You remember that thing with the antenna, where Maglan killed the security guards? (In March 2003, two Israeli security guards were killed in the South Hebron Hills by friendly IDF fire, when soldiers mistakenly identified them as terrorists). So that happened in our sector, and the bereaved families came at the end of the month of mourning – I don’t know what, to rebuild the (settler) outpost that was demolished after those guys were killed. There was this fake antenna and a trailer and a fence around it. So after they were killed, the army demolished the trailer and the fake antenna, and the family, one of the families was a settler family and their son had been killed. They were actually Americans. They wanted to rebuild the outpost. So at the end of that month, they came there, okay, with a permit from the brigade commander, because he felt bad – after all, in the end he was the one in charge when their son was killed. So he gave them permission. And all the settlers took a ride on that and lots of so-called 'hilltop youth' (extremist teenage settlers) came there, and in the end, what was supposed to be 15 or 16 people from the nuclear families turned into a crowd of about 80 people. The place was declared a closed military zone and we had to make the people leave. They came back on Memorial Day, same story, and again on Lag Ba’omer (Jewish high holiday). On Lag Ba’omer it was even worse, because they arrived in buses, busloads of girls from a religious school in Kiryat Arba (settlement). They came there and we had to run over those hills in our ceramic vests and helmets because it’s hostile territory, right? And these 12-year old girls are just running around the hills. You get them onto the bus, they go back to Kiryat Arba on an army bus, and then a Kiryat Arba bus comes back half an hour later, filled with girls. (…)

How did the IDF senior command respond to the settlers’ demands? They usually basically folded on the spot. For example, this whole antenna-hill story. The families paid for two buses to go there. And it was declared a closed military zone. And there was some access road that the army – a day earlier, some intelligence info was received that they wanted to cross through – the army blocked the road so the buses couldn’t get to that hill. It’s about a kilometer, or a bit less, from the main road, from that dirt road. And they blocked Route 60 in advance so that the bus couldn’t even get there. Obviously, the bus arrives, people get off it. I was on the dirt track. My job was to block them, not let anyone go up that hill. They don’t give a damn about you, they just get off the bus, pass right by you – it was me and two other soldiers, and my driver sitting inside the jeep. Okay, so you start making phone calls to the company commander, the battalion commander. The battalion commander got there pretty fast, and the brigade commander got there and the police too, because they were prepared for it. But you can’t touch them (the settlers). The police has to.

Why can’t you? They’re civilians.

As a soldier, as far as you know, you have no legal permission to handle them? In general, yes. Physically touching them like this is okay, yeah? But if you want to stop them, say you want to block a person, stop him from getting on a road, how do I do that? Physically. If he says, no, no, no, verbally, and continues walking, I have to stop him. Say he pushes me because he doesn’t want me to stop him, where does it go from there? Do I start beating him up? That’s forbidden. Shoot at him? Out of the question. They reached an agreement, after the police got there. In the beginning there was all this talk: No one goes up the hill, it’s a closed military zone. And they’re really really smart. You tell them: Guys, this is a closed military zone. “Okay, show me the order”. And it can’t be a photocopy of the order. They want the original paper – which is right, by the way, by law – the order signed by the brigade commander, in ink. Not a photocopy of his signature or just his stamp. No, it’s got to be the real signature. Also, the thing with the map. With the whole ‘closed military zone’ order, there’s a map, so "where is it marked", "what exactly is marked", what’s allowed and what isn’t. At first there was all this talk: No one goes up the hill, we’ll stop them etc., etc. In the end, they reached an agreement.

Talk by whom? Who says: No one goes up the hill? You get briefed by the battalion commander. For example, that night, I’d been out in the field all night. I was in a patrol jeep and they told me: “Okay, you stay focused on this place.” At some point, the brigade commander arrives. He says: “No one goes up top”.

That’s what the brigade commander says? Yes.

And what happens at the end of the night? At the end of the night, people get there and go up the hill and you can’t stop them. Then everyone comes and the battalion and brigade commanders go and talk to the parents, yes, okay, this and that, okay, we’ll give you four hours. Okay, okay, okay. Make an exception. Usually – in this case, they wanted to stay the night. Okay, so they were allowed to stay the night. There was once, I think it was Lag Ba’omer – it was Lag Baomer and Memorial Day, there were three cases of families with all their people and the 'hilltop youth'. The first time, all the people simply joined them, the 'hilltop youth' and all that, and they started rebuilding the outpost, and “we’re not moving from here”, and the police came and all. The second time was relatively calm, I think it was Memorial Day, and they said – finally they did reach a compromise – they said: “Okay, we’ll be here until nine o’clock tomorrow morning”, something like that, and that was really what happened, more or less. There was also less of them. The third time was that incident with all those buses, and again, they broke all the so-called agreements. And the army, instead of saying no, it’s easier to reach some kind of understanding, because then you don’t have to use all your force and there’s no media attention. It doesn’t harm the relations between the officers and the settlers. Okay. (…)