It was a scary time, because there was accurate intelligence about an explosive car that was in Balata waiting to drive to the country’s center, so it wasn’t possible to go in and do arrests with vehicles. You have to walk, with a David’s shield, which is like the plate in the ceramic (vest), only as a shield with a handle, and someone walks in front with a handgun, and everyone walks behind him. It went on for one or two weeks, where we’d just pull people out like that in Balata. We’d come to a house each time and pull somebody out. How do you get a person out in Balata, which is the most crowded place in the world, blindfolded and handcuffed? You use him as a David’s shield. You rest a gun on his shoulder and walk with him, or walk with him in the back. Balata is all alleyways, it’s sneaking around in pairs that cover for each other or for the fireteam cells. You have to do it with him (the detained Palestinian) the whole way, and it happened more than once. There was also something there that was very unusual. We got into the vehicles that had been waiting for us outside of Balata in order to go, and the convoy was delayed. They might have wanted us to do something, and the guy who was sitting, handcuffed at the back of the Wolf (an armored transport vehicle) says: I have to pee. I have to take a dump. I’m not feeling well. He wasn’t let out and he had diarrhea in his pants, puked on himself inside the Wolf. That was a really extreme point. When we got to the brigade, they refused to admit him.  They said: Wash him. And then he just wandered from place to place there for half a day: He had to be put in a Military Police detention facility, and they didn’t want to wash him, the foxes (the Shin Bet), didn’t want to admit him. It took a few hours before someone from the Military Police agreed to wash him with a hose in the detention facility’s yard. We detained so many people during that time that we sometimes brought in about, say, 15 guys, or eight guys, and then we’d put them in the yard on the base, or next to someone who would guard them. Morning comes, people are getting up, making breakfast, joking around, [having] coffee, and they’re sitting there with a blindfold over their eyes, tied up. There was a guard post right where the reconnaissance platoon’s barracks were in the brigade. They’d put them near the guard posts and the guard would have to keep an eye on them too.

How long could they stay there?A few good hours. It wasn’t days.

How were they treated?The vast majority completely ignores them. In Jalameh, in the freezing cold, when we’d catch people. They would have them sit down, put a scabies (blanket) over them, or something, when it was cold, and go around with water bottles and let them drink. There’s always a problem releasing the zip ties, because they had to pee. The zip ties wouldn’t be released. We would do it.