There were many actions whose objective, I understood, was to disrupt the routine. There was this [Palestinian] Molotov cocktail thrower identified by an ambush crew identified, I believe he threw a Molotov cocktail on the road, in some valley, and then he ran in the direction of Al-Bireh. The entire next day, Al-Bireh was blocked, from the night until the afternoon, roughly.

What do you mean by 'blocked'? The roads were blocked, any vehicle coming in or out was checked by the soldiers, and in parallel, the soldiers entered every house in the neighborhood. We physically went and knocked on doors, people opened the doors and we said to them: we want you to bring your family to identify the Molotov cocktail thrower. [We wanted] to find out if they saw something.

Where did you block the exits from Al-Bireh? Not in the area of the Focus checkpoint (a checkpoint leading out of Al-Bireh), [but] in the neighborhood itself. In the neighborhood cars were stopped, people were stopped.

You say you entered every house in the neighborhood, Al-Bireh is a city, how many houses do you think you entered, your battalion entered? Hundreds. An entire company did it.

And the purpose of all this was to find the Molotov cocktail thrower? No. We could never find him, nobody knew what he looked like.

So why do it? To disrupt daily routine: here, see, one of you, a Molotov cocktail thrower did something not nice, now whoever wants to go to work in the morning gets screwed.