We held the largest checkpoint in the area. There are very clear definitions of who passes through. There are very specific villages whose inhabitants can pass through, others can't. Of course the ultimate goal is to prevent hostile destructive activity in the area. This is a checkpoint through which all Palestinians who work in the Jewish settlements in agriculture pass every morning, and return through. Whoever is travelling to Jordan also passes there, and whoever arrives from Nablus eventually reaches Hamra, if he's travelling in that direction. This was a very big and busy checkpoint, it was huge as far as the number of people who pass, but it wasn’t organized in any sense. There was an enormous line every morning, people who wanted to get to work at an early morning hour would arrive in the middle of the night to get in line, and when the checkpoint opened then the line would begin to advance.

How long would it take to clear the traffic jam in the morning? If the checkpoint opened at five, then probably four-five hours. There are a few hours of a crazy traffic jam.

Is this a checkpoint for pedestrians or a checkpoint for vehicles? Pedestrians as well, but mostly vehicles. The closest village is relatively far, so they don't really have any way to get there on foot. So if it's pedestrians, they come in taxis. The security check in the morning lasts a few hours. This wave of workers is done at about eight in the morning, maybe nine, and then it becomes calmer until the evening hours, when they return. The return is less critical, they're not really checked. In those morning hours, at some stage, all the schoolboys and schoolgirls pass through this checkpoint, buses with schoolgirls pass through there. A soldier who stands there and checks a bus full of teenage girls, it has an added facet. Even if there's no reason to check this bus, absolutely no reason – all these girls will be taken off [the bus] and stand there in line, and the soldier will pass one by one, look at them and harass them. Not necessarily sexually, but harassment. They weren't touched, that was forbidden. But daily harassment. They were supposed to come with IDs, some of them were minors without IDs, whoever was a minor had to come with something else. The main excuse for harassing them was that they're minors and that their documents were forged. "You're 18? You're not 18, who are you trying to fool." The vast majority of these girls don't know a word in Hebrew and they simply stand there helpless facing the shouting soldier on duty. I'm talking in the third person all the time, [but] I'm not shirking responsibility, I was part of all this. And I remember an incident when someone really cried, she became hysterical, a poor girl who really started to cry there. I was there, and I probably felt pangs of conscience, and I walked aside to her and tried to tell her that everything's alright. I'm standing there with my uniform and weapon and the whole mess, and there's not a chance she can relate to anything I'm saying in friendly manner, and there's also no reason she should. I remember this specific picture, she's standing there and doesn't stop bitterly crying. People cry at the checkpoint. When you're a soldier you interpret these tears as some sort of performance, some sort of theatrical behavior by these lying Arabs. An ambulance arrives at the roadblock, and from the start you see it as some sort of ploy to smuggle weaponry, in the end it's really someone who’s dying and should be let through. That's the approach.