There was a terror attack in our area, a few police officers were injured in the area of [the settlement of] Beit Hagai. And that shook our sleepy area. A few hours after it happened we were running around like ants in the [Palestinian] villages, to show our presence. There was a feeling of hysteria, and the brigade commander and the battalion commander wanted all forces to go out on the ground, before a calculation was made about what needs to be done. We got [assigned] the villages closest to the incident. Everyone enters the villages without a plan, without anything, and for starters stand in central intersections in the villages. It was the deputy battalion commander’s order. The idea is to arrest the person who had carried out the terror attack, but the real idea behind it [is], “We’re very angry and you’re going to see that we’re here.” [We] enter, supposedly everything was allowed. You’re allowed to enter [a house] in the middle of the day, you enter a house on your own accord, do a ‘mapping’ )a mission in which soldiers enter a Palestinian home in order to map its interior and make a record of its residents) and leave.

You go in with ammunition, shots in the air?                  Of course you go in with ammunition, as well as stuns (stun grenades). We didn’t shoot live [fire] but [we had a] bullet in the barrel. You enter Dhahiriyah, Yatta (Palestinian towns in South Hebron Hills) to show that “You may have wounded our police officers, but we’re not afraid.” You always have to show that you’re present, that you’re the king of the area. On that night there wasn’t a drop of intelligence, and it was driving everyone crazy. The tracks of the terrorists reached the area of Dhahiriyah or Dura. There was no intelligence, it was tracks that led to a village of 7,000-9,000 people. Eventually they caught the terrorist who did it, he wasn’t even from there. On that night they told us to prepare for an operation. We had to make some mess in the village we were sitting on (operating in). “Make some mess” didn’t include only driving and making noise, but we had to choose a few houses for “widows” (‘straw widow’, a temporary army post set up inside a Palestinian home in order to carry out an ambush or create a lookout) and houses for mappings. It was revenge. Operationally, it was the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. There were a few [military] vehicles that drove around making noise, there were observation posts around, there were a few houses that we took over. We entered people’s homes at night, took them out of the house, mapped [it]. When you take them out of the house you write down how many rooms there are, and the combat interrogator asks him (the father of the family) also how many people [live in the house], which family, who lives here. The ones who had cameras had to take photos of the house, but there were very few cameras. At the end of the operation we gathered everything. The regional brigade didn’t want to receive it, they weren’t interested in the mappings we supposedly did. Threw it away.

Did you return to those villages in the following weeks? We returned in the same manner. It decreased, but it happened every day, and we never received intelligence. Inside the village at night there was never resistance. When we [entered] during the day they would throw stuff at us, but [at night] there was never any resistance in the village, they accepted it. Just like we are indifferent to their humanity, they were also indifferent to their own humanity. [We] don’t treat them like human beings, just don’t treat them like human beings.