Etzion DCL - sins of the children on the fathers

There were only a few people today probably because of Ramadan. Two men were in the waiting room with the son of one of them. They said they had tried to call but got no reply so we tried calling and immediately got through. This happened again with two other people so there was no long wait for them..

Another man who had spoken to Sylvia a few months ago in an effort to cancel his blacklisting status learnt that his request had been refused. We advised him to get in touch with MW volunteer, Ronit, who could submit an appeal. His son, 15 years of age, had been detained for seven days because of throwing a stone. He, the father, who had worked in Israel for six years and in the settlements for four, has had his work permit cancelled. Truly the IDF believe that they, like God, in this instance, can punish the father for the sins of his son.

We spoke to two other people. One of them was a man whose wife owns land near the Dead Sea which the government wants to confiscate.  The other was a man who had bought land in the area of Bethlehem. The Lands Authority had been giving them the run around. We gave them all the appropriate phone numbers.

We were relieved that there were people we could assist as to make the project worthwhile as, being Ramadan, we thought there would be no one at the DCL.

But, whatever the case, Big Brother, in this case, the IDF, had a conniption.

We were lucky that Adi was with us as she was part of a team of three who had come to film and interview us for a MachsomWatch documentary. Her knowledge of Arabic was a great help. We had been speaking with the above men….they were asked if they minded being filmed. While we were ourselves being interviewed,  a vehicle with an Israeli license plate drove up and two soldiers emerged.

We thought about instances  of Palestinians  who try to contact the IDF for help when they are being attacked by settlers and how long they have to wait….without anything being done. As they say in English “nuff said”. But here we had an example of how efficient the IDF can be when, maybe, they think that they are not being shown in a good light. “Who are you ? Why were we talking to these people? Had we coordinated with the army?”

We replied that the team had not been photographing in the waiting room but in an open parking lot. And immediately they went into a huddle with their phones. Suddenly the parking lot had become a closed military area.

We decided not to argue as maybe the whole compound, including the area of the confiscated vehicles, is a military area……as we know from other episodes, aside from MachsomWatch, any area where the army does not want you to be, becomes a closed military area, with or without a document to prove this. We moved off to the new “Wailing Wall’ which we thought would be a parking lot but which is now hermetically closed. At least some contractor is happy and who knows who else.

There we finished the interview. The film crew was very pleasant and patient. They also paid us the compliment of saying that they had learned a lot from us. They also, which we had not thought of, introduced us as “the women of MachsomwWatch”.