Thus it is difficult to be precise about the number of people who have been beaten in the three days since the policy was declared, but it clearly runs well into the hundreds and perhaps higher. Accounts from Palestinian districts indicate the policy has in fact been in effect for more than a week.

For the most part the beatings have occurred in refugee centers, which are now closed to journalists by the army, or in remote villages. They often occur at night. The army is not giving out specific information.

''There is a lot of broken hands from clubbing, and also some broken legs,'' said an official of Medical Aid, a Palestinian organization that provides medical treatment in the West Bank and Gaza. ''The number is really huge, including both men and women, certainly hundreds.''

''We are deeply shocked by the evidence of the brutality with which people are evidently being beaten,'' said Angela Williams, the acting director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip. ''We are especially shocked by the beatings of old men and women.''

She said two men, one 85 years old, the other 75, had been treated at the Jabaliya center in Gaza for head injuries after being beaten. The clinic there also treated 12 members of a single family, between 10 and 54 years old, after severe beatings, she added.

The new policy has thus far drawn little political or other criticism from Israelis.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir defended the policy, saying it was not Defense Minister Rabin's policy alone, but ''decided upon and instituted by the Government as a whole.'' Wide Coverage in Newspapers

Israeli newspapers have begun extensive coverage of the policy, including interviews with military commanders, who stress the effectiveness of the beatings but express worries about the effects on troop morale, and with Palestinians who have been beaten.