Hebron, Sansana, South Hebron Hills, Tue 8.9.09, Morning

Sansana Pathway
The lane is empty. The last workers expect their transfer on the Israeli side.
On the way back – two buses of families' visits (to Israeli prisons).
Road 60
Water problem in South Mount Hebron: because we arrived early today, we saw a scene worth a thousand words: near Dahaiya, in two places separated by only a few km.s, on the side of the road, several water tanks were gathered, with hoses sent into the earth, where there is a water reservoir or some connection to a central supplier. We talked to one of the drivers who, for fear of the army, asked us to leave the precise location of those tankers unspecified. He tells us that they are forced to get to those places once weekly in order to fill those tanks and distribute them to the local villages, adding that both the army and the settlers harass the drivers.The distance between the pastoral scene and the life's harshness was, once again, blatant.
The road is quiet and empty all along. We wonder and worry: how is it that none of the usual pedestrian traffic, consisting of pupils, teachers, and others, are to be seen?
Hebron
The mystery is resolved in Hebron, which is empty, too. The schools' janitors reveal the secret: in the Palestinian authority, they moved to winter-time on Sept. 4^th, so it is now an hour earlier than we thought. We were relieved because our thoughts were with yesterday's events – that mass state memorial to the 1929 events.
So we arrived too early and we could not but await some signs of life. No special problems witnessed anywhere, and the children walk through, without being detained.
Road 317
The apartheid road, limited to the "lords of the land", is entirely empty.
We enter the settlement Carmel to see for ourselves the newly built neighbourhood. A soldier stands there, at the entry-way and opens the gate for us. We counted ten new houses, spacious and well equipped for multiple-children families. All signs of life – cars, laundry, children's toys – are scattered all round. The place itself seems to be still in the working, so to speak: more flattened grounds, water hoses scattered around.
We will keep our eyes open.