In January 2002, in response to the deaths of four soldiers in the Africa outpost, the IDF decided to demolish a line of houses on the other side of Rafah, along the Philadelphi corridor. The army spoke about razing a limited number of uninhabited houses, but the Palestinians claimed the real number of houses destroyed was much larger, that some of houses were inhabited and that some of the residents escaped by the skin of their teeth from the bulldozers. The head of the Southern Command at the time, Doron Almog, was interviewed on television and emphatically denied the Palestinian accusations. But when Almog began to investigate, he discovered other facts.
First, it became clear that the number of demolished homes was closer to the Palestinian assessment. The operation was conducted during the night and the commander of the force, an officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel, erred in identifying a palm tree that was designated as the border of the area slated for demolition. The bulldozers felled a different tree, further away, and this led to an additional row of homes being destroyed by mistake.
Almog was also in for a surprise with regards to the question of whether the homes were inhabited. The major general called in all of the parties involved in the operation, including two men named Vaknin and Dima, who operated the D-9 armored bulldozers. "How do you verify that no one is in the home?" Almog asked the drivers and learned that there are two schools of thought. According to the Vaknin method: "First, I give a small hit to a wall with the bulldozer’s blade. The wall cracks. And then, if I see people fleeing the house, I know it is inhabited." Dima had a different method: "The first thing I do is to knock the water tank off the roof. If water spills out, it indicates the house is inhabited.
