Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

When you go out, what do you talk about? You fold up like all of the Israeli army forces leaving Gaza, so what it is being said to you? Are you praised, learning lessons, what is the dynamic like?
There was a company of ours that stayed behind. Saturday night, midnight, the battalion commander told us. We get on radio with him. He was told, 'we're folding up' and no one knew about this. He was surprised too. At 2 we began to move, then we were told, 'You stay here in positions, don't know how long yet.' We stayed there another four days. Finally on Wednesday, at dawn, our company got out. But by then all the high was gone, and there was still a talk with the battalion commander before we went home.

What did he say at that talk?
The night before, there was a talk with the paratrooper brigade commander, to whom we had been subordinated. He told us not to talk about the destruction we saw when we get home, no need to brag about it. It's important for you to know that everything you did there we had to do. That's what the brigade commander says.

What did you think of that?
You know… It's nice they even had this view. Obviously it's – I don't want to say it's an utter lie – but most of the destruction that went on there was not necessary. There was even one time when a brigade commander got on our tank, we had to drive him to a press conference inside Gaza. They brought an APC with some reporters, so we were about to take off, and we already see the press, and he gets on and orders us to drive through the ruined tracks. So the press won't see us driving through the fields. We had to cross a field. There are those cones where a track had already been formed, so you know, drive over there… It was ludicrous. That's it, at the talk, the battalion commander said that as far as we were concerned this was war.

As far as we're concerned? Meaning, the Israeli side?
No. He means that even if his superiors call it an operation because at the end of the day no military branch used all the force it could have unleashed there, and they don't want to name it a war, still we should realize that as far as we are concerned, as soldiers, as a company – what we did, that’s what it would be like in war.

What does that mean? Why is it important to note that?
I don't know why he made such a note of it, that we should feel we had taken part in a war, it sounds more…

Why, was there a letdown?
At some point everyone had already had enough of being in there. They were so exhausted. To be there for two weeks not knowing what is going on with you, your commanders have no idea.

Was there boredom at any point during these two weeks?
Much boredom.

So what does one do to relieve this boredom?
I told you, fire at water tanks, I don't know, out of boredom. When there's nothing else to shoot at, you fire at water tanks. You wouldn't if you had targeted persons.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

 There was a point where D-9s were razing areas. It was amazing. At first you go in and see lots of houses. A week later, after the razing, you see the horizon further away, almost to the sea. They simply took down all the houses around so the terrorists would have nowhere else to hide. Among other things, whole chicken coops were taken down, on top of the chickens.

… The D-9s were there the whole week you were waiting?
Yes. It was during that week, a day or two. There's a Corps of Engineers company. I don't know how many D-9s belong to such a platoon or company.

The houses that were taken down – were they sources of fire?
Not necessarily.

So why take them down?
I have no doubt it was for operational purposes. You can argue about how necessary that really is, or how moral, but it was entirely operational, so as not to enable them to take positions that jeopardize us.

How many houses were taken down?
A radius of about several hundred meters. It wasn't a very crowded area. It's the outskirts of town. Still a rural area.

All the houses were demolished?
Nearly. Not just by D-9s. Some places were bombed. In one of these there was an engagement.

What's the size of the area after the razing you saw?
I see rubble.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

When we spoke about what really took place in Gaza, you said it was insane or something. Why, what was it?
The amount of destruction there was incredible. You drive around those neighborhoods, and can't identify a thing. Not one stone left standing over another. You see plenty of fields, hothouses, orchards, everything devastated. Totally ruined. It's terrible. It's surreal. You see a pink room with a Barbie poster, a shell that had gone through about a meter and a half below.

Really went through?
Yes. People live in these places. There were many incidents of people, towards the third or fourth day, where you'd be informed on radio or just simply suddenly see in front of you a group of about twenty people walking south with white flags. It's so insane.

So when there's information of people with such flags, what do you do?
You're told not to open fire. If you get this information, or if there's a report of something humanitarian supposed to pass.

 
Ambulances passed, for instance?
No.

So what is this humanitarian thing?
Humanitarian aid, I don't know what they call it. Maybe a donkey and a cart and who knows what it's carrying. Maybe rice or something.

Were there cases that you knew of, that you were told of civilians or someone wounded, or wounded persons who had had no medical care. Did you run into such cases?
The matter with tanks is… Our range is huge, you don't really feel the enemy. So our own incidents, things that happened once or twice, were at a range of over a kilometer, or 800 meters. So you don't really feel it. I don't know, in my own company there were plenty of people who fired just for the hell of it, at houses, water tanks. They loved targeting water tanks.

But you don't do it with shells. You do it with machine guns.
Machine guns. Fire at windows too. If there's information requiring us to demolish that house.

Did you happen to escort D-9s demolishing houses, do you know what they destroyed, why, how many?
The way we worked was in secondary protective positions. After they realized we'd be inside over 72 hours, and that we couldn't stay in our positions, all of us, all of the time, these rear positions were prepared. If they didn't like the looks of some house, if it disturbed or threatened them, then it would be taken down.

But that was for operational needs.
Operational needs. I don't know, maybe half of them. Sometimes the company commander would give the D-9s something to demolish just to make them happy.

Why, were they resentful?
No, but D-9s, you know… They have a hard time. They're your gofers. They do what they're told. So they love to demolish, and when the commander sends them off, "Go take down that house," they're happy.

Were there lots of explosive charges? Booby-trapped houses, cases where you fired at a house and heard a secondary explosion? How many such cases were there?
There was once someone we detected and fired at, and then heard a secondary explosion. From a house at a window, 800 meter range. Nothing else that I know of.
Although the infantry say they had a lot of that. According to them there were plenty of booby-trapped houses. In our second advance there was some field where we'd nearly hit charges any minute, and eventually the paratrooper officer close by did hit a charge, it was hard. He and another two soldiers were wounded. The infantry who were more inside the houses felt this more than we did.

Did you see civilians?
I saw the folks who were walking south… There was this one time when two old women were right behind us with a little kid and a suitcase, all confused.

Behind you, meaning north of you, between you and the border.
Yes, behind us. They got too close to the infantry formation, and deterrent fire was opened at them. I also heard that the company commander asked the guys, 'Why didn't you shoot them?' I talked with some of the guys at the position over there. I saw the infantrymen in the rear positions.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

Were there any humanitarian convoys in your area?
No. I remember hearing once that a Red Cross truck would be passing, but it didn't, or at least I don't recall it did or that someone told me it did. Every time they'd announce a humanitarian ceasefire.

What did that mean?
Basically that we were to hold our fire. Categorically. Can I tell you it was quiet? It wasn't. The Giv'ati forces made a lot of noise even during humanitarian ceasefires. That was my sense of things. I can't say this about a specific incident on a certain date or at a certain time. But it was not quiet.

They were positioned mostly inside the Zaytoun neighborhood?
Yes. They did some hard work there… I see Giv'ati forces through my binoculars, from a distance. And phosphorus rounds were used there too. I saw this through the binoculars, it was a kilometer away. Having seen it once, you can't go wrong. I remember there were several incidents. I can't tell you the background for their use, but use was made there of phosphorus.

So what do you see around you there?
You see increasing devastation. Houses that disappear with time, farm land plowed over time.

You served in Gaza as a regular soldier, meaning you have a sense of the scale of military operations in Gaza.
This is different altogether. There's no comparison. No way, it is not at all similar to what we knew as operations in our conscript term of duty. Things were localized back then. Even the large, brigade-scale operations were combined with tanks. Not artillery, choppers or combat helicopters. Not this whole bedlam.

What is the difference on the ground?
On the ground you hear these thunderous blasts all day long. I mean, not just tank shelling which was a tune we'd long gotten used to, but blasts that actually rock the outpost, to the extent that some of us were ordered out of the house we were quartered in for fear it would collapse, that engineering-wise it would not last. These were the blasts closer to us.

By the Corps of Engineers unit?
Yes. Usually. But even when artillery hits not too far away, the blast would be enormous.

How does the area look then?
I'll describe for you the house we took over: You enter a house which had obviously been a workshop, probably a rather large building, certainly compared to others. You enter the house which had been entered with live gunfire, in urban warfare, including the use of grenades, which you see from the shrapnel that obviously hit the plaster on the walls. Then of course you see that some of the walls have been partially ruined, the concrete fence around the house, as well as all kinds of holes broken in the walls between rooms. I can imagine this was done with a 5 kg hammer, or with explosive charges. These two things were around all the time. One of the guys told me it had been a 5 kg hammer. That's what the house would look like.

Every house was taken with live gunfire?
I can't tell you that every single one was, but I see no reason that the house I was in would be different from others. I suppose they were, and I know that more houses were. I know for certain that grenades were used.

Your guys or Giv'ati?
Both.

Your guys also entered houses with live gunfire?
Ours too. Definitely. I think there's a very significant difference in what I hear from guys and what I know personally about my own unit. Big difference between the way we treated the contents of the house and the way the regulars did. The regulars wouldn't take care of even the simplest most basic sanitary stuff like going to the toilet, basic hygiene. I mean you could see they had defecated anywhere and left the stuff lying around. There's something called "shit bags" then they left them in some room or threw it away not too far around the house. The house was filthy when we got there. Really… The first thing we did was to clean up. But regarding property, too. Whether someone actually picked up a picture, took stuff – I don't know many people who came away with souvenirs. I mean, the only thing I recall is that one of the Giv'ati men showed me a picture he had picked up. I don't even know whether he put it back or not. I don't know whether he finally took it with him or not.

A picture of what?
I think it was of the owner of the house. I don't know for sure, a bearded man in his thirties or forties, with a little child clutching a Kalachnikov. Naturally this was while talking about… This picture served that soldier as a justification for everything we did there. "Look at this cruel enemy we have here, who lets his five-year old son hold his gun." That's it. When we arrived we did try to clean up. I can say about my own platoon that the deeper moral discussion went about as far as whether to use the guy's olive oil or not.

And the television set and everything was intact when you went in?
The television set came out with us. At least one of them. One was ruined by the shelling. Furniture. Guys tried to preserve the furniture, whatever was not used for operational purposes, like blacking out the room and stuff like that.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

There was a mosque, and we won't go into all those traditional reports about why was there still a mosque, those are for internal discussion. But on the whole, most of the mosques were demolished. That too, earlier – in Tze'elim (army base) – that brigade commander I mentioned explicitly told us we should not hesitate to target mosques. Nothing is immune, nothing and no area. He explicitly mentioned mosques. This specific mosque was one of several in our designated area, which wasn't too wide.
It contained several mosques, most of which were hit. At some point, during the regular searches, we heard and saw – not I, personally, but the deputy commander who kept his head out and said, "Did you see that? They blasted a mosque." Then I was told it was probably targeted by a helicopter. Not sure who fired. They blasted the whole minaret, that top part of the mosque, where the muezzin stands.

Why? Had it been a source of fire?
No. Not that I know of.

Your tank is supposed to be monitoring that area from a range of 500 meters.
We saw no fire. I repeat, from my own personal point of view I saw no reason whatsoever. Could be that an alert was on about some anti-tank fire source at the top of that minaret. I don't know. I know that as far as I see, there was no fire originating there, and at some point the minaret was taken down.

This happened in daytime?
Yes.

You were there for a week, and on some days the air force would bomb?
No, the air force bombed all the time, not necessarily the neighborhood facing us, but we would hear bombing constantly, not just a burst of machine gunfire here and there, but massive bombings by the navy and air force. They would constantly shell various areas in the Strip. Not necessarily in our designated area, but you constantly heard them firing.
That's why I ask you specifically about your own designated area, if you could know what they were doing and why. We don't know the reasons for fire all around, that's why I'd like to focus on what you actually see.
Occasionally in our designated area there was longer-range fire. Not within the specific area which we were monitoring but rather a kilometer to a kilometer-and-a-half away. You don't hear any fire before the Israeli army fires. We saw no resistance there except for that one incident with the anti-tank crew and the rumor about mortar shells being fired at us once. Assuming it was correct; besides these two incidents we faced absolutely no fire, and did see our own side firing at the other side.

There was this concept of deterrence, deterrent fire?
It was talked about in our maneuvers, that there's nothing to prevent us from firing for deterrence. There was nothing to deter so we didn't need to do that, but it was certainly discussed in the briefings, deterrent fire. Fire to take down heads. You see a position which you cannot monitor and you suspect there's something there, shoot without finding out what's there first.

What's a position?
If you see sand bags, you shoot without the shadow of a doubt.

How do you define it?
You run into a curve in the road and know there's an angle from which you cannot monitor a certain area, first you shoot, see if anything happens, then you proceed…
When we say 'dead area' we mean a building. If you don't know what's in that building, you fire at it. Such were the general instructions, in fact we weren't in these situations so I don't know what happened there, but instructions were definitely that if you get to a T-junction and have to make a right turn and behind you is a building and you have no idea what's in it, you fire at the building and then turn right. This kind of thing. No doubt, preventive fire was allowed.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

So for that same mission of fragmenting the Gaza Strip, we actually received orders to control some high point, and that while we were there – we didn't know how long – we were to raze as much as possible of the area. Such razing is a euphemism for intentional, systematic destruction, enabling total visibility. Razing was meant to give us the advantage of full control over fire and lookout, to see exactly what was happening throughout the zone. So that no one could hide anything from us. Two reasons were actually mentioned for this destruction. I'll talk now more about the destruction of houses because that is the main problem here. One reason may be termed operational. Meaning a house is suspected to be booby-trapped, contains tunnel openings, is wired in all sorts of directions, or has signs of digging. Or we have some outside intelligence information about it, making it suspect of all these things. Stemming from this operational line of thinking, is a house from which fire is opened, whether light arms or mortars or missiles, grad rockets, all those things. These are houses we demolish. You could say this is a pretty natural extension of the normal army procedure I know at least in the Gaza Strip. A house that has often been a source of fire has sustained a shelling, or even been demolished entirely. But then we were told there are houses to be demolished for the sake of "the day after." The day after is actually a thought that obviously we're going in for a limited period of time which could be a week and it might also be a few months. But it's not a longer span of time without defining what it is. And the rationale was that we want to come out with the area remaining sterile as far as we're concerned. And the best way to do this is by razing. That way we have good firing capacity, good visibility for observation, we can see anything, we control a very large part of the area and very effectively. This was the meaning of demolition for the sake of the day after. In practical terms this meant taking a house that is not implicated in any way, that it's single sin is the fact that it is situated on top of a hill in the Gaza Strip.

 
Close to the fence or inside?
It could be either. I mean, this hill could be, I think, between half a kilometer to over one kilometer. I don't remember precisely so I don't want to say, but it's at a reasonable distance. This hill, this point that is strategic, the reason it is so important is that anyone occupying it can easily fire at Israel, as well as controlling the westward direction towards Gaza City. Anyone on the top of that hill sees both the sea on one side and the Israeli border on the other. So that is how strategic this spot is.
…Each company was assigned a certain designated area. With time, I mean every two days, or three days, it would be moved up. Meaning we came from below and began to climb that hill I mentioned. Every time there would be some advance made. We wanted to control the area, too, while advancing. We kept wanting to move because we were threatened, but there was also constant destruction. In my own experience, having spent over two years in the Gaza Strip in the days of Gush Katif before the disengagement, during the Second Intifada, I never knew such fire power. They were using every weapon I know, at least. This means they were demolishing houses with bulldozers of course, who were working very hard, but also with artillery, helicopters, tanks, air planes, mortars. And naturally special units of the Corps of Engineers, who perform regulated blasting of houses as it were. There were constant explosions and we could no longer differentiate between tanks and artillery that we heard from the border, for we were relatively close to the border. We heard the firing from the border and the explosions in the Strip. There was constant destruction. I can't say whether every house I saw was ruined for the first reason I mentioned, namely on operational grounds, some incrimination or another, or for the sake of 'the day after.' What I do know is that a soldier who took a position and was designated a certain area, let's say 130 degrees for which he was answerable, the way this area was defined was usually from this house, let's say, the house with the red roof to that house with the arches. These boundaries were changed on a daily basis, at times even in shorter intervals. In other words, I get off my position and the boundaries are fixed one way, then when I got up again those boundaries are no longer relevant, for the house no longer stands. The right boundary of my designated area no longer exists. It's gone. So now my designated area has changed. It's deeper, or less deep. It's different. A tree was there, now it's no longer seen. The boundaries keep changing and that's what kept happening, not once, not twice, not three times. It was actually routine.

When your company occupied houses, there was no fighting going on in your area, right?
No, usually we did not see a living soul. Except for our soldiers of course. Not a soul. The first time we saw Palestinians was several hours after the ceasefire. After the ceasefire was declared. Then, at a distance of about one kilometer, we saw several people moving around in an orchard. But besides them we saw no one. There were cases of mortar shelling in our direction. There were occasions when snipers took shots at us, but visually there was nothing. It is important to stress that on the other hand, it was obvious to us that there were terrorists in the area. That is clear, too.

While your company is present, there are demolitions going on in your designated area?
Sure… I was talking about what took place in our own area. I remember a house that was shelled by an 81mm mortar which is something I had never witnessed before. Except for maneuvers at Tze'elim (training base), and that too was 'dry.' I never saw any use, certainly not operational, in urban warfare, of 81mm mortars. I never realized there was such an intention. 81mm mortar has a high arcing ballistic trajectory, meaning it fires indirectly. When I fire my weapon I am aiming directly at a target. I mark my target and shoot. I mean, I can fire over a hill, hit something indirectly. The great disadvantage of this kind of fire, however, is that it is less precise. The mortar is a weapon that wreaks great damage and is imprecise. The smaller mortars are still very harmful and less precise than artillery, let's say, which I think, from what I've heard, is a bit more precise. But they cause a lot more damage. Much greater damage. In fact, the 81mm mortar is a rather primitive weapon. A mortar is not much more than a pipe that fires a shell that is fed into it. This is rather primitive. And it's best righting means is by correcting its hit. In other words, you see where it hit and say, okay, correct 2 cm. to the right, 3 cm. to the left. Eventually you hit the target. I was so surprised, we know it's so imprecise and still make operational use of it.

Was there much use made of 81mm mortars in your area?
At least twice or three times out of my own outpost, and a series of bursts each time. In other words, not a single shell but several. I'll say, even if prematurely, that I have the feeling the army was trying out something for real here. There was no need for such intense fire, no need to use mortars, phosphorus ammunition. Others as well as myself have a certain feeling that the army was looking for the opportunity to hold a spectacular maneuver in order to show its muscle. This is the only reasoning I can see for using mortars operationally in urban warfare. Nothing else to my mind can justify this. Nor is this any justification, naturally.

…The day after?
That's something we didn't really understand, we didn't quite know the meaning of it. In a way, we got the rationale. I explained this – the army wants us to have that advantage when we leave. But it created certain confusion, it blurred things. I mean, you see a house, so what do you do? How? I felt the orders here were somewhat amorphous. I could say that in a personal talk with my battalion commander he mentioned this and said in a sort of sad half-smile, I think, that this is something that will eventually be added to 'my war crimes.' Meaning that he realized there was a certain problem about this. I know that this order was carried out in practice, for some of the houses that were demolished had not been incriminated. There was even a certain barn there that was blasted. Houses that stood there, harmless, and were demolished in various ways and modes. This was a general framework for destruction. That was my own feeling, but again – it's a feeling. I only know with certainty that destruction took place, in different ways and by various means.

You had served in Gaza for years, was this destruction in any way similar to what you'd known before?
No, no way. This was on a totally different scale. This was fire-power such as I had never known. I can't say that when I had been in Gaza the airforce wasn't used. But no, the ground was not constantly shaking. I mean, there were blasts all the time. Whether distant or near, that's already semantics. But our basic feeling was that the earth was constantly shaking. Explosions were heard all day long, the night was filled with flashes, an intensity we had never experienced before. Several D-9 bulldozers were operating around the clock, constantly busy. This was a very different scale of intensity than we had known. Much greater… Look, when we were fired at, we did not actually see the enemy with our own eyes. On the other hand, we were fired at and we fired back towards suspect spots. What is a suspect spot? It means you decided it was suspect and could take out all your rage at it.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

Often a house that was suspect for tunnels or explosive charges was a house that was targeted with various phosphorus shells, thinking this would activate all the charges. In other words, phosphorus was to serve as an igniter, simply make it all go up in flames, which then ignited the explosive charges. And the tunnels. Everything was ignited.

Is that what you were told at the preliminary briefing?
No, I say it now as a comment. This was one line of reasoning.

When did you hear about the use of phosphorus, and from whom?
I ran into it, there were all sorts of rumors but I saw it with my own eyes in one of the houses in our immediate area.

What's the story?
The story was that a house was seriously suspect for containing explosive charges. There was also intelligence information about tunnels and the like. Naturally a shell was fired, that didn't do too much. We didn't get the indication we wanted, so the artillery forces decided to target this house, and they were the ones using phosphorus. That's what actually happened. I don't remember whether they fired just one shell or more, I think there were several used. This house went up in flames. Later there were secondary blasts and shelling into Israeli area and so that house was rightly suspect. But 'exploding smoke' was definitely used there.

Did the phosphorus hit just the house?
I don't know for sure. I saw it because I was on guard duty that night. It creates a kind of umbrella. It explodes several dozen meters above the house and forms an umbrella of fire on the house. To tell you that it was pinpoint precision? Artillery never achieves pinpoint precision. But I know that the artillery officer said the hit was on target.

And that is the only use you recall of artillery in your area?
We kept hearing artillery. We were close enough to the border to hear both the firing and the impact. There was also mortar fire from our own outpost. Targeting a house.

Massive use of mortars?
I don't know what you mean by massive. But I think it happened dozens of times during the week we were there.

Precision mortars? Do you remember?
Mortars is not a precision weapon. It is usually more precise than a 52mm caliber mortar, but to say it's precise? I don't think anyone considers it a precision weapon. Again, I'd like to reiterate that this is a neighborhood that we know with certainty is empty of people, or at least there are not supposed to be people there. Whoever is there is considered an insurgent. This is the approach. Obviously. Therefore, the main fear is for the lives of soldiers. The risk of friendly fire. That's the story here. But mortars were definitely used.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

When we got there, the main demolitions were in warfare, "pressure cookers." From the point we got there, infrastructure work began. D-9s were brought in and they worked nonstop to raze orchards and take down houses suspected of containing tunnels. Occasionally there was sniper fire inside the refugee camps and there were attempts to detect their source, and at times we directed combat helicopters and tank fire at the house that was supposedly the source of fire. You have to be extremely professional to detect the source of fire and direct exactly towards it. The range was over a kilometer in a very crowded area.

Detecting sniper fire over a kilometer away inside a refugee camp is nearly impossible.
Tank fire was directed in response.

Tanks firing heavy ammunition, shells?
Yes. After detecting sniper fire.

Who directed the D-9s?
The unit commander.

He would decide which house was to be taken down?
Yes. After consulting the company commander. The company commander would request confirmation of the Brigade Headquarters and the unit commander would work directly with them.

In all of that house razing activity, were there cases of explosive charges blowing up?
Not while I was there.

And in the orchards around?
Not while I was there. But I was told there were during the first week.

 
You're saying there was plenty of infrastructure work during your week there.
Yes.

How many D-9s in action?
Two or three.

Working nonstop?
Yes… It wasn't a dense block of crowded buildings with houses razed in the middle. These were scattered buildings. It is a farming area, there are plenty of fruit groves between houses. There's sort of a street, several streets, not well-ordered infrastructure, so after taking down houses there was this bare feeling, but you had a fruit tree grove or orchard which was totally razed and houses taken down – and the overall sense might be that everything was empty. It's not like that. There was a house taken down here and there. The feeling is it's all sand dunes, all the streets were destroyed and there were shell pits from the bombings before the ground offensive. At least this is the logical explanation. We were there for a week, not doing too much – basically holding our positions, being on the lookout, sending out an occasional search, taking another house over to search it. At some point our officer decided he'd hold a grenade-launching practice because we hadn't managed that before we entered. So we went to a house next door, took an inner room, and each person came along and threw a grenade inside. The house was totally devastated. At some point a grenade flew out a window and hit a gas pipe, gas started leaking and we stopped the practice. Went back. Occasionally some civilians would show up. Another force searched a house nearby and found civilians inside. They assembled them, I don't know what they did with them. One day some refugees, civilians, came in and were searched and taken away, or assembled in the house next door. I think they had been there the whole time. There was not much control over this. They were used as "Johnnies" (at a different point in the interview the witness described the 'Johnnie' procedure, using Palestinian civilians as human shields during house searches), and then released, and we’re finding them in later searches.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description: From the onset, he and the brigade commander and other officers made it very clear to us that any movement must entail gunfire.


No matter what kind of movement?
You don't need to be shot at. Suffice it that you suspect there's movement, and this was before we entered our own designated area. I don't remember if the brigade commander said this or someone else. I'm not sure: no one is supposed to be there, if you see any signs of movement at all, you shoot. These, essentially, were the rules of engagement. Shoot if you like. If you're afraid, or you see someone, shoot.


Even if there's no jeopardy?
That's the meaning of this, yes. You don't only shoot when threatened. The assumption is that you constantly feel threatened, so anything there threatens you, and you shoot. No one actually said "shoot regardless" or "shoot anything that moves." But we were not ordered to open fire only if there was real threat.


Did you feel threatened coming in?
Yes. We got alerts the whole time. The sense of threat was literally being built up in us. I can say this about ourselves, we were very frightened. In actual fact there was no reason to be, but we felt threatened. Not that anything happened to justify this, but from the outset, we entered Gaza in fear. It's important to reiterate that as reservists, we want to get back home as safely as possible. It's different. Listen, I have been a regular. It's a different kind of feeling. You're afraid even to get into a tank on maneuvers. You don't want to get hurt, you don't want anything to happen to you. Consequently we're also more cautious with opening fire, we don't want to start off something that would get us stuck there. In general reservists are more careful, they don't run unnecessary risks. As for the rules of engagement, we did not get instructions to shoot at anything that moved, but we were generally instructed: if you feel threatened, shoot. They kept repeating to us that this is war and there opening fire is not restricted.


… After getting in positions, were you watching the houses all day or at night?
We watched them all the time.


You reported any suspect movement?
There was nothing there. Ghost towns. Except for some livestock, nothing moved. One tank of our company had a run-in, identified an anti-tank missile that was about to be fired at it, so it fired and that was that. Rumors ran that our tank was shelled by a mortar. Three hours later someone said to us, "Didn't you hear you'd been fired at?" We had no idea we were fired at. Alerts kept coming in all the time about a woman suicide bomber about to reach us in twenty minutes. None of these alerts ever materialized.


How was she going to reach you?
We got no information on that on radio, they just told us which direction she was supposed to come from and to keep on the lookout in that direction. Beyond that, we didn't hear much.


She was supposed to come on foot?
Yes. The alert was "Woman suicide bomber on her way to the position." Something along that line, not too many details. "Within an hour or two." We kept getting alerts about a sniper in our area, about a group of five observed inside a house that could be an anti-tank missile crew. We constantly got all these alerts and none of them materialized as far as our company was concerned. That does not mean they were empty alerts. The rest of the time we sat in the tank and were on lookout and ambushes, and kept seeing fire all around us, constant artillery fire, navy, air force, and regular units that were activated continuing from where we had been situated.
Our designated area was so narrow because beyond those 500 meters, Israeli army units were in action, paratroopers and battalion ***, and we were not allowed to fire outside our area. Occasionally another area was opened to us. We heard that company L opened fire a lot, there were rumors around the battalion, can't tell you how true they were, but rumor had it that they had emptied large amounts of ammo together with the infantrymen. Beyond these rumors I don't know what happened or didn't.
I can only talk about what our company did which is not much… There were really absurd incidents during our stay there. One day we sat and had our afternoon coffee. Suddenly the battalion commander's tank, five meters away from us, fired a shell into a building. Why did he shoot? I don't know why. Perhaps he received an alert, maybe not. I wasn't on radio. It looked groundless to me, more of a "wakeup call" for the company. There were cases where a terrorist was suspected to be hanging around the tanks. I think that someone simply came out of one of the tanks and a lookout detected him and thought this was a terrorist climbing onto a tank, so the whole area was alerted and there was this moment of hysteria, panic, and the next day an area near the battalion headquarters was razed, and a yard that had been there – just disappeared. The D-9 expanded the position. Such things happened all the time, but I can't testify about this beyond my own personal recollection.


Were there house demolitions in your area?
All the time. Houses were demolished everywhere. You see clearly that these houses had been fired at with tremendous power. We didn't see a single house that remained intact, beginning with such scenes as you saw photographed – a house totally shattered or a house with a huge hole in it or many bullet hits on it. We didn't see a single house that was not hit. The entire infrastructure, tracks, fields, roads – was in total ruin. The D-9 had gone over everything, building up the tank positions and preparing the routes. Nothing much was left in our designated area. It looked awful, like in those World War II films where nothing remained. A totally destroyed city. The few houses that were still inhabitable were taken by the army. The less a house was damaged, all the more chances were it would be entered by soldiers to spend the day or night. As I said, there were lots of abandoned, miserable animals.


During your week inside the tank position were there still D-9s demolishing houses around and entering neighborhoods across from you?
All the time. Definitely. During the week we were there, almost daily, armored infantry would go into a house, this was not D-9s. It was armored infantry since they suspected the houses to be booby-trapped – they blasted the houses. They would open a hole in order to enter the house not through the regular entry door. There were constant blasts, and the D-9s would expand the tank positions and routes. Corps of Engineers was engaged there nonstop, with houses containing no one. It was funny because at some point someone said – I don't quite remember who, I think our deputy commander or the company commander himself – that our company is supposed to be more active, assigned to do more. So, really, houses were entered where no one was present, and anyway those houses were monitored and I, personally, never saw anyone in there, perhaps the commanders did find a reason to enter them. I didn't see the reason to enter houses in an empty area where we were monitoring the houses nonstop. Still houses were entered and damage was done to property, for we only saw property, not one person. No obvious reason whatsoever. Perhaps they thought there were weapons inside. I didn't see any reason for this activity, but it was ongoing, all the time.

Name: ***
Rank: ***
Unit: ***
Place of incident: ***
Description:

What in fact happened was that we were on the road between Karni and Netzarim, the old route. We were there for six, seven days, more or less. A week, almost. We went in.

What was the purpose?
We were not told. I don't know what the objective of the war was. Different things were said, aimed more at what needs to be done concretely – they were said in retrospect, that's how I feel.

Were you not told what the objective was, at your briefing?
No way, what do you mean? The same way the broader Israeli public was not informed. Our specific goal was to fragment the Gaza Strip. This was the responsibility of our brigade. Fragmentation was carried out just like in the good old days of Gush Katif prior to the disengagement. Fragmentation is total, absolute – complete separation of the northern Gaza Strip, the north-central section, from the south-central part of the Strip. A separation of Gaza City from the refugee camps and the prevention of weapons, ammunition and reinforcements from reaching Gaza City, which – at the time – I think the army planned to occupy. In fact this did not take place. It was the responsibility of our battalion. We were under charge of Armored Corps Brigade ***… We went in, replaced the Rotem Battalion (Giv'ati Infantry Brigade). We were briefed on the method, the reserves actually replacing the regulars so that the latter would continue occupying or taking charge of the city, that's already a terminology issue. So our greatest fear was that we were defensive rather than on the offensive. The regulars were more engaged in an offensive because they're the ones who came and charged, they were the first to break through the front line, they kept advancing further and further towards the designated targets and we actually replaced them and were supposed to control the area and deepen our hold of it, as the army calls it. In actual fact this is done by means of defense posts: residential buildings situated at strategic locations are taken over, whether at high points, or overlooking roads or whatever. Every such house is held by a force, according to the size of the building and the needs at hand. It may be a platoon, a squadron, a company, a battalion – not the whole battalion, of course, just battalion headquarters and some more men, or just the headquarters staff…We're sitting in a building that was a brick or marble workshop belonging to a pretty respectable-looking man. Obviously Hamas, from the pictures and inscriptions we found there. We actually created a pretty big setup there that was gradually reduced as time went by, control was intended to intensify inward, paradoxically meaning towards Israel. We come in from the north-west and wanted to deepen our control towards Israel, in the north-east. Towards Hoovers Road, as it is called, the border with Israel. This was the method: we did not actually see an enemy, nor civilians – we saw absolutely no one. But we were not being used in the field.

Were the buildings empty?
We came in at night, but the next morning we saw a ruined house with holes blasted between walls for passage, but we also saw a whole wing of the building simply destroyed.

What did you see around you, the neighborhood, what was its condition? What went on there?
The neighborhood – first of all we saw lots of destroyed houses. This does not mean there were no houses still standing. There were, but next to them were ruins, and with time more and more ruins, and even the houses still standing, most of them kept getting shelled here and there. The explanation we got was that when the regular soldiers went in, they knew which houses were belonged to Hamas activists and which did not. A Hamas activist's house usually got shelled once or twice just to make sure…

Tank shells?
Yes. I don't know which kind, and I wasn't there. The reasoning was that Hamas houses posed much more of a threat because of potential booby-trapping, tunnels, combinations thereof, etc. That is why they were shelled, to prevent a whole arena of explosive charges, mortars and the like.
The idea is that because we know in advance that a house belongs to a Hamas activist, we blow it up to make sure there are no explosive charges.
We have to differentiate here between blasting a house and shelling it, let's put it this way. Blasting a house is blowing it up in the air. This is something that a tank shell just cannot do, you'd need explosives for that, all kinds of units dealing with explosives do this. And they did. You fire some shells, and whether intentionally or not, a whole wing is taken down. A whole wing of a house was tipped on its side. When morning came, we saw the destruction of the house and began to realize where we were, somewhat. We saw the Zaytoun neighborhood in front of us, where Giv'ati (infantry brigade) had already begun to engage, and the destruction of the neighborhood we were in. One must constantly keep in mind that we were under enormous threat. All possible dangers – whether anti-tank fire, light arms fire, explosive charges, kidnapping, mortar shells – any scenario was definitely possible. Luckily, but for a few exceptions we didn't witness or experience such things ourselves.

About shelling the activists, when you were briefed which house to destroy and which not to, who did the briefing and when?
Hard to tell, but I think it was my talking with Giv'ati guys when we replaced them there and they explained that this was the procedure. It's hard to say whether this was an authorized source or not. But this repeated itself later in rumors. However I can't tell you that someone was officially authorized to say this: an intelligence officer, battalion commander or someone else. What I can say is that it was already mentioned in the preliminary briefing, that the idea of demolishing houses or razing the neighborhood is twofold: on the one hand there's the operational necessity, that's what we heard all the time. I recall having constantly heard this over our radio. The idea that we are not to jeopardize Israeli soldiers by entering a house where we don't know what's in it, or entering areas with the risk of explosive charges, and therefore from experience that many of the houses, whether every second or fifth house, various things were said – anyway a significant part of the houses were booby-trapped, some of them had tunnels, others mortars under remote control, such stuff, those were things we saw. That was one reason to demolish a house, and that could entail a more massive shelling.

To such an extent that a whole wing would collapse?
Worse. Or that it's a house that a D-9 bulldozer would take care of, and if not – possibly artillery and even Corps of Engineers, in other words blast it to high heaven. If not, it could be shelled, but more thoroughly… So the first reason, as I said, was to protect our forces, let's put it that way, aiming to risk our men as little as possible. We'd demolish suspect houses – that was one thing. The other reason was already brought up at the preliminary briefing at Tze'elim, in fact: part of the concept of razing was what the Israeli army calls 'the day after' consideration. Obviously this campaign would end at some point, clearly there was no intention to come back and take over the Gaza Strip, it was obvious we'd leave eventually. The question was in what condition we'd leave the area, whether more exposed, a state that would afford us better firing and observation conditions, and far greater control. This was the principle behind all that razing, namely razing for our benefit.

What was the exact wording at the preliminary briefing?
"The day after." Razing was done with the day after our leaving in mind, that we would want this ability, outright, this field of vision and range of fire. The expression "the day after" was repeated time and again, even as we were still in action.

When you were on the ground, did you get to demolish houses? Order D-9s and direct them?
Sure, these things actually took place, for two reasons. These two lines of destruction existed in fact, not just planned.

But you went in behind the regulars, the neighborhood was already empty. The regulars had already left, and you were actually taking over in a 'straw widow' procedure.
Not precise. The regulars began what the army calls offensive combat. They fragmented my area, that's what I know. They fragmented the Gaza Strip and deepened control a bit, and took over centrally located houses and did not control the entire area. To that end deeper control was needed. They did not reach all the houses that we did, we deepened control over the area, took over more houses, climbed ranges, took over new houses and that split the force.
During the week you were inside, you were still continuing demolitions, I mean continuing to receive intelligence information about all suspect houses.
Sure. And also demolishing as part of the conception of our own security, for if it's an orange grove, there could be fear of sniping from inside, so the orchard would be razed for our own safety, not to leave a piece of ground over which we do not have total control, to avoid its threatening us, and also with the future in mind.

Can you estimate how many houses? Many, a few?
Not sure. I can say that as someone who stood guard duty at posts like any other guard posts, the soldier has a certain area over which he is supposed to keep watch. Quite often the boundaries of such areas were made unclear, for as we know them, the boundaries are from one house to another, so if one of the houses was no longer standing you had to consider another house, which we also didn't see later. The boundaries were made unclear by the house demolitions, I mean house demolition continued. That's for sure.

During the week you were inside, you would still be shelling houses with explosive charges, or would you demolish them with D-9s or would the Corps of Engineers be working on them?
All of the above, I think.