Ezyon DCL, Wednesday PM, 28.6.06Observers: Tami B., Daniela G. (reporting)Route 60: Police and army stop southbound vehicles opposite the regular tunnel CP. On the way back, there is a long line of cars waiting to go through.Ezyon DCL – 13:30: The parking lot is not crowded so business is far from thriving for the owners of the new stand selling light food and drinks. The shed is empty but for a young man stretched on several seats, trying to catch a nap. Behind the turnstile only one man and one woman. However, this scarcity of people does not spell a change for the better. For the woman, it seems, this is the second day she is spending here trying to get her magnetic card. On Sunday she went to and fro trying to secure a number, otherwise the soldiers at the windows refused to attend to her. Today she’s been waiting since 12:30 for the soldiers to come out and hand out more numbers. Neither she, nor another woman and 4 men with similar stories, know whether their wish will be granted, whether more numbers will actually be given today. But they wait because their only link to the authorities, the soldier up in the watchtower, keeps promising: “Soon”. He assures us too that it won’t be long. To confirm, we try Amir, Eyal, the office – no one answers. Yael S. tries reaching them as well, but to no avail. Though there are only 6 people requesting magnetic cards, they do not let them in, with or without numbers, and instead let them wait for hours not knowing if it is not altogether in vain.At 14:15, it turns out that it was for nothing. Over the cackling loudspeaker comes the announcement “No more numbers today”. Since our desperate calls still go unanswered, the angry and frustrated Palestinians leave, all but one guy. He returns after a few minutes with a precious number in his hand. It cost him 50 shekels. During all this while, though they do not require numbers, it is no picnic for people coming for permits either. They need to crane their necks through the bars and shout so as to get the attention of the soldier in the watchtower, who sometimes consents to let them in through the turnstile immediately and at others, especially strangely enough when it came to 4 women, one of them with a 4 year old child straddled along, he kept repeating the infuriating request for “patience”.15 more minutes go by, during which we try to help four young men who had been summoned to the GSS, were waiting to be called in since 9 in the morning when their IDs had been taken by some soldier and by now only want their IDs back, and all of a sudden a soldier does come out, not with their IDs but with numbers for magnetic cards!At this point we leave two angry messages on Eyal’s phone, Yael reaches him too and he gets back to us. He has lengthy unconvincing explanations regarding today, but as for the future the upshot is that no day is similar to the one before and therefore there are no rules and he cannot say when and at what intervals numbers will be distributed to the Palestinians waiting to apply for magnetic cards. They do come out every morning, then again towards noon they asses how many more people are there for cards, sometimes they give out more numbers at around 14:00, and they may even be very large and come out with umbers at 4 in the afternoon! All we could do was beg and plead that they at least give the Palestinians non-misleading information so they would not wait and wait and then be sent home empty handed.As for our young friends still in search of their IDs, 3 phone calls to a polite girl at the GSS office reveal that the “captain” to whom they had been summoned has long gone, and regarding the IDs all we managed to get out of her was “we’ll check”. Yael S. said that a similar incident had occurred the other day and the IDs were probably in one of the drawers at the windows. Eyal said he had looked into it and there were no IDs at the windows. Luckily, before we spoke to him we succeeded in persuading the soldier in the watchtower to let the men in so they could ask the soldiers at the windows about the missing documents. Though it took a while, eventually the men were let in through the turnstile. Their IDs were found in a drawer at the windows.