Abu-Dis DCO, Wednesday 20.9.06 PM Obervers: Daniella G. Maya B.H. (reporting) Abu-Dis DCO 12:45 The waiting shed is fuller than we have ever seen before, perhaps40 people waiting. The windows are not working. No sooner do we step in,and they are opened for business. MAny run up to form a line. Othersapproach us with their familiar tales of woe. A stooped and wrinkledlittle old woman, accompnaied by her grandaughter, has been waiting for afew hours to get the documents she was promised returned. Could we speedthe process up? (In the process of attempting to help, we get a glance atthe savta’s ID — born in 1947, she is not yet 60!). The water containeris empty. Could we see to it that it is refilled? We ask a BP soldieroutside the gate, in the base, to fill it up for us. “It is not my job”,he replies. “It is not ours, either”, we point out. “We are justvolunteers. You could just volunteer to fill up the container”. Talk tothe trees and stones. But miraculously, not only do we find a faucet tofill the container from, but one of the Palestinians manages to procure abag of ice cubes from the base!The most frustrating case by far kept us at the DCO till 14:30. A 52 yearold teacher, with a nice organized set of documents, has been refused apermit “GSS denied”. Yet he has a magnetic card, has always had permits,teaches in an orphanage in the Old City — and even has a letter statingexplicitly that he does not have any GSS impediments on his record. Sowhy is he denied? E., the young lieutenant in charge, refuses to talk tous, to listen, to explain or to hear our explanations. He forbids theother soldiers from talking to us, too. “We have our reasons. Don’tinterrupt our work. You can complain to the ombudsman if you don’t likeit”. We don’t, so we do. We try to call Captain E., over and over again.No reply. The Humanitarian hotline. No reply. We enlist HB to help. So3 MW women are busy for a couple of hours just trying to get the DCO tostate that which they are obligated to state: Why if this man denied thepermit he requests. Finally, E shows up, and explains: This particulardocument is now not issued at the Abu-Dis DCO. The man is referred to therihgt place and person, including phone number. And since indeed hisdocuments are in order, he will get his wish. It took the man about 6hours to get this explanation, including 2 shared with us. Any chancethat any of this will be better next year? Or dare we only hope that itwon’t be worse?