“They Told Us to Aim at the Legs”

“They trained us to hit only the lower extremities,” said a soldier from the IDF’s sniper unit, who said he was supposed to be part of a special sniper force that the IDF has trained for disengagement. An interview with the sniper will be broadcast today on Avi Yaacobovitz’s radio program “Response Time” on the the “Kol Hai” radio station.

The IDF soldier, whose name was not revealed in the interview, recounted that when the police and IDF vanguard are sent in unarmed, the sniper force is supposed to wait very close to the settlements about to be evacuated, but not inside.

If firefights or violent incidents, such as the taking security troops hostages, should occur, the snipers and elite units can be on the scene within a few minutes.

“We received orders not to use live ammunition but other means, and to aim for the limbs,” the soldier, a reservist, said in the interview. He said that the IDF asked him to mobilize for the task so that the snipers behind the sights would be mature and level-headed, and not younger soldiers who might prove to have an itchy trigger finger.

Ma’ariv has learned that the special forces, which will be deployed for any violent development outside the settlements, will be subordinate to a special command led by Brig. Gen. Amos Ben Avraham, former commanding officer of Sayeret Matkal and today commanding officer of the IDF’s command and staff academy. In addition to the snipers, these forces also contain a special police SWAT team together with selected elite units of the IDF that specialize in taking control over kidnappers, conducting negotiations and rescuing hostages.

IDF officials claimed that it was decided to use the most elite soldiers and snipers because they are trained for surgical action that will allow them to refrain from causing wide-scale casualties in case the use of weapons should be required. The officials said: “In everything connected to the inner circle of the evacuation, within the communities themselves, there is no intention for either the soldiers or the police officers to bear arms at all.”