What did your activity consist of, mainly? Most of our activity took place around Jenin and Qabatiya and all the villages around there, and we also did some lookouts for arrest missions and initiated activities.

What does that mean? It means that you enter a village quietly, put up lookout posts, and then let in armored vehicles that throw stun grenades, shoot in the air, and stuff like that, in order to draw fire to them. Then the lookout post can fire back.

What were the instructions given before such activities? What was the general purpose? The general purpose of such activities was to detect weapons being held in the villages, and to neutralize them as soon as they open fire at our vehicles.

Neutralize means kill? That decision is made on the ground, based on the type of weapons and where they’re found. If it’s in a building – you surround it and then the work on the building begins. If it’s on the street, one of the vehicles can do the neutralizing. If the lookout post can take down the shooter quietly from a distance – they do it.

Is the aim is to kill armed men or to bring them in? The instructions were always that if a person is armed – you have to take him down. Shoot to kill.

Under any circumstances? Yes. The very fact that you enter a sleeping village at 3 a.m. and start shooting in the air – it posed a certain problem for me. I think that if I lived in that village, I’d be the first to go out with a Kalachnikov (AK-47 rifle) and start shooting that guy who comes in every morning at 3 a.m. and throws stun grenades next to my house.

How often did you go on such missions? There were planned activities ordered by the Shabak (Israel Security Agency) or when a certain wanted person or wanted place was targeted. Otherwise, we’d go on those initiated missions every once in a while. There could be a week with only initiated missions, every day.

And where were you situated? Inside a house or out in the open, at a reasonable distance, if it’s only a simple lookout. If it’s a sniper lookout – then at reasonable sniper range.

Did snipers sit with you? They belonged to the team. We were a sniper lookout team.

How do you enter the house? It depends on whether the house is inhabited or not. Generally, you enter, ask the family to gather in a certain room, get them all in one room, fold up rugs and sofas because we don’t sit on them, we don’t use them, and set up the lookout post in a relevant room.

How long do you stay in the house? It can be anywhere between two hours and two-three days, depending on the type of activity.

What happens with the family in those two days? Can they leave for work, for school? In towns, you keep entering the same houses most of the time, because they’re strategically located and you know that in advance. You know about the kind of activity and the area where it will take place, so you know you’ll have to enter those houses. There were families we already knew by name and we’d bring sweets for the kids, because you feel bad. I remember two families that we’d knock on their door and they’d go sleep over at their relatives’ house.

They knew the procedure by then, so they’d go stay over at the neighbors’? Yes, instead of getting stuck at home.

And you let them? In the case of those two families, yes. These are usually tall, newly-built houses located at a dominant spot, on some hilltop, usually owned by wealthy families. I guess that as far as the Shabak was concerned, there was no danger of their being involved in any terrorist activity.

So you were just securing the area. Yes, yes. We would also clean up when we were done. We would walk around in the mud of Jenin, enter a house and muddy it up.