Keren made Aliyah some years agio.  It is amazing how she has managed to make a life for herself and also help others. She met a young Palestinian boy of 14 who was cleaning car windows. His father could not work as he has a problem with his back. She began taking him something to eat and started to teach him Hebrew. She also started buying medicines for his family.  Today he speaks a very good Hebrew.  The young man has initiative and speaks to contractors who needs workers and connects the workers whom he finds with the contractor. The family, in spite of all the difficulties, have children who are studying academically.  She had brought clothes, etc. for them and they came to the DCO to fetch them. When we were leaving they asked us to wait until their taxi came as they were nervous of being there. This is not the first time we have heard this. Most people come with someone as someone said you never know what can happen there.
A man was waiting for a friend of his who had been released from prison in the latest prisoner/hostage deal after more than 20 years. He was called in to be questioned.  The man had been waiting there since 9 a.m. and it was now past 12.
There were also two men, one of whom worked as a stone layer and another who said he was a journalist, and he had not heard of us. But would read…and report? There was a car there with a sign on which was written  “press.”
We saw this interesting sign…here at this  place will be raised one of  the largest garbage incinerators in the world on private Palestinian land  without supervision at the initiative of the Civil Administration. Shlomit found the following information.

In the last years private groups acting with the civil administration promoted a campaign to raise a giant incinerator on the hills of Neve Daniel north of the settlement which overlooks Beitar Ilit and near Sde-Boaz. This is the first such incinerator in Israel and if all goes as planned it will be one of the largest in the world and will serve the Palestinians. This sign proclaims the opposition to the plan  in the heart of Gush Etzion, claiming also that it is being done without supervision.
We saw a car driving into the confiscated lot. Behind it was a trailer loaded with goods which was then taken off by four men and put to the side. A man, as soon as he saw us, came shouting and waving his arms telling us we were forbidden to be there. He told us that this was “his” lot….so what does that mean. That a private individual is making a packet from vehicles confiscated by the army. On the one hand he said it was Israeli territory….Shlomit shouted that it was not so. We told him to call in the police and if he had a order saying it was a closed military area. Then another man came to us, very conciliatory and in a pleasant tone,  and said please not to photograph the workers as they were from East Jerusalem and did not want to be recognized. Which we accepted.