We were in the South Hebron Hills. A trainees’ company commander (a commander for a company of combatants in training) arrived for a weekend in the area. He wanted, on the instructions of his battalion commander, to train his soldiers. In areas A and B (areas in the West Bank under full or partial Palestinian control), if you want to enter a house and arrest someone – you need authorization from the regional brigade. In area C (areas in the West Bank under Israeli civilian and security control) we didn’t need to ask for authorization from anyone.

You decide at the battalion level? Yes. A company commander arrives in the area and requests that we give him houses to make arrests. We gave him a few houses in [the village of] a-Ramadin to make arrests in. At first the objective was to arrest someone, to enter houses that we have a tiny bit of intelligence information about. [So they] sat with a scout who looked at houses in Ramadin. They asked her which house is suspicious, she pointed to a few houses and told us about suspicious conduct. ‘Suspicious conduct’ is when there’s someone here who goes out to work very early. Palestinians wake up early for first prayer, around 4:30AM. He (the resident of the house) wakes up at 3AM. That means that he works far away and he has to get there on time. Or ‘suspicious conduct’ – there’s a kid here who is always on the roof because he’s bored. It was clear to both the company commander and to us that there is nothing here. He entered, made an arrest. The arrest ended with [them] taking everyone out of the house, interrogating them, putting them on the Wolf (armored transport vehicle) and then releasing them.

The whole family? All the men. The women and children were outside. It was simply training practice, up to the [use of] zip ties. At the Wolf the practice ends and they are brought back. A real sense took root that these are not human beings. Obviously we can arrest them, [but] we’re also humane so we’ll release them along the way. These were the best guys (the soldiers), [but] an army isn’t intended to deal with grey situations, and this in-between state created moral and operational decay.

Did you, too, reach the point where you stop seeing them as human beings? Definitely, yes. As an officer Palestinians didn’t interest me.