Etzion DCL: Maltreatment with bureaucratic gloves

Place:

Etzion DCO

Tags:

Black listed by the police

Transfer Permits to Israel

Updates during Corona

Observers:

Shlomit Steinitz, Natanya Ginsburg (reporting)

Jun-7-2021

Morning

DCL Etzion

10:30 - 12:00

The men’s toilet is again locked.

A man of about 50 is Police Blacklisted as he was working in Israel illegally, and though this edict has now ended, it of course does not appear on the computer. We told him he should wait a week or two.

Two young men were sitting for a long while worrying about their brother who had been called in to the DCL by the Shabak. We told them it could take a long time and indeed when we left they were still waiting.

A young woman from Kfar Yasif (in Israel) arrived with her Palestinian fiancée. They had met at an hotel in Israel where he was working, and now they want to marry. The problem is that he was on the prevented list. This was was already supposed to changed on the computer seven months ago but nothing has been done. They came last week and were told that he would get a reply within a week. Of course nothing has arrived. They were told that there is a technical error! But A. told Shlomit that the prevention had been automatically extended. So what else is new. We also told them that the chance of his being allowed to live with her in Israel were very small.

In all three cases we gave them them Sylvia's contact details. And again so what else is new.

Why do we take the trouble to report in Corona times as well?

Because democracy’s watchdogs have fallen asleep on their own watch, so Israeli citizens have no idea what is actually happening in the Occupied Territories, especially now.

Day and night, Israeli soldiers (as the State’s emissaries) help extreme settler-colonists take the law into their own hands, unhampered. They do not stop even in days of a raging pandemic and do not hesitate to harm Palestinians – their bodies, property, and sources of livelihood.

Unceasing harassment of the weakened Palestinian population inflicts psychological harm as well. All – from babies through and including the elderly and the ill – are open prey to Jewish violence and terrorism which the settler-colonists are only too eager to exert.

We of MachsomWatch will not cease to report, certainly not now during these Corona times and under the threat of annexation, about the settlers’ increased rampages, those who hurry to set facts on the ground helped by the Israeli army.

Israel rules the West Bank, and by force of the Geneva Convention, article no. 27, it is committed to enforcing law and order there. The inhabitants of these Occupied Territories have the legal right “to decent treatment of their body and dignity, and should be especially protected against any act of violence”.

Ironically, this is not at all upheld.

Nor shall we cooperate with the commonplace ignoring of the Palestinian people’s suffering, and with the Israeli public’s indifference to it. We shall continue to follow up closely and report the goings-on in the West Bank, in its villages and encampments.

No one should be able to say ‘We knew nothing, we heard nothing’

Location Description

Etzion DCO

See all reports for this place

serves residents of Bethlehem and surrounding villages who need magnetic cards, work permits for Israel, permits for one-time entry for religious or health reasons, various police permits, etc.