Do you remember anybody in your battalion or in your company having killed somebody, injured somebody?Of course, but I remember it from serious events, I mean events of threat.

Armed threat?Yes, yes . . . I mean hold your horses, we haven't reached that stage yet. Though I'm sure that there were serious things there too, at the moment I find it hard to reconstruct, what I do know is that there were periods . . . we were there at the time of one of the major assassinations, Yassin I think, we were there at the time of Kfar Darom, it was of course a very stormy time, not at all simple. It happened at that time. . .one of the things that almost never happened in Gaza, and does happen a lot in Judea & Samaria took place, that is demonstrations.

Was this your first encounter with a demonstration?Yes, yes. Again, the distance between . . . this dichotomic feeling in Gaza, such black and white is relatively . . . I mean, there's such a feeling. Demonstrations belong more to the gray area of Judea & Samaria, less to the black and white of Gaza.

Were you in Kfar Darom?Yes. So it was the assassination attempt of Yassin, if I remember correctly it was the assassination attempt of Yassin. We were in Kfar Darom then. At any rate, there were very serious demonstrations, demonstrations are always accompanied by very great misgivings, which indeed are often realized, that a demonstration is an instrument . . . a demonstration is a threat,

Why?In a demonstration there are armed people as well. A demonstration is also an instrument to test us, our behavior vis-a-vis our red lines.

In a demonstration, did they usually leave the camp moving towards Kfar Darom?Yes, that's it. They usually came . . . The demonstrations at the time came from the road, in this area of there was, of course, no traffic, it was blocked. It's an area that smugglers travelled in, in this area we also had this procedure . . . They came to the side where there is a close proximity between Palestinian houses and the settlement, there was even a Palestinian house meters away from one of the posts, meters away. This house of course could not have been inhabited . . .

For operational use?That I don't know, it was way before my time. In any case no one was living there. Of course, had we spotted people there we would've taken it as a very very very serious threat, a tangible threat, I mean . . . Shooting. Definitely shooting to kill, because the assumption is that there's nothing innocent there, these are not innocent houses. There were a few such houses.

Even without spotting any weapons or something like them?Even without spotting weapons. As I see it, I don't . . . I mean . . . Those houses . . . and the fact is they didn't spot anybody there . . . It's quite clear that this house . . . it was also, I mean, relatively within the red line. I mean, obviously somebody who took the trouble to go there didn't do it out of an innocent motive. This is obvious. In any case, those demonstrations, that part of the road is relatively very built up along the road and the demonstrations came from there, so the sense of danger, the sense of threat was relatively strong, because it is relatively very close to the settlement. All the while you believe some armed people are hidden among the crowd.

How did you deal with it?Now, this is it, inside Kfar Darom there is an OP.

What are these initials?Observation Post. Observation post, yes, not very complicated. As you know, you don't treat it as initials but as a word, like any word in the IDF. Now, sharpshooters sit there, those sharpshooters were sharpshooters who belonged to the company with weapons, usually a Barrett, M-24, usually a Barrett, there was almost always a Barrett there. A Barrett is a very efficient firearm, very long ranges, more or less two kilometers, a little less I think, 1.8 kilometers, I remember, no, 1.2 is an M-24, no, sorry, it's 800 meters, right. 1.2, that's right. In any case with very accurate firearms, with very accurate observation devices.

What do call them?Very accurate NVD's (Night Vision Devices), no, NVD's are for night use.

Okay, telescopes.Yeah, very accurate telescopes, Day Devices you call them, very very accurate. Now, a red line was defined in those demonstrations, as far as the demonstrators are concerned a red line was defined for these demonstrations. Now, in principle, they way they are dealt with was, of course, firing a warning shot, firing in the air, firing at stop butts, such firing, but nevertheless at some point permission was given to fire at the knees and downward.

What does it mean, firing at the knees and downward? Who does the shooting?The sharpshooter. The sharpshooter is of course the only one who can shoot, the only one who is authorized to shoot, you don't fire your personal weapon because it is too far away. Those are not [possible] ranges at all, not for personal weapons.

Firing at the knees of unarmed people as well?It means at unarmed people as well, absolutely, children too, that too. This was in my view the sense . . .

This is something that was carried out?Maybe it was . . . Carried out, of course carried out. I mean, you also have to understand that the owners of the weapons are usually people keen enough to carry out, I mean, they go around with the weapons throughout their service. . . . firing at the knees and downward. There's also this . . . oh, this is a long argument indeed. Firing at the knees and downward. First, almost always . . . from the knees downward. Except that, what does it mean from the knees downward? You can shoot somebody and hit the thigh. You have to understand, these firearms are are relativeky very accurate. You can try and aim at a apecific part and probably hit it too. Still, I mean, again, these are very long ranges, with all the accuracy it's not that you can't sometimes miss, still, of course you can try to hit a specific part. You can aim for example at a person's knee, definitely. Again, this is not my weapon, I'm not familiar with it enough for me to say firmly, but the fact is they did hit people's knees. But then again, you can hit a thigh. A thigh is, you're a medic too so you know, we know what a thigh looks like physiologically. I mean, there are two bones, relatively few blood vessels, though there are blood vessels.

What happened in the field?In the field they really liked to hit knees, to watch knees smash.

That's what you call it?No, but it's an achievement, a knee. A knee is both a small body part and also . . . if I hit a knee I've ruined his leg, to rehabilitate a knee is not like rehabilitating a thigh. Did they ever see what happens to a man who was hit by a 0.5 [caliber bullet]? Obviously I haven't myself, but I know what it does. A 0.5 means there's no knee left. It means smashing a knee. Though it's not that . . . you're left with a whole knee . . . It's like an achievment for a sharpshooter who . . . It's not like they made lists of who smashed more knees, It wasn't a competition, but it was a kind of a personal achievement. It's also not fair to speak about the whole company, but I remember, I have this image of one or two sharpshooters that I remember with their fervor, with the excitement they showed about the thing. It has to be said clearly: when such a bullet hits the some guy's knee, and it was done to children as well, this person is left without a knee. I mean, with all the rehabilitation that he's going to get, and the medical know-how of the Gaza hospital I'm not sure is very impressive. Even if we take him to Hadassa Ein Kerem, this person will never again walk properly, he'll never emerge a whole person out of this, and that is an understatement. Even smashing a foot is simpler than a knee, but . . .

Did they ever shoot a body part other than a knee on purpose? If I remember correctly, if I remember through the haze, I feel I have to be careful about it, there was a case where they fired at a man's stomach, and it was done tongue in cheek. Like I aimed at a knee and by mistake I hit a stomach. I remember it vaguely, I wasn't at the post, I wasn't at the post. I remember it as a story, not as an incident, so I find it hard to tell, and I'm not sure about the details. As far as I remember, yes, there was a case where they fired at somebody's stomach when there was no authorization to fire at the stomach. Again, when a bullet hits a man in the stomach like this, I don't know if there's much chance for him to stay alive. A hit in the stomach is a very severe one. Being a medic, you know it too. A very deep systemic injury can cause immense harm. Especially with the medical competence of the Palestinians.

From what distance did you operate? I mean, how far from you was the demonstration? This is it, again, the demonstration . . . There were a few demonstrations, there were a few days of tough demonstrations, that by the way, again, were really a threat, there was some shooting out from these demonstrations. By then already we felt a deep fear. . .

Fear?I mean, there was some apprehension, at that time there already was . . . The Palestinians in Gaza were always very sophisticated about these matters. The feeling was always that of fear of a combined action. Later on it was already really . . . It was already a combat alert, a combat alert was a combined action, I mean, if somebody's firing at you, always assume that they'll try to infiltrate here, I mean, even if you ignore the firing here, we've reached such a situation that . . . mortar shells . . . If armed men were spotted in a demonstration, what . . . how . . . That's it, now, if I rightly remember they tried . . . though there were fairly strict firing orders, I mean there was no sweeping authorization to fire at such armed men, I don't remember what they did exactly in each case specifically. There was no sweeping order saying, if you see an armed man, fire.

Were there cases where there was a contact with bodies?Us? No, never. Again, this is an area relatively mostly theirs. Always with these demonstrations, there were always ambulances at the back that kept coming to fetch an injured person, evacuated them and took them to the hospital, came back, took another person who was shot in the leg and took him to the hospital.

Wasn't there an encounter where . . . No, no, again, this is Gaza, Gaza is . . .

No, because in Gaza too there are battles. True, but still, I mean there's always a great effort to keep as much as possible so called "sterility", distorted as this concept may be here, but for all practical purposes this concept describes keeping distance as much as possible, there's almost no contact when it can be avoided. The debriefing you asked about, this is an important point. I don't remember much dealing with this business, but this is simply because I don't remember, period. I mean, there may have been something. In any case, nobody was chucked from the company following this, there may have been a trial, there may have been a reprimand, I don't know exactly what.

In all this period do you remember a case where . . .So that's it. Those demonstrations where the relatively very tough events, those where the tough events from the point of view of the contact with the population, the contact with the Palestinians.