Towards the end of training we were in Adora, around Hebron. That was our base, I don't know what has happened since then but I heard there have been major changes. That's where the work against protesters and all those stories began. It was hardcore straight away, we were in training, there were four incidents where I drew a weapon and fired in all kinds of situations.

Live fire?Yes. We even skipped steps in the procedure for using means against protesters.

Crowd control measures, stun grenades, teargas grenades...Yeah, all that nonsense, and everything that includes.

The first time you were met with real aggression, jumping into action, when did that happen?At the very beginning of our deployment. The encounters – after training we were immediately deployed, and it was pretty intense at first, we weren't ready and we didn't know how to take it, we didn't know how to behave in that situation. There weren't checkpoints at that time, not the way they became an established thing afterwards. There were always checkpoints, but they kept changing. I don't know how to define them. Old-school checkpoints, not even armor protected, nothing. Something very simple.

Do you remember a specific incident of an encounter or a demonstration?One time, we had an invasion of a hilltop, something nice. We spread out over the hilltop, the whole squad, I don't remember how many people were there. It was funny, at some point the crowd control means ran out, you scatter and scatter (shooting to disperse demonstrators).

On whom, on what?On the demonstrators, they come from the village.

They come to the hill to demonstrate?I don't know how they realized we were there. It’s not demonstrations, it's all riots. They want to eliminate you.  It's not a demonstration where they come with signs, instead it's “look, here are soldiers, let's take them down.” It's children, women, everyone. They see you as someone they have to fight against now, everything heats up at once.

Stones or shooting, too?Stones. We tried [to stop them] with all the means we had. I remember that I ran out of crowd control means and I began scattering with live fire.

With permission?Without any permission, without anything. There wasn't even a commander next to me. We were dumped there in the field... there’s a crazy showering of stones, so you shoot to scatter, you shoot near them, you shoot in the air, you shoot near rocks or stones.

How did the incident end?With us backing up, before we did any real damage.  Not that you think about it then, when you’re in it – you’re in it.  You don’t think about the ramifications, you just shoot.