There was a case when lots of vessels chased a school of fish into Egypt and they crossed the Egyptian border. Not only did they cross the border, some of the vessels were actually inside Egyptian territorial waters. You cannot enter Egyptian territory – that would be a breach of sovereignty. These situations anger commanders at sea and the senior commanders on shore as well, because there's a gap between practical enforcement which is never perfect, and what we are supposed to do.

What happened there with the Egyptians?They (the Palestinians) left lots of unmanned boats inside the closed area and in Egyptian waters. The unit commander sailed on a ship. At the same time, they were thinking what to do with those vessels that were – as I said – unmanned. They decided to take one of the boats that we were sure was unmanned, and fire at it in order to hit the gas containers and burn it. That’s how you spare ammunition in an attempt to sink a boat. Beforehand, we ‘made sure’ there was no one aboard: we flashed a projector at it, called out over loudspeakers, tried to shake it, said, “If there's anyone there – get off the boat!” All in Hebrew. Regulation requires the presence of Arabic-speakers on board, but in reality, there were four Arabic speakers for a large number of vessels. True, they're supposed to know the procedures and they’re not innocent, they know the ropes. Normally they stretch things to their most daring limit and hope that the Dabur will leave them be. Perhaps they’ll manage to catch some fish in their nets. That time, there didn’t appear to be anyone on board. We had no way of making absolutely sure, unless one of our men boarded the boat and conducted a search. We decided there was no one there. We got an okay to open fire and sink it. One soldier shot at it with light arms. After several shots, someone came out with a bleeding leg. We'd hit him in the leg. This was all done by the book, nothing exceptional about it. We escalated the incident according to standard definitions, you cannot assure there is no one aboard. There was no suspicion there of any terrorist activity.

There were no warnings.No warnings, and the conduct on the ground was typical fishermen conduct. We just wanted to deter them, to make sure the ‘boss’ will see one of his boats on fire and won't take that risk again.

What happened to the guy in the end?He limped, rolled up the anchor, the ‘boss’ came along and picked him up and the rest of the boats, and the incident was over.

When you saw him, did you hold your fire and wait?Yes. Everyone was a bit stunned to suddenly see a person coming out when we were sure no one was on board. Again, the point was to clear the area. We didn't want to shoot anyone. As far as we knew, there was no one there.

Was this incident investigated?No.