Soldier's tale: 'We are not warriors'

Thousands of soldiers have been housed at a tent city outside Gaza

Dana, a 20-year-old teacher doing her national service in Jerusalem, was moved to Gaza to help evacuate more than 8,000 settlers from the territory.

She tells the BBC News website how she has prepared for her new role.

Normally I work with teenagers in Jerusalem, but the army came and told me that I need to move down to Gaza.

My job will be to take people out of their houses. For the past three weeks I've been living in a city of tents just outside Gaza.

We eat there, live there, shower there, use the toilet there. Everything. We even have Domino's Pizza. It's become like home, but it's not as comfortable.

My job sounds quite simple: to put them [the settlers] on the bus. After that it's not my job any more. Some of them are going to Nitzanim, others to Tel Aviv.

In theory we know how to do this. But how do I know what to do when someone cries in my arms because I'm taking them from their home? Dana, Israeli soldier

The soldiers here come from all sorts of places. We are not really warriors. The people I'm with are from the air force, they are technical people.

They took us, me and my friends, all of us teachers, because they believe we have experience and can talk to people in bad situations.

But most of the people here were chosen because they have spent a lot of time in the army. It's not brand new recruits doing this. They have officers, people who have signed up for extra service.

'We have a plan'

We live in two tent cities: A and B. In B, where I am, there are 8,000 people, soldiers and police. In A there are 10,000.

Alongside every 40 soldiers there is one police officer. They are always with us, both men and women.

Soldiers and border police are often young, and include women

They teach us about how to take people to the buses and advise us on when and how to use force. That helps.

It makes me more calm knowing that they didn't take just any old soldier. Not just people who like holding a gun.

I think it's good that Israel decided to do this, but the prospect of doing it myself stressed me out. I'm not used to using force or power.

When we arrived we were all taken to a kibbutz for training. There were 200 people there playing the roles of the people we have to evacuate.

We were given a story: this is a house with a woman who is pregnant, and we have to evacuate her and her husband. But when we went in we found there were more people than we were told.

Click below to see a detailed map of the Israeli disengagement plan Enlarge Map

The idea was to train us to deal with different situations. Sometimes the people inside said they had gas and they would blow themselves up. In that case we call in a special unit. That's not our job.

From Monday 15 August it's not legal for them to be here. We are going to go and ask them nicely to leave. Then on 17 August we come back and we evacuate them whether they like it or not.

If they don't go we have a procedure. We are divided into small groups of four people. One for the right hand, one for the left hand and one for the legs. So that everyone is comfortable.

If they say they want to go nicely we will go with them, but if they start to hit us, or spit on us, we can grab their arms and legs and take them like that.

Holding the line

The plan is to evacuate one settlement completely in a day. If we need to finish it in daylight then we'll sleep there on the road and finish it the next day. There are 20-25 settlements. Each team, A and B, evacuates one each day.

Soldiers find varied ways of passing the time

The plan is to finish it as quickly as possible. They tell us we have the numbers, we have enough people here, so we don't really need to use force.

Using power is not the idea. We want to be calm. Some people will stay there until we come just so we can really ask them to leave. They won't cause trouble, but they want to see us ask them to go.

It won't be fun to do this, but I think I agree with what we are doing and I think it will be better for our lives.

These people say "you can't move a Jew, from Jewish land". That's a dumb thing to say, because that implies that you can move an Arab.

People who want to blow things up are nuts, they are crossing a line. The more people cross that line and do bad things the less I want to live on that line. It makes me feel wrong.

Divided loyalties

For me to do this to people who will leave peacefully and nicely is hard, but I think it is something I have to do. We have to do it for the sake of our democratic state.

It's not fun, and I'm afraid I'm going to be a different person afterwards.

My family are worried about me

We've done all this training, but you never really know what's going to happen. In theory we know how to do this. But how do I know what to do when someone cries in my arms because I'm taking them from their home?

It's so complicated. Some of the soldiers live in Gaza or have family there. Some are against this, but they do it anyway.

My family are worried about me. Most of the week I'm in the camp so they see it only on TV, where the situation doesn't look so good. My father is very optimistic: he thinks it's going to be very easy.

Sometimes I agree with him. Last week there was a protest planned, and we stood there in line to block the people from coming into Gaza. And it made me more optimistic.

Dana's name has been changed to protect her identity as a serving soldier.