"You hear shooting, nothing effective. You jump and start shooting. There's nowhere to shoot. You shoot at suspicious places, which is a bush here and a bush there, more or less. But the soldiers take a bit of initiative and shoot at suspicious water tanks, suspicious television antennas, suspicious satellite dishes. Maybe they catch the al-Jazeera station and get ideas, who knows, so the soldiers shoot... This was an incident that was later reported on the army radio as 'shots were fired at the greenhouses of the Morag settlement. Our forces returned fire to the sources of the shooting.' I don't know about any sources of the shooting, and I was there."
From a soldier's testimony to B'Tselem

B'Tselem Publishes a New Report: " Trigger Happy
Unjustified Gunfire and the IDF's Open-Fire Regulations during the al-Aqsa Intifada"

Israel's policy regarding opening fire in the Occupied Territories since the beginning of this current intifada has caused extensive injury of Palestinians who were not involved in acts of violence against Israel.

The findings of B'Tselem's report, published today, indicate a series of problems in the IDF's policy regarding opening fire:

• The regulations allow the use of live ammunition in some cases where there is no clear and immediate threat to life;
• The regulations are vaguely worded and are not provided to soldiers in writing and in a straightforward manner;
• The army has almost entirely abstained from investigating incidents of lethal force against Palestinian civilians; investigations that are opened are superficial and usually rely exclusively on soldiers' versions of the events.

The report is based on testimonies given to B'Tselem by IDF soldiers and Palestinians, and on media reports. It analyzes the IDF's policy and discusses patterns of unjustified shooting, including excessive force in the dispersal of demonstrations; shooting at innocent pedestrians at checkpoints; shooting with no prior warning in some areas; and disproportionate and indiscriminate responsive shooting.

In the report's conclusions, B'Tselem states that the responsibility for harm to innocent Palestinians is not that of the soldier alone. The primary responsibility rests with the senior commanders and the policymakers. They bear responsibility for the wording of regulations allowing gunfire in situations where soldiers lives are not threatened, for the ambiguous message regarding when soldiers can open fire, and for the virtual impunity granted to soldiers who use illegal force.