Etzion DCO: few people

Today’s vigil was very short.

6 people were waiting at the DCO entrance, among them a very bent old man leaning on a walking stick and holding a paper in his mouth. As soon as Shlomit sent an SMS to A. at the DCO office, everyone entered the waiting room.

A trader approached us with entry permit problems. We gave him Sylvia’s phone numbers.

A Palestinian who has worked for a Jew for years suddenly discovered he was police-blacklisted. He too got Sylvia’s numbers from us.

After a while, the old man was back. He was holding a water bottle but was shaking so badly that he couldn’t get it to his mouth. We helped him stabilize the bottle and he had his drink. According to our friend A. he received the old man first, before everyone else. The man needed a permit to get to hospital and A. issued him one but with the reservation that two people would accompany him there. Now here’s the problem – how would he get back home (we have no idea how he made it to the DCO in the first place). Beside the language problem, because of his shaky voice one can hardly understand a word he says. Taxis arrive at the DCO rather seldom these days, and since today there were not many people there and no one was going in his direction, and since we didn’t get a number of a taxi that would take him home, we decided to shorten our vigil and bring him to the nearest taxi station. He must have gathered what we were up to, and gesticulated explaining that he wanted us to proceed on our own way. Finally, with the help of a passerby we took him home, at one of the narrowest streets we had ever seen. First, we understood from him that he has no wife, but when we arrived at what he said was his home, we asked someone to come outside and apparently he does have a wife and a daughter.