There’s an area called the ‘knee’ zone, which is the northeastern border of the Gaza Strip, near Nahal Oz and all sorts of kibbutzim (within Israel). Sderot is also there, further back. We were stationed in several outposts. From the largest one, you could see the entire Gaza Strip, especially Beit Hanoun. The rules of engagement were that if anyone reached a certain distance from the fence… deterrent fire. I remember cases where an order was given to kill a sheep. It was shooting to deter. There were cases during our time there of sheep being killed. At that range, 2-3 kilometers from the fence, all you see is shepherds. As far as we’re concerned, the army – we were told over and over again that they were scouts, meaning that most of them were simply out to gather information for planting explosive charges. There really were explosive charges planted on the fence. I also remember house demolitions: there were two single houses still standing in a corner, inside a stretch of land several kilometers long that had already been razed. The D-9 [bulldozers] demolished those two houses.

Were there people living in them at the time? No, I don’t think anyone was still living there. The IDF had already made it forbidden [for Palestinians] to be there. At Nahal Oz, the rules were “whoever touches the fence dies”. Nobody was allowed to get to the fence.

Were there such cases? There were all sorts of infiltration attempts. At that time, some of them even succeeded. There was a story going around about some Palestinians who had come there with a very big ladder and had managed to cross the fence. Some people came close to it with tools. Maybe they were carrying an explosive charge, because there were attempts to get explosives in [to Israel]. Or, maybe they were just trying to cross the fence. Anyway, some Palestinians were shot for getting close to the fence. There were a lot of attempts to get close and they either ran off or were killed.