The Booster Hill is an illegal hill, it’s an illegal outpost: a few trailers of families plus a soldiers’ guarding trailer. It was established around fifteen years ago. It’s very small. And [the nearby settlement of] Negohot is surrounded by Arab villages. What they (the Negohot settlers) did – that’s what they say when they tell it – they wanted to show the Arabs that it’s theirs, so the Arabs don’t hold their heads up – that’s their language – so they just built an outpost. The Booster Hill sits above an Arab village.

What goes on there? A platoon of soldiers guards there all year round, which doesn’t prevent the people who live there from being there or not being there. I mean, it’s guarded regardless. Whether they’re there or not there – it’s guarded. There is no fence surrounding it. They claim they don’t need a fence, the soldiers protect them. So we patrol all night because there’s no fence, because they don’t believe in [having] a fence.

When you were there, were there people around? There were people there because I was guarding throughout an entire week, including during holidays. When there were holidays, the outpost emptied. Meaning, I guarded their equipment. Everyone left, dispersed to their families, and we would be the guards of the equipment of the settlers who live there. They have a very small synagogue there and they don’t have a minyan (the quorum for Jewish prayer), and they’re religious people, so on holidays as well as on Fridays and Saturdays they need to complete a minyan. Now, they can’t drive [on the Sabbath or during religious holidays], so they have to walk to Negohot, which is located 500 meters [from there], to complete a minyan. So in order to protect their lives, we block all the Arab villages, all their roads, for something like half an hour, and wait for them to finish praying. And then they return. Every time they want to make some kind of move, we block all the villages in the area.

What other movement apart from prayers? Prayers are the main thing. Ultimately every time they ask the soldiers to block the roads because they want to go [to Negohot], then the soldiers do as they’re asked.

Give me a concrete example. They were at a Simhat Torah prayer. There were a few prayers during the day, [and] each time the villages were blocked – three, four times during that day I think. Each time you would see huge traffic jams in all the Arab villages. [Sometimes] they (the settlers) want to go from Negohot to the outpost in order to complete a minyan for one another. They won’t plan it to make the Arabs’ lives easier. So they go, come back, go, come back, they visit the people, and the Arabs – let them wait, let them stand there.