Every few days, I had to be the officer on duty, and as the officer on duty you need to always be in contact with the operations room every time there’s some kind of incident on the ground, in your region, which was Jenin in our case. An incident means in operational terms that our forces need to enter on the ground, whether it’s an arrest or a mapping or some kind of patrol. When our forces enter Areas A-B, then the officer on duty needs to call our counterparts in the Palestinian police and tell them to “fold the PPOs.” PPOs are Palestinian police officers and to fold them, I just had to tell [the Palestinian police] to enter their police stations and they knew, “Okay, no problem, we’re entering our police station and not going outside while the IDF does its operation.” [The force] leaves [once the operation is over] and I call [the Palestinian police] again to update that we’re done, and they can go on with their routine.
How long does this happen before our forces actually enter the city?From what I remember, it’s very short notice. It's not that we would say, "in X hours fold the PPOs," but [rather], "fold the PPOs," meaning – do it now.
And say they’re in the middle of some kind of activity?I don’t remember ever having resistance or objections to this thing. We said it, and they did it.
How many times did you happen to do this thing?I can’t say exactly, but it was common. It was like this kind of relationship where we’re the masters on the ground, we give the orders and they carry them out.