Etzion DCL

We now know what the new area is used for. Evidently the business of confiscation is doing so well that a new branch has been opened up. Also it probably does not need a maximum use of intellect to find excuses for confiscating a vehicle or tractor or whatever. So far the only means of transport we have not seen there are bicycles, motor bikes or  electric scooters. But I am sure that if business drops, place will be made for them. 

There were not many people, much as last week. We do not know why. Maybe the GSS is busy confiscating Palestinian flags in various villages. But one such case took up most of the morning. A man from Ad-Dirat has his tractor confiscated as he was told that he was working but, but of course, he was not given a receipt. So we photographed it so as to prove its existence. There was a whole group of men connected to this. Can you imagine an Israeli driver giving up his vehicle without being given a receipt? But I guess Palestinian's know what such insistence will cause them. 

Malak of LEAP, an organization which gives legal aid to Palestinians, told them to send a letter to the Civil Administration and to ask for a number of the requisition which has to be sent to them within 62 hours. 

The other case was of a man whose wife is sick in Jordan and he wants to join her but the soldiers have told him that hands would wash hands …in other words if he became a collaborator and spied on other Palestinians, he would then be given a permit. The Israeli version of Pontius Pilate. He was “bridge prevented” he told us. In other words he cannot cross the bridge over into Jordan. The army has invented its own vocabulary. For example instead of saying that someone had been shot to death, they have "been neutralized". In apartheid South Africa, I remember, when someone had been thrown out of the window he had "jumped and committed suicide." The man had sat in jail for some years but chose not to tell us why. 

The parking lot which we have written about before was packed with holiday groups of religious Jews buying cherries which had been grown on land stolen from Palestinians. If not actually been stolen from them, grown on land which is only to be used by international law to be used for security purposes. Will someone please explain how this is possible in the time of Shmitta?