A former Israeli soldier (speaking in a YouTube video by Asif Osman) recounts his 14-month service in Hebron and describes routine IDF practices intended to "make presence felt": nightly patrols (10pm–6am, 8-hour shifts) that include random house entries, waking and separating family members, roof-to-roof movement, and searches. He frames these actions as widespread, continuous since the second intifada (from September 2000 onward) and designed to instill fear in Palestinians rather than isolated rogue actions.
Questions this video answers
14 months
10:00 PM to 6:00 AM (8-hour night shift)
From September 2000 (the start of the second intifada) until today (ongoing)
Chapters
I don't believe that a soldier who served in the occupied territories has clean hands. It's not that. I think that we are all, you know, it's not that every soldier murders innocent Palestinians far away from that. But no Israeli soldier who served in the occupied territories, his hands were clean after that. Because at the heart of what you do, there is no way of seeing Palestinians as equal human beings to you. I'll just give you one example which is, you know, nothing extreme, nothing exceptional, something very routine and banal. I served for 14 months in Hebron. Right now, in Hebron, as we are sitting here and having this discussion, there are two military patrols that their job is to do what we call in the military, to make our presence felt. What does it mean? The military logic says if Palestinians will get the feeling that the IDF is all the time everywhere, they'll be afraid to attack. So what do you do to give them this feeling? You make your presence fed. You start your night shift patrol, 10 o' clock till 6 o' clock in the morning, 8 hour shift, you walk in the streets of the old city of Hebron, break into a house, Palestinian house, Of course, not a house we have intelligence about. I'm the sergeant, I lead the patrol. I choose a random house, wake up the family. Men one side, women the other side, search the place. You can yourself imagine the dynamics. Yeah, Climb to the roof, jump from one roof to another, come out through another house, wake the family. And basically, that's how you pass your 8 hour shift. 20, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. From September 2000, when the second intifada started, till today. Now, it didn't stop for 1 second yet. The idea is that every Palestinian will feel the military is right here. You don't know when we're going to show up, what we're going to do, when it's going to end, how it's going to look like. It's to do what we call in the military, L'tsot troushat nir de frut. To create the feeling of being persecuted. Now, when this is your mission again, this is not an action of a rogue soldier officer. This is.
