In primary searches for weapons, we go in and then suddenly a guy opens a cupboard, sees china and begins to throw it all on the floor. There are such cases, people who did this sort of thing. It's the kind of guys who talk about having to really show it to the Arabs, that they have less of a regard for family belongings. Little things, but not as extreme as burning things or throwing stuff out the windows. Little things.

Did this stop?
It stopped and then began again. Writing on the walls.

What would be written there?
"How long yet?" or stuff about the platoon, or "We'll show those terrorists."

What causes this, do you think? After all, it wasn't just one soldier in every battalion.
Writing on walls doesn’t stem from hating Arabs that much, but from the fact that you're a soldier – you write in the outpost, or the outhouse, it's a natural thing for soldiers to do.

But you're still inside someone's home.
That's right. You need to think about that in order not to do it. But you don't feel it. Take for example the house we were in – it was abandoned and you go about it as if you own it. You break floor tiles to make sand bags, you break stuff to prepare an outpost. It becomes… You don't think about this at all. You don't consider this a home of a family that will be back.

Did you use their belongings? Are there rules for entering such a house?
There's a general instruction not to touch the family's gear, not to sit on their sofas and so on. But one disregards this. You're in a house and you enter without a sleeping bag, at most you have a warmer shirt and neck warmer, and it's cold at night. So you use mattresses and blankets that are there.

Where do you think this all originates? You find it wrong to smash china, but you talked about people eager to do this, or to leave inscriptions on the walls. What do you think motivates this?
It's the heat of operation, as well as racism. Those who smashed stuff did it because it belonged to Arabs, as well as because of the general army atmosphere. You're in your own shit and writing on a wall doesn't seem so terrible to you. If I was the guy who came back to his own house and saw the wall with the writing, I would be a lot more upset about the fact that my whole orchard was gone. This was an operational need – to raze the area and prevent infiltration of Qassam launching crews. In the midst of all of this, the other stuff doesn't look that bad.

Was there a lot of destruction around? What was destroyed?
Mainly orchards. Houses – some were demolished by D-9s, like the part in (the film) Waltz with Bashir where the tank moves backwards and crashes into a house? Same thing happened to 'our' house with a D-9 bulldozer. It made a hole in the first floor, and you also saw results of the previous shelling.

The D-9s were working around the clock?
Yes, nearly.

What did they raze?
First of all, the orchards. Then houses too, nearby, to open routes, to prevent shelter in the whole immediate area of the house we were in. The D-9 clears a path for the heavy APCs, a path that did not exist before. There were orchards and hothouses there once. Next to our house, at the edge of the neighborhood, the bulldozer created a dike so that when you came out, you couldn't be fired at from the distant houses. They actually kept changing the terrain.

We entered a house there, searched it, found stuff that hadn't been found earlier. We found a Kalachnikov and some grenades, under a bed in one of the rooms. It was the home of a Fatah activist. He had pictures of himself with Arafat in the living room. There was an old man in this house, a diabetic who could hardly walk. His family was gone and he stayed. He was with us the whole week.

You left him inside?
Yes. He was locked up in his home for three weeks. He lives with his wife on the ground floor, his son-in-law lives upstairs with his daughter. No one but him was left there. There was a guard post at the entrance and at first he had a mattress laid out for him by the door. I kept seeing him lying there all week. At some point he really had difficulty getting up so he asked for a bed to rise more easily. There wasn't too much talk with him. At some point we brought him food and began to cook with materials from his pantry. We did get supplies but that was sausage sandwiches, and one of our guys began to cook and we brought the old man some of the food we prepared.
In retrospect, there was no justification for our using the family's food stores, since we did get army supplies. But it's hard to judge when you've been out there for a week and army food is disgusting. We brought him our unit doctor to take a look at him. There was talk of removing him but the Shabak didn't want him, didn't know what to do with him. The doctor said his condition was not immediately life-threatening, but in the long range, if we keep this up for several weeks more, it certainly wasn't healthy for him, and could endanger his life. I don't know what eventually happened to him because we were out of there by Saturday night, late, and he was asleep, or pretended to be.

So how many days was he in there alone with the soldiers?
Two weeks. He had no idea what was going on outside. He said, "Come on, take me out into the street so I can be transported to the hospital." We'd tell him "there is no street left," the D-9s wrecked everything. At some point we ran out of water and he said there's a main pipe in the house next door which can be turned on. Apparently he meant it was connected to another tanker. We would tell him, "What house?"
"Right here, next door." We'd tell him, "That house has been demolished." He was in shock, I guess he went out to take a look and saw a ruined neighborhood. Some of the houses had been demolished because that they had sheltered armed combatants, other houses were suspected of having tunnels, yet others blocked our line of vision. That was also grounds to take them down. Houses in our line of vision were taken down, whole orchards were razed.

I'd like to ask about houses blocking your line of vision?
You have detections, the company that held a designated area observed a certain patch, and the house facing their post blocked their direct line of vision, so there were some houses taken down.
What do you mean when you mention a house suspected of having tunnels?

I don't quite know how these suspicions were validated, but a lot of this came from intelligence.
But houses were searched.
Yes. But they (the tunnels) were not always found.

We got there in the morning, in daylight. Tanks ride ahead and behind us, and parallel to us, covering us constantly. As we enter the city itself it is already full of noise. We squeeze in there in our heavy APCs, and when we reach our objective and have to unload, our hands are twisted and we can no longer move. We unload. If until then we had been on the outskirts, now we are in the center, about as central as you can get. High-rises, buildings. We unload next to the house, next to a building. We are under a building in a small entry porch, another platoon is inside, begins to clean out the house. They bring down the families. Women, children – everyone is taken out of the building downstairs while another platoon begins to clear it.

With live gunfire?
Yes. They sent the women and children away. Around all the time, in all directions tanks are shelling. It's not quite Kasbah, it's a kind of residential block with some open space. We surround the block and park near a corner building and all around us are tanks, firing. I don't know at whom, just that they were shooting.

Where did you send the people who had been in the building?
I have no idea. We sent them out of that block and I have no idea where they went. The tanks shelled the houses that overlooked us.

So you don't know what happened to those people? How many were there?
Fifteen, thereabouts. They went off as a group. I hope they were not shot at. The women and children went off and the men remained for questioning inside the building.

How many were they?
About the same number. Fifteen. They stayed downstairs with the interrogators. Later as we left, they stayed.

What ages?
All ages. From early teens to old men.

Every male had to stay? How was it decided who goes with the women and who stays?
I don't know. Some were older boys, not toddlers.

How large was the building?
About eight or nine floors. Every floor was a hall with two doors on each side, four doors in all. Stairs on each side. This is one side, and there are staircases on both sides. The apartments are built identically, nicely decorated, different styles. They seem to be pretty wealthy there. In some of the apartments we find weapons, documents. Someone said there were suspects with explosive charges. At the same time, the men are assembled downstairs in a room. Two or three soldiers were watching over them. All the doors in the building were steel with safety bolts, and we broke every door in with a blast, as far as we could. At some point everything slowed down. The platoon commander stayed with some three or four men, going up one floor, blowing up a door or two at the same time. We were at least one floor below, closing our ears, and your heart just drops from the blasts. The platoon commander and some other soldiers go up another floor again, clear the apartments with live fire, and there was less control of the men who went around and did whatever they felt like doing. I remember a different atmosphere taking over while the upper floors were being cleared. We went crazy from going up and down all those stairs between the floors. I recall people (soldiers) going around downstairs and doing as they pleased. There were cases of unneeded damage to property. From sheer nerves soldiers broke or smashed stuff, a guy sees a picture and gives it a rifle butt blow. The soldiers there were less in control. But they didn't go totally wild, in a big way. It's a huge building and lots of soldiers were roaming free inside, so there was less control of them. More vandalism.

Looting?
I think there was, according to what I heard.

How long did it take to blow up doors?
A long time.

How long were you in this building?
It took quite a while to clear it. Five-six hours.

Was there any resistance while you were inside?
A company was fighting in the next building. They were involved, all the tanks were shelling around us. I know in retrospect that my building took a few RPG hits while we were inside. It was a large structure and must have taken some more hits but we didn't notice. There were all those blasts from our tanks shelling buildings close by, and I wasn't aware of RPG hits we took because of our own fire.

What happened in the building? Do you recall specific incidents? Did you notice things were getting out of hand?
Yes. Not an outright urge to destroy things, but lack of control over the soldiers.

 
To what extent?
A soldier could walk around and pick up anything he pleased from the apartments. Soldiers sat on couches, it's a pretty weird sight. Eventually there wasn't real fighting inside the building, only some weapons found in some of the apartments and even the risk of explosive charges. But while some guys were upstairs clearing apartments, others were relaxing on the sofas downstairs. They took out stuff from a cupboard and threw it on the floor, broke pictures and all kinds of things. I don't remember anything extraordinary. What bothers me especially is stuff I didn't see.

Why?
Because of this general lack of control.

Was there talk?
Yes, talk of looting.

What do you mean?
It was all hush-hush. People are not dumb. After we got out there was a 'shame parade' (a company check for stolen items) that was actually whitewashed. Didn't look as though whoever held it really wanted to find things.

Why?
Staff came to check the soldiers, the room was crowded and guys knew this was going to take place.

Did the commanders care that people took stuff?
I don't know. The company commander didn't want to deal with it and confront the soldiers.

Did he take other things lightly in this operation? Punishments, for example? Did he tighten discipline or loosen it up?
A bit of both. I don't know how to describe it. On the one hand, he really held us on a short leash, and on the other, I told you, in Gaza there is nothing extraordinarily severe to talk about. Let's say that there were small things in regards to looting, things in the houses: breaking, throwing around. As for looting I can say I heard but didn't actually see anything. I can't really prove anything. I'm saying there was a feeling of lack of control, throughout the operation. Most of the commanding ranks wanted to maintain moral values, but soldiers… Again, I wasn't witness to such cases but I heard people talking, that soldiers shot at people here and there. Again, these are things I cannot prove. I don't want to say because I cannot prove them with any certainty.

The company commander comes around, inspects them for two seconds and that's it?
Yes. I am trying to give you the feel of it. None of the commanders actually set an immoral approach, there simply was no emphatic confrontation with the soldiers.

You had the feeling that if they search thoroughly, they would find something they wouldn't want to find?
I had the feeling that if someone looted then he should be found out. It's as though they were afraid to find something they did not want to see.

We came in on heavy APCs, got to the house we were to occupy, and assembled its residents downstairs. Since we had a prisoner-interrogator we didn't let them go right away. Only the women and children, and told them to go in a certain direction. Naturally we reported on radio that they were passing through so they wouldn't be killed. We searched all the floors, one by one, the battalion commander was with us, too. We blasted every door with an explosive charge. There were many doors. We were already used to this, assuming there were no terrorists. So we sat quiet. There was no one there and we went in and the soldiers were indifferent. You go in with live fire after breaking in the door, the soldiers are looking to smash television and computer screens, looking for interesting stuff in drawers: Hamas shawls and flags, knives, looking for loot. After a while we realized there was nothing to loot, as people knew we were coming and took their stuff away with them.

Did the soldiers take things?
There was no money, but there were Hamas shawls. It's not a nice or moral act, not ethical, but worse things happened. Even if a soldier was found out to have taken something, what could be done with him, would he be charged? At the end of the day, I realized, when you go into battle, the only thing that keeps soldiers together is trust. You have to choose your battles. If you 'rat' on someone – you'll lose their trust. Sometimes it's just not worth it.

You said there were worse things, morally.
As far as I'm concerned, shooting was worse. The fact that people looked for terrorists, and sought to annoy captives, and the way they look at people there. It was terrible. The way they're brought up. I cannot understand this at all. If someone picked up a Hamas shawl, I don’t really feel guilty towards the Hamas man. I mean, it is property, but after all, it's Hamas.

What was the attitude to people's property in houses you occupied?
The guys would simply break stuff. Some were out to destroy and trash the whole time. They drew a disgusting drawing on the wall. They threw out sofas. They took down a picture from the wall just to shatter it. They really couldn't see why they shouldn't.

…So why did this happen in Gaza (and not in other patrols)?
When you enter a house on a mapping action, the family looks at you. But here you didn't know if this was a terrorist's house at all. So the assumption is that everyone is a terrorist, and then it's legitimate to do just anything we please. And also because Gaza is more dangerous, so there the guys have free rein. We carried out a drill near the house. On the way down soldiers took their time because they ran into an easy chair or mattress so the decision was to clean it out. What does that mean? Take the large cupboard and break it, throw it into the hall as trash, do this with any piece of furniture. The hall was also full of holes from tank shells, so we threw all the furniture to one hallway.

How were you feeling, coming out of Gaza?
That at the end of the day, the war was justified. We did what we had to do. The actual doing was a bit thoughtless. We were allowed to do anything we wanted. Who's to tell us not to?

Were there any humanitarian convoys in your area?
No. I remember hearing once that a Red Cross truck would be passing, but it didn't, or at least I don't recall it did or that someone told me it did. Every time they'd announce a humanitarian ceasefire.

What did that mean?
Basically that we were to hold our fire. Categorically. Can I tell you it was quiet? It wasn't. The Giv'ati forces made a lot of noise even during humanitarian ceasefires. That was my sense of things. I can't say this about a specific incident on a certain date or at a certain time. But it was not quiet.

 
They were positioned mostly inside the Zaytoun neighborhood?
Yes. They did some hard work there… I see Giv'ati forces through my binoculars, from a distance. And phosphorus rounds were used there too. I saw this through the binoculars, it was a kilometer away. Having seen it once, you can't go wrong. I remember there were several incidents. I can't tell you the background for their use, but use was made there of phosphorus.

So what do you see around you there?
You see increasing devastation. Houses that disappear with time, farm land plowed over time.

You served in Gaza as a regular soldier, meaning you have a sense of the scale of military operations in Gaza.
This is different altogether. There's no comparison. No way, it is not at all similar to what we knew as operations in our conscript term of duty. Things were localized back then. Even the large, brigade-scale operations were combined with tanks. Not artillery, choppers or combat helicopters. Not this whole bedlam.

What is the difference on the ground?
On the ground you hear these thunderous blasts all day long. I mean, not just tank shelling which was a tune we'd long gotten used to, but blasts that actually rock the outpost, to the extent that some of us were ordered out of the house we were quartered in for fear it would collapse, that engineering-wise it would not last. These were the blasts closer to us.

By the Corps of Engineers unit?
Yes. Usually. But even when artillery hits not too far away, the blast would be enormous.

How does the area look then?
I'll describe for you the house we took over: You enter a house which had obviously been a workshop, probably a rather large building, certainly compared to others. You enter the house which had been entered with live gunfire, in urban warfare, including the use of grenades, which you see from the shrapnel that obviously hit the plaster on the walls. Then of course you see that some of the walls have been partially ruined, the concrete fence around the house, as well as all kinds of holes broken in the walls between rooms. I can imagine this was done with a 5 kg hammer, or with explosive charges. These two things were around all the time. One of the guys told me it had been a 5 kg hammer. That's what the house would look like.

Every house was taken with live gunfire?
I can't tell you that every single one was, but I see no reason that the house I was in would be different from others. I suppose they were, and I know that more houses were. I know for certain that grenades were used.

Your guys or Giv'ati?
Both.

Your guys also entered houses with live gunfire?
Ours too. Definitely. I think there's a very significant difference in what I hear from guys and what I know personally about my own unit. Big difference between the way we treated the contents of the house and the way the regulars did. The regulars wouldn't take care of even the simplest most basic sanitary stuff like going to the toilet, basic hygiene. I mean you could see they had defecated anywhere and left the stuff lying around. There's something called "shit bags" then they left them in some room or threw it away not too far around the house. The house was filthy when we got there. Really… The first thing we did was to clean up. But regarding property, too. Whether someone actually picked up a picture, took stuff – I don't know many people who came away with souvenirs. I mean, the only thing I recall is that one of the Giv'ati men showed me a picture he had picked up. I don't even know whether he put it back or not. I don't know whether he finally took it with him or not.

A picture of what?
I think it was of the owner of the house. I don't know for sure, a bearded man in his thirties or forties, with a little child clutching a Kalachnikov. Naturally this was while talking about… This picture served that soldier as a justification for everything we did there. "Look at this cruel enemy we have here, who lets his five-year old son hold his gun." That's it. When we arrived we did try to clean up. I can say about my own platoon that the deeper moral discussion went about as far as whether to use the guy's olive oil or not.

And the television set and everything was intact when you went in?
The television set came out with us. At least one of them. One was ruined by the shelling. Furniture. Guys tried to preserve the furniture, whatever was not used for operational purposes, like blacking out the room and stuff like that.

… He (one of the soldiers) was in the room, I was in the position, and looked through the window, sitting. He opened a child's bag. The family was not there, they had run away. He took out notebooks and text books and ripped them. One guy smashed cupboards for kicks, out of boredom. There were guys arguing with the platoon commander before we left the house a week later, over why he wouldn't let them smash the picture hanging there. They think he was being petty with them. It should be noted that the deputy company commander at the debriefing yelled at them that they're dealing with non essential issues and we've got a humanitarian issue here.

Do you recall anything else related to vandalism?
The deputy company commander's staff wrote "Death to Arabs" on their wall.

You said earlier they wondered why they weren't being allowed to smash another picture, too.
This "too" is due to an atmosphere of… After getting out of there, I heard about the letter that reservists wrote (to the Palestinian family that lived in the house they occupied), saying they were sorry. I thought it was a different world, because of the atmosphere on the ground. I didn't regard this house either as a house that I should respect and leave neat behind me. For example, once I shat on the roof because I had nowhere else to do it. Leaving this house clean was just not the first thing on my mind. There was simply this atmosphere. But about stealing: the company commander, apparently under orders of the battalion commander, held a shame parade to check if stuff was stolen. How did he do it? He didn't tell the commanders to check each individual soldier. He said: "You (soldiers) pair up, everyone checks his mate for stuff taken. Then you don't have to yell out if you find anything, just come to me discretely, or to the platoon commander and sort it out." Obviously either this company commander is a total idiot or he just didn't want such stuff to be found out.

So there was a shame parade where everyone checked his buddy?
It was bullshit. And I'm sure there was looting. I can't tell you anything more specific.