They decided to send the entire battalion out for a mission inside Nablus. The goal was to find weapons caches inside the Balata refugee camp. All the companies sent at least two platoons, and Oketz (the IDF canine unit) and some of the Border Police forces that were with us in the district [joined]. That was the scale. Every platoon receives the targets it’s supposed to take control of and check. It was around 2:00-3:00 A.M. when we set out. We ride, get off outside Nablus, start walking. We walk in a column and arrive more or less where we’re supposed to go. We’re supposed to check the house where someone we’re looking for lives. He is suspected of terrorist activity and may have weapons in the house. The Platoon Commander starts knocking on doors, looking for the man because the address he gets is a block [of houses]. It takes us a long time to figure out where it is. We go into a house that we essentially pass through. The whole platoon and a half of us goes through the house, exits on the other side, in a much smaller house. In the small house, there is an older man and woman, and they have two children: a 17-18-year-old boy and a girl who’s younger than him. They are obviously very frightened. We took over the house. [The] occupants were made to sit on a couch. The father was a little sick, the flu [or] a cold, and the wife was terribly worried about him because it was late and he was barefoot, so she got a little hysterical, and then the solution was “Okay, father and son, you’re going with us to another room, mother and daughter, you’re staying here on the couch.” The father and the boy are both handcuffed so they don’t interfere with the search. There was no provocative behavior on their part that could have caused this.

So then, you entered the house and immediately handcuffed them?We entered the house, “Good evening, we are the IDF, we need to search.” The parents made some kind of attempt to understand what was going on. Events unfold, officers decide, boom, somehow they are handcuffed. It all happened very quickly. I wasn’t fully paying attention to what was going on. We tried to talk to them with the little Hebrew they knew and the little Arabic we knew. Winter, dad is barefoot, [it’s] a tile floor, and he is sick, so we gave him slippers. Our commanders weren’t too happy about it, but it happened. Every now and again [they] asked us for tissues, and we didn’t quite know what to do. Do we want to give them, do we not want to give them?

Why didn’t you want to give them?There was some kind of explanation; I think it was part of the briefing: “Don’t engage with them; don’t talk to them, don’t be friendly.” It’s an operation; you can’t be nice. Either way, the situation, there is something embarrassing about it. I am 19 years old with my iron partner (military term for a pair of soldiers who are meant to stick together at all times), who is also 19 years old, standing in front of a 60-year-old man who is scared to death of us. It’s a situation that happened a lot in Nablus, where we find ourselves in front of people who are 60 years old.

Do you know what they were suspected of?In the house we were in, the thing that was found in the end was a photo or a certificate with the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] logo on it. A certificate of appreciation, “Thank you for donating,” not something incriminating. The only thing that was ultimately found [was] just this slingshot, probably the boy’s. It wasn’t even one of those advanced ones you can aim with. It was some piece of wood he’d broken off and an elastic.

Who conducts the search?There’s one guy from Oketz, a canine handler with his dog. They lead. The dog looks for something, can’t find it, but he takes [the dog] through each and every drawer, each piece of clothing, and the dog sniffs. Together with them, there are the mission commanders; these are the Company Commander with his interpreter and the sergeant. [There’s] someone else in every room because they’re all running around the house. But the house is a complete mess. Everything is a mess, mess, mess, mess. The worst part was when a friend from the platoon, a somewhat clunky guy, walked around with his whole vest and weapon and knocked over some vase, and then there is this silence. The mother starts crying madly; the father has this look of... I can’t describe this look, okay? But eyes on the floor, his son next to him; he is handcuffed, so he’s already embarrassed by the situation, his son seeing him like this. They blow their noses on each other’s shoulders, and then their vase gets broken in a moment of clumsiness. Everyone was quiet, hands on their faces, not knowing what to do anymore. That was also more or less the moment we said, “Okay, let’s get out of this house already.”

What were you looking for?As soon as we got there, the search was narrowed. We were told, “pay attention to cold weapons; look for knives; in the kitchen too; if you find knives in the kitchen, it also counts [as weapons].”

If you find knives in the kitchen?Yes, say, I don’t know what... The battalion’s mission was to find weapons caches. I think that shortly after we arrived at this house, they realized we weren’t going to find Kalashnikovs there. That’s why they found the slingshot, you know. It was like, “anything you find that is potentially a weapon, you report” kind of thing. The hope was to find actual firearms or some very large stockpile of cold weapons. It did not happen. I remember [it] as a very strange evening.

Why did you go into this particular house, if it was not the suspect’s house?Because as far as the Platoon Commander - who led the operation - understood, that was the house Intelligence sent us to. That was the house that had intelligence on it. There was a block of houses, and then he started asking the neighbors. The interpreter comes and says like, “Where does whatever his name is live?” or “Where is so and so’s house?” Most of the neighbors sort of pointed over there. The conversations with them weren’t too detailed. He (the Platoon Commander) somehow understood that that was the house.

And when you went in and saw the person you were looking for was not there, did that change anything? Meaning, did the instructions on the search of the house change?No, it was like, ‘OK, now search.’ He is not here? No problem, search. Phase A cannot happen; we move to Phase B, looking for weapons.