Soldier: [In my unit] there was this thing that for the end of your course of training, after you finish up your training, we’d go out on a last activity that is a kind of exercise. They’d tell us: you’re going out to train, it’s something the battalion [soldiers] do, it’s called “mapping”. What’s its purpose? [Its purpose] is to map the house, that’s what they told us. And then they’d tell us: in order for you to be prepared for the serious arrests you are about to perform, 'pressure cooker’ arrests and all sorts of things like that, start, practice mapping, the simple activity battalions perform, a routine [activity], and it’ll prepare you. 

 

Every team would get a target inside some village and would go map it. Now, this usually means a raid in the middle of the night, sneaking into the village. And in this village, there would be a house you’d get, and this house was by definition uninvolved [Palestinians not involved in fighting]. They would tell us in advance that they are uninvolved, people who aren’t actually involved in terrorism, innocents to use a euphemism, but everyone without exception was always a potential threat. You never know who might do something, so in this case too they were a potential threat. 

 

What you do, after we infiltrate the village, is we surround the house completely. As opposed to what we do during arrests - when we try to lure people out of the house by escalating the situation - we use, this time we go knock on the door to the house. Just like that. I had the team commander and I went with him. We went and knocked on the door to the house and the head of the family opens the door. We tell him, “We’re here to perform an activity, please go inside, open all doors, turn all the lights on, bring everyone in the family to the living room, we’re here to investigate you.” Someone [a soldier] is told that he needs to draw the house, he takes a piece of paper and tries to draw the entrances, exits, rooms and that kind of thing. 

 

Interviewer: Was it on a page designed for this?

 

Soldier: No, I recall it being a very crumpled piece of paper, we drew very badly, it was impossible to understand anything from it [later] I’m sure. 

 

Interviewer: Was there any explanation for how to sketch a house, was there a briefing?

Soldier: Not really, and also like, this was the only time we really did it this way, the mapping. It was just training in the end. Live practice. 

 

Interviewer: What do you do with it? 

 

Soldier: I have no idea what happened to the paper. And then after we go inside, somebody scribbles something, I remember it being very embarrassing, that picture. Simultaneously we had to map the family, and this is what always happened again and again when we went into houses, you go into the house, and panic starts. The parents get angry and confused, and the children cry and often pee their pants; you actually see them peeing their pants. Screaming, crying, and you have to get them to quiet down as fast as possible: if it’s an arrest - you can’t have them waking up the whole area, and in this [mapping] too, we had to silence them. 

 

And, you like find yourself either yelling at children or trying to calm children down, or you order the parents to shut their kids up. It was always a super stressful, super complicated situation. You move them quickly to a spot where they’re less likely to be heard, to a side room. But you see, again and again, every time you enter a house, whether it’s an arrest or mapping, what it does to the kids. 

 

Interviewer: What tools do you have to cope with that? 

 

Soldier: Your weapon. It’s your most powerful means for successfully handling the situation.