There’s a checkpoint right next to the Jericho DCL, checkpoint 327. The battalion at that front would take charge of the checkpoint, and we’d send a soldier or an officer there to reinforce them for a few hours with this whole business of permits and things like that. And when I went there, they’d be standing there for, say, eight hours on average, more or less, with a helmet and flak jacket, in the sweltering heat of the valley, which is hard to describe in words, and they just deal with nonstop shit all the time. And if there was no soldier or an officer of ours, the soldiers were clueless about what kind of permit lets you cross and what permit doesn’t. And all of this stress with the Palestinians—until you see it for yourself, you can’t understand it, it fucks you up. I really understand the soldiers who went crazy at the checkpoint. It fucks you up. It’s hard to explain. Jericho is hard because of the bridge there and the people who want to go to Jordan, there are just so many people going through there. And you don’t really understand the orders. So, people can cross? They can’t cross? If they have a passport, then they can? I don’t know. The soldiers line everyone up and you have to start looking through their vegetables, inside the truck, because the day before they found a rocket in the Jenin district. And you have to check inside every ambulance . . . and the woman with the elderly mother is yelling in your face, and you yell at them all the time, “Get back, get back,” and you go crazy. At first you think you’re a Nazi soldier, you feel like some kind of Nazi soldier, then at some point you let go of that idea, because how long can you feel like you’re a Nazi? So you just go with it. And it fucks you up. Really. Any soldier who didn’t go crazy, I think there’s something wrong with him. Or he shut himself off entirely. What do you mean by “At first you think you’re a Nazi soldier”? Because you yell at them in a kind of Arabic-Hebrew, because soldiers don’t know Arabic. We know a bit, so we try to help them. Then you yell at them in a kind of Arabic-Hebrew, “Get back.” And they don’t pay attention. So you start to raise your weapon, as if you’re really going to do something with it, and everyone there, women and children start to cry, and they’re also yelling, and it’s hot, and you feel like one more second and you’ll spray them with bullets. You just don’t understand what you’re doing there. At least I didn’t.