When you carried out ‘straw widow’ operations (temporary commandeering of houses), what did that entail? Entering a house, either abandoned or not.

Why enter the house? It just an ambush in a built-up area. That’s all.

Would someone be sent? No, no one was sent. It’s just an ambush in a built-up area, in order to detect armed men inside the town, who go around there in day time and in night time.

What were the open-fire rules? Whoever is armed can be shot. If someone comes to pick up the weapon of the man who was shot, he also becomes an armed man, so you shoot him too.

What do you mean, someone coming to pick up the weapon? You detected an armed man, shot him, killed him, he’s lying there on the sidewalk with his weapon at his side, and someone comes along to pick up his weapon. So he also gets shot. That’s it. (…)

Any armed man is killed, anyone who comes to pick up the weapon becomes armed as well and is killed. Exactly.

A sniper takes down an armed man, and no one can approach him, treat him? I don’t recall the exact orders. What I do know is that as soon as someone approaches him to pick up the weapon, he becomes an armed man himself and is shot. I suppose that if someone simply approaches him, we’ll have our sights on him, and as long as he doesn’t touch the weapon, he’s not [a target].

But if he’s armed and you take him in for treatment, the weapon goes along with him. It doesn’t.

His weapon has to be taken off and left in the street? Yes, until our force comes to pick it up. I mean, our forces will get there as soon as the shooting happens and will pick up the weapon. They probably won’t get there the second you fire, but they will get there eventually.

And if an ambulance comes to pick him up? Was this mentioned? No. Not that I remember. I don’t think this point was raised. No, if someone isn’t armed, he isn’t shot. I was personally present at a mission where, I guess some guy was inside the house, it was an arrest in Balata refugee camp, and I think the guy escaped from the house and the operation dragged on until morning. We were already inside the house, they started shooting here, shooting there. I was simply inside that house, peeping out the window, waiting to see the armed men firing there, out on the rooftops. We saw their lookouts and we saw them pointing at us and directing and all. We didn’t fire, even though it was like they’d fired at our forces and we’d identified them directing the, you know, and we didn’t shoot. Even though we had them, I personally had them in my sights. If they had picked up a weapon, then… But it was forbidden. It wasn’t the open-fire rules.