JERUSALEM -- Israeli security forces in Hebron are under orders never to shoot a Jewish settler who opens fire on Palestinians, a border police commander testified Thursday at an inquiry into the mosque massacre.


"Instructions are to take cover, wait until the clip is empty or the gun jams and then overpower him," Meir Tayar, commander of the paramilitary border police in Hebron, said.


"Even if I had been there," he said, referring to the mosque, "I could not have done anything -- there were special orders."


The commission is investigating the massacre by settler Baruch Goldstein of about 30 Arabs in the Tomb of the Patriarchs on Feb. 25.


Judge Abd el-Rahman Zuabi, the only Arab member of the five-man panel, asked: "You mean if a settler fires at worshippers and you see him, you are not allowed to shoot him even in the leg?"


Tayar said: "According to the instructions, as I interpret them, yes (I cannot)." Asked what he thought of the policy, he said: "Perhaps it is an illegal order -- I am not a lawyer."


The officer said the orders were issued by the commander of the Israeli army brigade in the Hebron area, Colonel Meir Khalifi. Khalifi's testimony Tuesday did not touch on the subject.


Tayar said he believed similar orders were given in other parts of the occupied territories.


Earlier in the session, Colonel Shalom Goldstein, military governor of Hebron, testified he had alerted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and other top officials to rising tensions between Palestinians and settlers before the massacre.


He said political uncertainty following the September Israel-PLO peace deal had raised tensions in Hebron.


Goldstein, describing past friction at the mosque, said Arabs had complained that Jews poured sand on prayer rugs. Some 110,000 Arabs and 400 Jews live in Hebron.


In Hebron, soldiers shot and wounded 16 Arabs during unrest Thursday when a curfew imposed after the massacre was lifted briefly to allow residents to buy food, witnesses said.