In our first two days there, we were in shock. It was a really hard operational activity. There were over 150 people there, throwing Molotov cocktails, burning tires, throwing stones, it was a total mess. We came equipped with crowd dispersal gear and didn’t know what to do with it. We began firing [tear]gas canisters, rubber[-coated] bullets, but we had no clue.

What were the instructions, the procedures? On our first day, nothing at all. Just chaos.

So what did you do? We did whatever we could without hurting the local population.

And did you hurt people? No. We managed to gain control of the situation, but those were totally insane incidents. There were lots and lots of angry boys on the streets, who somehow wanted to do their bit in Operation Cast Lead (taking place at the time in Gaza)… It was the chaos of the first days. After 2-3 days, when we also sent the soldiers in on operations and did patrols there, which I think hadn’t been done in that village since it was built… We were a large company, in basic training, which is about four times larger than a usual combat company, so we patrolled every meter of their village.

Motorized patrols? Motorized, and on foot, and whatever. And they just stopped moving around. You randomly stop traffic inside the village every now and then, to show your presence. We threw stun grenades and made noise in the village when the rioting began, when a large demonstration began. We’d come in, throw stun grenades and make noise, that sort of thing.