I landed in Hebron right after the murder of Shalhevet Pass (in March 2001, a baby from a Hebron settlement was murdered by a Palestinian sniper).

How was it there? Mostly turbulent. It was really right after Shalhevet’s murder that we arrived in Hebron. It was literally a week after, when all the Jews were deciding to go up and, how did they call it? Conquer Abu Sneina.

That's how they put it? Yes. It was the conquering of Abu Sneina. They went into schools there, decided they were taking over the school, [that] it’s forbidden for Arabs to study in the State of Israel. They went into a girls’ school and took control of it. That was my first time landing in Hebron, with the Jews taking over a school.

Where was the school? The school is in Abu Sneina. A girls’ school.

All the Jews flooded Abu Sneina? What do you mean all the Jews? The Jews in [the] Avraham Avinu [settlement], not in Kiryat Arba, just the few families there, how many, 50 families?

They all advance... It's not advance, they just went up, there’s that incline, that road next to the cemetery there, do I remember correctly? Wow, I haven't thought about this for years. They start going up, so when we went up after them, as if we’re going to catch them, they were already sitting there in the school, on the steps, in the classrooms. Sitting, not prepared to move.

How many people were there? No more than 50.

So that was the first time. That was the first time. And at that point, they said that we wouldn't guard, that we weren't yet going to guard in Hebron, meaning we weren't going into the field. At the beginning, you only do guard duty on the base and stuff like that. And then, because there was the whole mess, they deployed us right away and I found myself there, next to the square.

How many girls were you? How many girls were we? We came to the company together, six girls, I think.

And how many guys? The company was something like 60 guys, 70, something like that.

Sixty guys and six girls? No, there were about four other girls in the company who were more senior than us, about to be released. We came, and they kept their distance from us, yeah, because they were like the senior ones. They were about four year-groups ahead of us, they were hardly any girls in the year-groups before us, and we came as a group with a majority of girls, there were two guys. We started with about 15 girls, and by the time we came there, we were something like six girls and two guys. The two guys came. We had two guys and they both came, yeah. Maybe we were eight and one became the clerk when we got there, something like that.

How did you feel there, as girls? The guys didn't like that we were in the company. The guys hated having girls in the company, they were really angry about it. Because no, I'll tell you why. Every time something happens in Hebron, they take the girls quick-quick-quick. Just like, as soon as we got there, they took all the girls. Now, all the girls at guard posts are immediately relieved by guys, because there are enough guys in the field. There are the paratroopers, when I came, there was border police, there were the police, and they’re all guys. Who needs our guys, these weak rifleman ‘03s with asthma? So they quickly send all the guys to the posts and the girls into action, meaning they enter what's going on. Every time there’s some incident or something.

An incident for which they need a police force? Yes, when they needed a police force. They basically stuck our guys in all of the posts in Hebron and they quickly took the girls into the field, the six poor girls. The first time I got there, I was at a guard post inside the base, and then they came: Quick, we need all the girls. They put me on a Safari [military SUV] and we went into the field.

What did you see there? What did I see? I got there and there were loads of memorial candles for Shalhevet, loads.

Where she was killed? In the whole area there, yes. The whole Avraham Avinu neighborhood was full of candles, full of inscriptions on the wall, loads. A marking of the stroller that she was in when they shot her, they drew a blood stain there on the ground, like [look at] what they did to us, something like that. It was really shocking. There were lots of pictures of the baby everywhere, a baby with a ton of candles around her. It was awful. It made you really want to do something bad to whoever killed that baby. There was really an atmosphere of [wanting] to cause harm. They harmed us and we're going to harm them, they murdered a baby. And her mother is walking around there among everyone. The mother was walking around there the whole time, my daughter, my daughter, with a picture of her together with the baby. She walked like that and kept showing it to the soldiers, look at what they did to my daughter, I don't have a daughter anymore, I don't have a daughter anymore. That's it, the minute we got there in the Safari, they started yelling at us, Nazis, Nazis.

Why? They knew a police force had come to stop them from going up to Abu Sneina, so when we got there, we were immediately the baddies.

So they called you Nazis? They called us Nazis and stuff like that a lot then. That's it, it was about four days of coming there all the time to sort of show our presence.

What do you mean? Four days of coming all the time, all the girls, a lot of forces came. Each time they threatened to go up to Abu Sneina, everyone came – they didn't do anything – we all went there and then returned to base. We were there for six hours.

That night they took over the school... It was, now I remember, it wasn't the first day, it was the fourth or the fifth. Every day, we just went there and stayed there. And on the fifth day, or something like that, it was when the seven days of mourning for the baby ended, and then it was like okay to cross the boundaries and then they basically started to go up.

How many people went up there? 50-60.

How did you manage to get control of it? First of all, there were lots of forces there. There were Border Police, paratroopers, really a ton. They also built barricades at the top, at the end of the road.

Who built them? The Border Police. They put up BP barricades that it was forbidden to cross. And they started shooting, the Jews just started shooting from the windows towards Abu Sneina. And every time we run to their houses: “We don't have weapons.” And then we go down, and then again. And they shoot, you see the weapon sticking out of the window, shooting. You can't say they’re not shooting, [that] no one is shooting. And we played those games with them all the time. We went into a house: “We don't have anything, we don't have weapons. It's only for self-defense, it belongs to the settlement. Look, it's clean.” They show you clean weapons, and they just shot from the window. And there’s nothing, we looked, no weapons. That's it, and then basically they decided to take over the school there, too. They were talking very strongly, that this is the State of Israel and we’re going up there, and it’s ours.

How did it end? How did it end? They just started playing games with us. I mean, it was becoming funny. They sat –there’s the wall of the cemetery there, right? So they all just sat down in a row, one next to the other. And then, say, I come first, I pull her, the one who‘s sitting highest up the hill, I bring her down, so she sits down at the beginning of the line. So then again, I bring her down and she sits like that. Every time you bring them down, they sit down again. It was the women doing that, because of the thing that the guys aren’t allowed to touch us. And on that day, I was the only girl there.

The only girl? It was the weekend, a Thursday evening, and they’d just decided they were starting to go up that day. And then they were in the school, too, and then they started with these games of going around.

How long were they in the school? They were there for like a whole day. We sat there with them. We took them out, they went in, We took them out, they went in.

Were there violent incidents with the Palestinians? The Arabs were really scared, they didn't even go near. The whole thing was between the army and this thing, the Arabs just kept their distance. I think they understood that it was better for them, because every time they came close, they got stones thrown at them. The Jews were very aggressive. That's it, and the evacuation from the school was by brute force, as they say. Us girls – girls? Me and the other girl, before she left for home, we caught them and took them down from there, took the girls. And the guys were catching the girls too, until some soldier tore a Jewish woman's shirt and then it was like a time-out for everyone, yelling, a whole mess, the soldier tore her shirt, what has he done, all the Jews started spitting at him, and all kinds of stuff like that. There was something there against the soldiers. So then, basically, after all the Jews, after they were all out of the school and we sat down with them all on the road, on the whole area of the road there, and the Jews started shooting from the windows, so the Arabs started shooting towards the Jewish settlement, too. And they started shooting at the road, where all the people were. What do I mean at the road? You see that they’re intentionally not hitting the Jews. It was at the walls of the cemetery. You could see that if they wanted to, they would hit [them]. Like, really just to chase them away. It was shooting to chase away, as it’s called. And even more Jews came to sit there. They saw they were being shot at, so they came in droves. Anyone who was still somehow – it was around evening, anyone who was inside just started to go out of the houses, even more. What’s that, shooting at us? It's ours, the Land of Israel is ours. It’s all ours. Always saying ours, ours. That statement accompanied my whole time in Hebron, the guys of the Jewish settlement saying: It's ours. It's all ours. The Land of Israel is ours.

And things calmed down? The thing is that then, we had this thing where some BP guy, a kid ran away from him at the barricade, a Jewish kid, and he grabbed him by the hand and threw him over the barricade. He just flung him, he almost crashed on the ground there. He kind of grabbed him by the hand, the barricade was here, and he just did like this, flung him over it. And what happened was, I started screaming at the BP guy at that moment, and then all kinds of commanders came and said to me: “What are you doing? You can't break authority. We’re on the same side.” Like, very… And then some Jewish rabbi’s wife who was there came and said something like: “This soldier is on our side, don’t you play games with her,” she said to the girls who were sitting next to the wall. “Either you refuse to go or you get up and leave. Don't make her run back and forth.” Meaning, because I’d caught one. And I was the only girl there. I was there day and night, it was the weekend, Thursday to Sunday, I didn't leave the field. People brought me food there, they organized a place where I could sleep in some small room, so that I could always be in the field if needed, so only I would deal with the girls after that guy tore the Jewish woman's shirt and there was that whole mess. So she said, “Don't play with her”,” she made some sort of statement like that, and at that moment, all the Jewish girls got up and left the place. They got up and left. Just like that. She didn't tell them to get up and leave, she said: Either you refuse to leave or you get up and go. Don't make her run around, don't play with her. And they just got up and left, all the women at once. And that's it, after that, the whole Jewish settlement also tried to spoil me, as soon we came back. They really hated it that women were guarding them in Hebron, and they came and brought me [food like] kubane on Shabbat, and jahnun, and they tried to invite me to some Friday night dinner.

What did you say to that? I never went.

Why? I don't know, I was really scared of them, of the people in the Jewish settlement.

Really? Yes. They seemed very extreme to me. I was a girl in the Meretz youth movement, my grandfather was a hardcore Mapam member. I totally came from Mapam, Meretz, I came to save the State of Israel somehow, and suddenly, my first week there, I got such a slap in the face, I didn't know what was happening.

Why? Because I was called a Nazi, I was left in the area there, they shot at people, and I see a mother rocking her baby while they’re shooting at the road and she’s saying: “Don't cry, sweetie, it's like music,” and they’re shooting at them with a machine gun. They’re firing a machine gun from the Arab part at the road, and she's telling the baby not to cry, that it's like music, that you have to deal with it and this is our land and this is where we’ll be and don't cry. And all I want to do is take the baby away from her, take him home and put him to bed. And she's sitting there on the road while they’re shooting at him. They’re shooting at her baby and she's saying, listen, it's like music. And, I don't know, for me it was kind of, every Arab that walked by, they threw a stone at him. It’s all very extreme, filled with anger and hatred. And I was a girl that wasn't like that, I didn't come from that. I was a rebel myself, but not from there, not even close.