We advanced to maneuver at a place called Khirbat Ikhzaa, which is across from the kibbutz [communities] of Nirim and Nir Oz, with Ikhzaa being an area where there hadn't been maneuvers. We were the first force to go in there as a brigade operation. The timeline was to capture the place within a week, I think. We were done in three days. There was no significant resistance there. There was counterfire from RPGs (anti–tank rockets) here and there and stuff, all kinds of exits from tunnel shafts. There were wounded for sure, but there was no intense fighting in the sense of fire fights, one force shooting at another.

Encounters. Yeah, there were no encounters at all. In Khirbat Ikhzaa [there were] tons of items belonging to hostages, tons, like down to ID cards, military boots taken from Nir Oz. There's no doubt about that at all. Things that you can, with basic knowledge, identify who it belongs to. And what happened in Ikhzaa, which I'd never seen before, is that you get a mission to clear up to the 800–meter line from [the] 'hourglass' (the border fence) — there must be no structures in Khirbat Ikhzaa. The exceptions to this were the UNRWA school and some other small water facility there. You have to understand, the IDF had been maneuvering at the time for almost two months. As a combatant, when something has to get blown up, you're used to having an explosives kit, and then engineers come and blow it up. But there's no more [explosives], [so] we do it with mines. You get an allocation of mines, and essentially, these are big, rusty limpet mines that were pulled out of deep storage — God knows where they were stored until now. Basically, our main mission was blowing things up, I'm talking up to hundreds of structure units (buildings). It's not like the high rises in Shati (Refugee camp in Gaza City). It's one–story or two–story cubes. But the destruction is total.

This was two weeks total? All in all, it was three weeks. Because after the conquest [stage], came the destruction–of–houses stage. It wasn't done simultaneously. First of all, there were the lines of advancement for the brigade and battalion offensives, and the clearing began only after that. There's a map that the Gaza Division made of polygons along the Strip fence that are marked in green, yellow, orange, and red. Green means that more than 80 percent of the buildings were taken down — residential buildings, greenhouses, sheds, factories; you name it — it needs to be flat. That's the order. There are no structure, except for that UNRWA school and that small water facility — for everything else, the directive was "nothing left."

This is a directive that comes from...?I came across it as a command in the brigade, which got it from the division's operations branch. It wasn't some local invention. The allocations you got also came from the division. I think the brigade demolished something around 600–700 structures over there. Because we (the battalion) had our own sector [but] the whole brigade was basically demolishing in its sector. [In the end,] our area, Ikhzaa, [had been] marked green. There were three green polygons where the 5th Brigade had been, "great pride."

What's behind this?The rationale, as stated, is to create flat lines of observation and fire. If the famous SBZ (Security Buffer Zone) was 300 meters [from the fence] before, it was being expanded to 800 meters. That was the directive.

Is this the perimeter?Yes, it was just called a polygon. Khirbat Ikhzaa is more or less built "grosso modo" (roughly), parallel to the border, but some neighborhoods are diagonal. So it ends up being that one house will get demolished and one won't. Obviously, it takes a shit ton of damage from the explosion, but it doesn't need to be flattened. They were very strict about the line at the time. As a soldier, you see the rationale; you say: "Okay, I get it, there's a military objective here." What's more, I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that at least a few dozen of the houses we took down were houses that were full–on incriminated. We found hostages' belongings in them, which means, "Fuck you, I have no sentiment about this."

Dozens out of how many?Out of hundreds, by no means the majority. It's not a huge percentage either, but it's some. You know, that's life. You see the military rationale behind it. Especially given that there really was a [defined] line [for the destruction of the buildings]. It wasn't a company commander gone bonkers in the field or some out–of–his–mind battalion commander or a brigade commander who thinks he's Kilgore from "Apocalypse Now."

Every structure or anything that falls within this geo­graphic area gets destroyed to its foundation? Destroyed to the foundation, yes, absolutely. In terms of the ethics of war and the laws of war, you can make it work. You say, "okay, this was used for a military purpose", you're now try­ing to serve a military purpose, you could swallow it. Not smoothly, not cleanly, not happily. What I'm trying to say is that in every military order, there is "such–and–such battal­ion will do this–and–that in order to–." So in this case, the "in order to" was to create a perimeter that allows unobstructed fire and observation from the fence. You say, "this is also fu­ture–forward, we're not going to be in Gaza forever;" you're setting the stage for when you get out of Gaza in the future. These 800 meters get destroyed as a perimeter, so they can make sure, from the border, that no one is invading Israel.

And will it stay that way?Yes, absolutely. It was talked about, this being the new status of Khirbat Ikhzaa, a community that, in my opinion, if not 50, then 40 percent of it, is gone. It's an issue, leaving it like this, for posterity, so to speak.

What was until now 300 meters would be 800 meters from here on out.Exactly. That was also the rationale that was explained from the beginning of this mission of blowing up the houses. In no uncertain terms, this is not interpretation, this is the "in order to." In order to allow unobstructed fire and observation.