About routine. First of all, 916 is the unit that wastes the most ammunition in the Israel Defense Forces. You’re actually maintaining the maritime closure in Ashdod. There’s an area where Gazans aren’t allowed to fish, and fishing is the biggest source of livelihood in Gaza. They have a pretty limited area for fishing, 24 miles [from the shore], and that’s where they always fish, all day. There are simply no fish left from some point on, so the fishermen keep trying to cross the lines and you have to keep them away for security reasons. Every time someone gets close to the line, the orders are: Shoot in the air, shoot close – at a certain range you hear tac-tac-tac, it sounds like a cap gun going off. You also see it falling in the water. You shoot in a row in front of the fishing boat, and from that point on you “escalate the use of means,” according to what you’ve been given permission to do. As a soldier, it wears you down, trying to communicate with the people on the fishing boats. Try shouting to someone at sea – he won’t hear you if you’re more than 200 meters away. And you only get as close as 200 meters away from him after a long time and a huge headache.

How do you call the northern and southern lines of the Gaza Strip – the line between Egypt and Israel and the one between Gaza and Israel? The southern one is M and the northern is K.

How wide is this strip of sea? Two miles each. There’s an area you’re not allowed to enter, and beyond that there’s an area they’re allowed to cross at night, and an area where they’re allowed to be in during the day.

Were there cases where the use of means “escalated”? Yes. There are trawlers and boats, which are two different ways of fishing. Trawlers are a bit bigger. They lower nets, drag them along and catch a very large amount of fish. It takes a long time to reach extreme escalation, but [when you do], it means reaching a point where you’re shooting at the vessel itself. You shoot holes in the vessel. There are very precise instructions on how to talk to them and order them to leave the area where you’re shooting. [If] anyone gets close to that area, it’s obvious that you hold your fire immediately. It can get dangerous, and in most cases, before that happens, you’ll be given an okay to shoot at the nets. You shoot at the cables holding the nets. As soon as you shoot at their nets, they very quickly get the point and turn around. Once you’re talking to their pockets and they realize that you’re not just messing with them, they turn around and go back. It’s very rare for you to actually manage to take down a net. As soon as they see you shooting, they stop the vessel and sail backwards. Then the cables have more slack and you can’t shoot, because you’ll hit the vessel itself. I mean, we know each other really well, it’s really funny. I think the day will come when we’ll be sitting with some fisherman in Gaza and laughing about it. You shoot at the nets if a trawler suddenly shows up in Israeli waters, even an Egyptian one. That means that it has crossed the 12 miles that are part of Israeli waters and is approaching Israel. It’s still very far from the shore, it’s not really a threat to us, but he could theoretically go around you and drop something off, so you have to make him go back. Fishing boats usually use lamps – they’re little fishing boats with hooks attached to them and gas lamps. The idea is that on a very dark night, the fish are attracted to the bright light. Often, they leave them there while the fisherman goes off to bring more vessels, and they simply drift into Israeli waters, beyond the line. In such cases, you shoot in the air, close to the vessel. They usually come in crazy numbers, 500-1,000 boats. The nickname for them is “second city”. If you pass among them – and on dark nights, in the good days, they would reach up to 6 miles – you’d be sailing between Gaza and those fishing boats and they wouldn’t see you, because all your lights were out. You’re sailing along and you have a ‘city’ on your right and a ‘city’ on your left, all lit up. “Escalation” means shooting at the lamps. You get there and shoot at the lamps, you miss a lamp, the boat comes along, collects them and moves them to somewhere else. You always shoot with an M16 rifle, so as not to hit the vessel.

From what range? You shoot when you “escalate.” Up to 50 meters away, 50-100 meters away. Sometimes, you blow up the gas tank as well, either by mistake or following an unspoken order. Soldiers sometimes take it upon themselves to blow up the gas tank. It happened to me. I don’t know whether the commander ordered it, because I was inside the vessel, but they blew up the gas tank. It made that little boat go up in flames. We set it on fire and then we put it out. At some point, the fisherman came and saw his lamp burning, and we both worked together to put it out.

Was this ordered by the commander or was it the soldier’s own initiative? It’s usually the problematic soldiers. In my time, at least, there was this feeling that you had to “prevent such things.” I mean, it did happen. In the navy, you joke about it: “Yes, I blew up the gas tank.” I wouldn’t be surprised if there are commanders who order [soldiers to shoot] at the gas tank. It depends a lot on the young commanders, the ones who try harder to connect with the crew and tell them to mess around a bit… In the end, when something like that happens, it really tidies up your activity that night. Okay, you burn one, but [if you don’t,] you’re woken up and sent into battle positions, and you can end up manning them for 8 hours, in order to deal with something like that (a suspect vessel). So, sometimes, I can imagine a commander taking it upon himself and saying: “Okay, shoot at…”

Was an inquiry held? Yes, after every such case.

And was anyone punished? I don’t think so. I don’t know if there was a reprimand, but I’d say that… there’s no punishment given for that kind of stuff.

Did you have instances when nets were torn? Very rarely. “Escalation” means that the commander is allowed to use his discretion and proceed until shooting close to the boat, and anything beyond that requires getting permission from shore. The permission is usually: First shoot in the air, then shoot close. At night, you have a Xenon, a strong light that you flash at him at the beginning. That’s your way of telling him: I see you, get moving. If he doesn’t start moving away, you open fire.

How close to the boat? It’s never [measured] in meters. You have to be able to see that he can see it. You’re not going to make it too close, because he won’t see that either. You have to give him a nice honk right in front of the boat’s bow. It’s about 100-200 meters away from him. In one case, fire was opened at the boat itself, and the soldier missed and hit a guy’s leg. That was a huge mistake and he got very severely reprimanded for it. That’s just not supposed to happen. From that moment on, shooting like that was only done by older soldiers. They didn’t let new ones do it.

What happened to the person who was shot? I think there was another person on board who pulled him out of the water.