Abu Dis and Sawahre Wednesday 25.8.04 AMObservers: Ofra B., Sylvia P., Ruti R. (reporting) It was a boring and depressing shift. It seemed as this was the way normal life looks. We climbed the wall at the Pishpash gate in Abu Dis, assisted by some young men that were there, and reached the container, which changes its face every week and looks more and more as a permanent installation. The traffic flowed. The checkpoint commander greeted us smiling, talked with us politely until we started, after 15 minutes, to ask about five detainees that were there already 10 minutes when we arrived. The commander explained that connecting to the computer takes time.Next time that we asked, one of the soldiers “advised” us to call the Border Patrol commander and to tell him that the soldiers in the checkpoint don’t want to release detainees. I called the DCO and A. says that she can help and asked the soldiers to call her. The commander refused to call her since they work “with their unit and not with the DCO”. We called A. again and she said that she would call them. The detainees were finally released after one hour or more of waiting there.We came back to Abu Dis, visited the Cliff Hotel. Everything there was quiet. The transit and bus drivers dismantled the shelters of each other.