I think the olive harvest is starting now, which is an occasion of friction but when the pre-harvest began, the Beaujolais of the olives or whatever it’s called, not the last Friday but the one before it. Which means on what date? It’s September 9, the last Friday of employment. Left-wing activists and protesters arrived in Nabi Saleh and from here to there stones started being thrown. Nabi Saleh is the battalion’s western area and in the morning there was a complaint that on the ascent to Givat Harel, some outpost, some 35 olive saplings were uprooted. The District Coordination Office (DCO) came, my company commander came, opened an investigation and no one saw it happen but the Palestinians claim that they uprooted [their trees] and I’m, like, listening to the riots in Nabi Saleh and hear my battalion commander sending out troops. Suddenly I hear from the adjacent area of Mevo Shilo, battalion 93 is there, Heruv [unit] if I’m not mistaken, that *** is starting, an incident involving a hostile Jewish activity. They received a report that the outposts are planning to go down to the village of Qusra, north of Adei Ad and Esh Kodesh – which are the daughter outposts of Shvut Rahel, which is in the Mevo Shilo area. Shvut Rahel is mine (my area), the outposts of Shvut Rahel are outside my area. We sent forces to that area, the idea being that the servicemen manage the incident and we’re an intervention force sitting in Shvut Rachel in case they need backup. In the western part of the area, in Nabi Saleh, all the squads dispersed and suddenly a riot started in the eastern part of the area. What did they do? There’s the outposts’ line, another line of hilltops, a valley filled with olives and then the village of Qusra, which is not a small village and not really –they didn’t participate in the Katowice Conference, these aren’t enthused Zionists. Two forces of battalion 93 situated themselves on the range between the outposts and Qusra, and suddenly they see around 10-15 guys heading toward them from the outpost of Esh Kodesh with the requisite ski masks, and they just start throwing stones at them. They just keep nearing them, when they’re within reaching distance of sorts, they start throwing stones at them and I hear the reports on the two-way-radio to deploy an emergency squad and call the border police and Yasam [special patrol unit of the police] and sure enough, after half an hour of throwing stones Yasam arrives and my company commander suddenly identifies smoke in the valley. A fire breaks out, in the olives, my company commander goes down with the tracker and manage to see the last few running away, with ski masks. They apparently just lit the olives on fire, a few dozen trees on which they just threw blazing rags or something so that they’d burn. The footprints of course led back to Esh Kodesh, and the moment my company commander arrived, the arson crew and apparently the crew covering for the stone throwers, also immediately retreated. So the Yasam chased after them and of course didn’t catch them because that’s how it always is. And the whole story of this disturbance lasted something like an hour, and meant that they simply set an entire grove on fire, simply set it afire. So yeah, an Israeli fire truck arrived that’s not allowed to get near there, it arrived and was stopped at the line of Shvut Rahel and Palestinians arrived with paddles to put it out but I mean, fuck. What is this crap? They throw stones at us in order to burn Palestinian property? What’s become of you, are you crazy? Like, this is the interaction between settlers and Palestinians in our area.