Etzion DCL was found closed with no explanation

There is nothing about the Etzion DCO which surprises us any longer. Not the slovenliness of the place, not the filth and stench of the men's toilet, not the fact that the women's toilet has not been open for years, not that the water closet also has not worked for years. Not the surliness of the woman clerk who now and again comes out and deigns to reply to the settlers looking for cheap workers....even they are not shown the respect of going into an office but stand outside. One of them came to us and said he had been called in for a meeting at eleven and where was he supposed to go? He was standing and phoning and phoning. We told him he could now know what the Palestinians go through every day.

So, this morning we were not surprised to find   the door ........locked and closed. No notice to explain what is happening. No one answers any phones. Even the Palestinian cleaner could not tell us if there were soldiers inside. Hanna Barag also said that she got no replies to her calls. 

Eventually we got through to the Moked and were given the number 050 3088598. As soon as we got through, a very suspicious young woman asked how we had got the number. I explained who we were and that we had found the DCO locked and wanted to know the reason. We told her that there were at least 10 people waiting in the sun, two who needed to get to a hospital and others who had actually been summoned to come. 

This made no impression on her.  She was as impolite as the woman mentioned above and said that she did not have to give us an explanation. When asked her name....what else....we were told that we did not have to know. They should go to Hebron with their problems. This, after some of them had taken a taxi to get to the DCO and would now have to take another to get to Hebron......and who knows if there they would find that the DCO was open. We told her, equally politely, that we hoped that some time when she travelled overseas, she would get the same treatment.

For good measure this was also seen along the way.  Do you need any more convincing about whose side the army is on?

 A man, living in Beer Sheva, was  coming back with his sons from a visit to relatives  and  was stopped at Meitar and one of the sons arrested. He does not know why. Nor does he know where he was taken. We hope that the Center for the Defense of the Individual will have helped. It would be interesting in the future to take a phone number to follow up.

We stayed for the usual shift if only to tell those who came to the DCO that .......it was closed.

I know I have written this before, but this place always reminds me of the poem "The Listeners" about a traveler who comes and knocks and knocks. I looked it up now. It is a mystery poem just as the workings...or unworkings ...of the DCO are. These lines are appropriate as there are cameras all over the DCO and I am sure listening devices.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house. 

and this explanation, the world in this case being the DCO.

Somewhat paradoxically, “The Listeners” acknowledges people's desire to seek understanding while also asserting a certain insurmountable mystery of the world around them.