of canisters are hung defiantly from utility lines

throughout the camp. Almost every house, it seems, boasts a collection

of one or more of the thin tin projectiles or grenade-style rubber

containers.

There are no figures available on how much tear gas Israeli troops

have used since December, but the use is widespread. Soldiers have fired

gas canisters from rifles, hurled grenades by hand and dumped

30-inch-long cans from helicopters. Despite printed warnings on the

canisters that the gas is "for outdoor use only" and "may cause severe

injury if not used in accordance with this warning," soldiers pursuing

alleged rioters have fired tear gas into houses, stores, clinics and

even, on occasion, into hospitals.

Even now, at a time when the frequency of violent incidents and

fatalities appears to be dropping, Christine Dabbagh, UNRWA's

information officer in Gaza, says she gets daily reports of injuries

including tear-gassing from Jabaliya and other camps. On May 21, for

example, UNRWA's Jabaliya clinic reported treating 11 people for gas,

including Said, who later miscarried at Shifa Hospital. The following

day the report listed six tear-gas victims, two of whom later

miscarried.

Altogther, doctors at Shifa Hospital, which serves most of the

northern half of the Gaza Strip, say they treated 378 miscarriage cases

between December 1987 and February 1988, the first three months of the

uprising, compared to 335 during the same period a year earlier. UNRWA

health director Badri says he tried to compile statistics to do a

similar comparison at the Rafah refugee camp, but the numbers showed no

significant increase.

The causes of miscarriages remain elusive because even in normal

times, the estimated rate of miscarriages runs as high as 20 percent.

Ikkram Said, for example, had a miscarriage and then bore three children

before her latest pregnancy. It is impossible to know in retrospect

exactly why she aborted this time. Besides her physical symptoms,

doctors say her sense of fear after being exposed to tear gas could have

been a factor.

Similarly, the death of a three-year-old girl in Gaza City last

Friday remains uncertain. Local residents attributed it to tear gas. But

the Army said the girl had not shown symptoms of tear gas inhalation

when treated at a local hospital and said her body was spirited away by

family members before an autopsy could be performed.

Dr. Issa Satti, director and chief surgeon at Ramallah Hospital in

the West Bank, recalled last Feb. 20, when soldiers fired two CS gas

canisters into the maternity recovery ward. There were five women and

four babies in the ward at the time who were quickly evacuated, Satti

said, after which he tried to enter the room to remove the canisters.

"I thought I would just throw them out the window, but I could hardly

get into the room," Satti recalled. "It was so concentrated. I started

to cough, and then I couldn't breathe. Even 24 hours later you couldn't

enter the room."

Satti, who is one of the West Bank's best known and most respected

physicians, said he has concluded after months of watching soldiers use

tear gas in Ramallah that "when used properly outdoors, I think it's

harmless. But we've had people who have had gas fired into their homes.

Someone kept inside long enough could certainly die."

An Army spokeswoman said soldiers were instructed to use tear gas

only in open areas and that other uses of the gas were in violation of

orders. She noted that the Army had taken pains to choose a form of tear

gas that would not prove harmful to its own soldiers because sudden wind

changes often expose them to its effects.

Brig. Gen. Danon said the Army had relied upon two reports in 1969

and 1971 by the Himsworth Royal Commission into the medical and

toxicological effects of tear-gas use in Northern Ireland. Both reports

indicated that CS gas was the safest and least toxic and had the least

long-term health effects, said Danon.

The Army surgeon general conceded that health conditions in Gaza are

poor but said many factors associated with the uprising were to blame.

The United Nations' supplemental feeding clinics for pregnant women and

children have functioned only sporadically due to civil violence and to

military curfews. Sewage systems and running water have broken down in

many places and have not been repaired. Garbage collection is sporadic

at best.

"All of these are far more important in terms of their effect on the

health of the population than the occasional use of riot-control agents

such as tear gas," he said.

But Dr. Jonathan E. Fine, an internist who is executive director of

Physicians for Human Rights, a Boston-based rights group, contended that

the Himsworth reports had drastically underestimated the harmful effects

of CS gas.

"There's a tremendous under-appreciation of the dangers of tear gas,"

said Fine in a telephone interview. "In my opinion it's a misnomer to

call this stuff 'tear gas.' It's really poison gas . . . . "

A team of four American physicians from Fine's group who visited the

West Bank and Gaza in February said in their report that they could not

substantiate claims of an increase in the incidence of miscarriages due

to tear gas. Even so, Fine warned, Israel should not take the safety of

tear gas for granted.

"I have to question both the logic and the morality of what the Army

surgeon general is saying," said Fine. "It's a double standard he's

applying here. Would Israel use the same gas on its own children? I

don't believe so."