Secretary of State John Kerry is making an all-out effort to restart peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Many well-intentioned, highly intelligent people from around the world have engaged in some way, shape, or form in the Palestinian-Israeli issue and many of these people have had hands-on experience in resolving other longstanding, global issues, like those of Ireland, South Africa, and U.S. civil rights. While there is always a great deal to learn from other global experiences, the case of Palestine is different and unless Secretary Kerry recognizes this, all the efforts and millions of dollars being thrown at this conflict will be in vain, as will the latest U.S. negotiations blitz.

Three issues related to this conflict that are crucial to understand are: historic guilt, colonial responsibility, and the U.S. “special relationship” with Israel.

Today’s global powers bear a tremendous amount of historic guilt, not only, as is popularly believed, for the anti-Semitism their ancestors practiced against Jews. This was very real throughout the 19th and 20th centuries – and earlier – and it was rampant in mainly white, Christian European places like Germany, Poland, France, Austria, and, yes, even in the U.S.

But these countries should also understand their historic responsibility for making the Palestinians pay for European and American crimes. Their guilt vis-à-vis Jews has hobbled their objectivity and skewed their capacity to see the acts of Israel for what they have been, and continue to be: crimes against humanity.

Long before the Holocaust, the political ideology of Zionism charted a path towards ethnically cleansing Palestine from its native Muslim and Christian Palestinian population, aiming to create what was dubbed a “Jewish State.” This colossal, historic injustice of dispossessing Palestinians is no longer a point of contention: even Israeli historians have meticulously documented this fact.

Furthermore, many of those same global powers, led by the U.S., were born out of a colonial history that displaced indigenous populations. As such, these powers see the Israeli enterprise as very similar to their own and find it difficult to hold Israel accountable for fear that this will then boomerang on them.

Thus, instead of seeing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for what it really is – ongoing colonialism – these powers prefer to frame the conflict as one in which the parties have equally valid, competing narratives that require a partition of the land. And meanwhile, as they remain transfixed on this outdated partition paradigm, they can offer no explanation as to why their respective governments allowed the reality on the ground to gradually render this solution unfeasible.

Ever since the New York Times headline of May 14, 1948 - “ZIONISTS PROCLAIM NEW STATE OF ISRAEL” – the U.S. has taken sides in this conflict, arming, funding, diplomatically covering for, and politically and militarily planning with Israel in its determination (always camouflaged in euphemisms) to ethnically cleanse Palestine.

Israel worked hard to cast the U.S. support in cement. Israeli leaders understood very well the inherent weaknesses of an open political system and wasted no time in creating a pro-Israel lobby that transformed what is supposed to be a foreign affairs issue into a U.S. domestic issue. Israel’s domestication of the U.S. political scene – courtesy of American proxies – is alive and well today; just ask newly appointed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

U.S. president Barack Obama epitomizes this reality. During his recent trip to Israel, he visited the Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum) to declare that Israel’s future existence and security as a “strong Jewish state” would ensure that there will never be another holocaust.

What did he mean? Was the idea to imply that if Israel, as a “Jewish state,” ceased to exist (like other states with a racially-based raison d’etre, such as the U.S. prior to the Civil War or South Africa during its Apartheid era), then Jews in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, would be slaughtered?!

Adding insult to injury, Obama then did a huge favor to Israel’s right wing by going outside official protocol to lay a wreath on the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the political ideology of Zionism.

Through his actions, intentionally or otherwise, Obama gave credence to the ‘right’ of a Jewish state in Palestine, while ignoring the indigenous people of Palestine – including Christians, Muslims and even some Jews – upon whose ruins the Israeli state was built. Palestinians are still struggling for survival in the face of an ethnic cleansing campaign that began more than 65 years ago and is still going on.

Indeed, Palestine is different, really different. A more basic and more relevant issue than artificial partition is still waiting to be seriously addressed: Is Israel to be a state of all its citizens—Jewish and non-Jewish—or not? The answer to this question goes to the heart of Zionism’s racially-based enterprise and opens the way to a historic reconciliation and a homecoming of Palestinian refugees to what is today called Israel.

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

CAN A law be both ridiculous and dangerous?

It certainly can. Witness the ongoing initiative of our government to enact a law that would define the State of Israel as “The Nation-State of the Jewish People”.

Ridiculous 1 – because what and who is the “Jewish people”? The Jews of the world are a mixed lot. Their only official definition in Israel is religious. In Israel, you are a Jew if your mother was a Jewess. This is a purely religious definition. In Jewish religion, your father does not count for this purpose (it is said, only half in jest, that you cannot ever be sure who your father is.) If a non-Jew wants to join the Jewish people in Israel, he or she has to convert to Judaism in a religious ceremony. Under Israeli law, one ceases to be a Jew if one adopts another religion. All these are purely religious definitions. Nothing national about it.

Ridiculous 2 – The Jews around the world belong to other nations. They are not being asked by the promoters of this law whether they want to belong to a people represented by the State of Israel. They are automatically adopted by a foreign state. In a way, this is another form of attempted annexation.

It is dangerous for several reasons. First of all, because it excludes the citizens of Israel who are not Jews – a million and a half Muslim and Christian Arabs and about 400 thousand immigrants from the former Soviet Union who were allowed in because they are somehow related to Jews. Recently, when the army Chief of Staff laid little flags (instead of flowers) on the graves of fallen soldiers, he skipped the grave of one such non-Jewish soldier who gave his life for Israel.

Even more dangerous are the possibilities this law opens for the future. It is only a further short step from there to a law that would confer automatic citizenship on all Jews in the world, thus tripling the number of Jewish citizens of Greater Israel and creating a huge Jewish majority in an apartheid state between the sea and the river. The Jews in question will not be asked.

From there, another short step would be to deprive all non-Jews in Israel of their citizenship.

The (Jewish) sky is the limit.

BUT ON this occasion I would like to dwell on another aspect of the proposed law: the term “Nation-State”.

The nation-state is an invention of recent centuries. We tend to believe that it is the natural form of political structure and that it has always been so. That is quite wrong. Even in Western culture, it was preceded by several other models, such as feudal states, dynastic states and so on.

New social forms are created when new economic, technological and ideological developments demand them. A form that was possible when the average European never travelled more than a few kilometers from his place of birth became impossible when roads and railways dramatically changed the movement of people and goods. New technologies created immense industrial capabilities.

For societies to compete, they had to create structures that were big enough to sustain a large domestic market and to maintain a military force strong enough to defend it (and, if possible, to grab territories from their neighbors). A new ideology, called nationalism, cemented the new states. Smaller peoples were subdued and incorporated in the new big national societies. Presto: the Nation-State.

This process needed a century or two to become general. Zionism was one of the last European national movements. As in other aspects – such as colonialism and imperialism - it was a late-comer. When Israel was founded, the European nation-states were already on the verge of becoming obsolete.

WORLD WAR II hastened the demise of the nation-state for all practical purposes. Huge economic units like the USA and the Soviet Union made countries like Spain and Italy, and even like Germany and France, much too small to compete. The European Common Market came into being. Large economic federations supplanted most of the old nation-states.

New technologies hastened the process. Change became more and more rapid. While the new regional structures were being formed, they too were already becoming obsolete. Globalization is an irreversible process. No nation or combination of nations can solve the apocalyptic problems of mankind.

Climate change is a world problem that urgently needs world-wide cooperation. So is the danger created by nuclear weapons that will soon be acquired by violent non-state groups. A photo taken in Timbuktu is immediately seen in Kamchatka. A hacker in Australia can silence entire industries in America. Bloody dictators can be brought before world justice in The Hague. An American youngster can revolutionize the lives of people in Zimbabwe. Deadly pandemics can travel within hours from Ethiopia to Sweden.

For all practical purposes, the world is now one. But human consciousness is far, far slower than technology. While the nation-state has become anachronistic, nationalism is still alive and killing.

HOW TO bridge the gap? The European Union is an instructive example.

At the end of World War II, thinking people realized that World War III could mean the end of Europe, if not the end of the world. Europe had to be united, but nationalism was rampant. In the end, the compromise model proposed by Charles de Gaulle was adopted: the nation-states would remain, but some real power would be transferred to a kind of confederation.

This made sense. The common market was born and steadily enlarged, a common currency was adopted. And now an economic earthquake threatens to bring the whole edifice down.

Why? Not because of the surplus of concentration, but because of the lack of it.

I am not an economist. Indeed, no renowned professor ever taught me the science of economics (or anything else). I just try to apply common sense to this problem as to all others.

Common sense told me right from the beginning that a common currency could not exist without common economic governance. It cannot possibly function when every little “nation-state” within the currency-zone has its own state budget and economic policy.

The founding fathers of the United States were faced with this problem and decided upon a federation and not a confederation – in other words, a strong central government. Thanks to that wise decision, when Nebraska has a problem, Illinois can spring in. The economy of all 50 states is practically run by Washington DC. The common currency does not just mean the same greenbacks, but the same powerful central bank.

Now Europe is faced with the same choice. It will either break apart – an unthinkable disaster – or abandon the Gaullist recipe. The diverse nation-states, from Malta to Sweden, must give up a huge chunk of their independence and sovereignty and transfer it to the hated bureaucrats in Brussels. One budget for all.

If this happens – a big “if” – what will remain of the nation state? There will be national soccer teams, with all the nationalist and racist hullabaloo. France may still invade Mali, with the consent of its main European partners. Greeks can still be proud of their ancient past. Belgium will still be plagued by its bi-national troubles. But the nation-state will be more or less an empty shell.

I predict, as I did before, that by the end of this century (when some of us will not be around anymore) there will be some kind of world governance in place. It will probably be called by some other name, but the major problems facing humankind will be managed by strong and effectual international bodies. There will be new problems (there always are): how to maintain democracy in such a global structure, how to sustain human values, how to channel aggressive emotion, now released in wars, into harmless activities.

In this brave new world, what about the nation-state? I believe that it will still be there as a cultural and nostalgic phenomenon, with certain local functions, like today’s municipalities. Probably there will be even more nation-states. When the states are stripped of most of their functions, they may well split into their component parts. Bretons and Corsicans, who were forced by nationalism to join the larger unit called France, may want to live in states of their own within a unified world.

LEAVING THE realm of wild speculation and returning to our own little world: what about this “Nation-State of the Jewish People”?

As long as the world consists of nation-states, we shall have our own. And by the same logic, the Palestinian people will have one, too.

Our state cannot be a nation-state of a non-existent nation. Israel must and will be the nation-state of the Israeli nation, belonging to all Israeli citizens living in Israel, Arabs and other non-Jews included. And to nobody else.

Israeli Jews who feel a strong attachment to the Jews around the world, and Jews around the world who feel a strong attachment to Israel, can certainly maintain and even strengthen their attachment. Similarly, Arab citizens can maintain their attachment to the Palestinian nation and the Arab world at large. And the non-Jewish Russians to their Russian heritage. By all means. But that does not concern the state as such.

When peace comes to this tortured part of the world, the states of Israel and Palestine may join a regional organization extending from Iran to Morocco, on the lines of the EU. They will join the ranks of the march of humanity towards a functioning modern world-wide structure to save the planet, prevent wars between states or communities and further the well-being of human beings (yes, and animals, too) everywhere.

Utopia? Certainly. But that's how today's reality would have looked to Napoleon.

A leaflet was distributed early this week in Nablus calling for a halt to the security collaboration with Israel in the West Bank. That very day, the Palestinian Preventive Security agency arrested a key activist of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was behind the leaflet. The man was released within a few hours, but an acquaintance who visited him related that the signs of the beating he received were still visible on his body.

It’s likely that the arrest and beating will be part of the statistics contained in next year’s report of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights ‏(ICHR‏). They will be contained under the rubrics of “Violations of the right to personal security and physical safety, especially in the form of torture and ill treatment ‏(during detention‏)” and “Violations of the right to freedom of expression.”

The report for 2012, published on Tuesday, states that last year, the ICHR documented 306 violations in the category of torture and ill-treatment − 172 in the West Bank and 134 in the Gaza Strip. This is a considerable increase over 2011, when 214 cases of ill-treatment and abuse of persons in detention were recorded. The past year saw an increase of 10 percent in the overall number of complaints by residents of the Palestinian Authority regarding violations of their rights by the authorities − 3,185 ‏(of them, 812 in the Gaza Strip‏) in 2012, as compared to 2,876 (831 in Gaza).

However, there were actually more complaints in 2010 (‏3,828‏). Thus, the numerical oscillations do not necessarily reflect a change for the worse or for the better in the number of human-rights violations in practice, only in the number of complainants who were persuaded that they had nothing to fear and must not remain silent.

The report − with its litany of abuses and its monitoring of the wrongs that were righted and those that are continuing to be perpetrated − was distributed Tuesday to dozens of invitees to the ICHR’s public assembly, held in the Movenpick Hotel in Ramallah. Those in attendance included cabinet ministers, the prosecutor general, representatives of the bureau of President Mahmoud Abbas, senior figures in the security forces and district governors.

These gatherings have created a tradition of speaking truth to power – albeit weak and subordinate to Israel. This is the 18th report issued by the ICHR since the commission was founded by presidential order of Yasser Arafat in 1993, making it a state institution. Its role is to demand that the official bodies − civil and security alike − uphold the rule of law and fulfill their obligations to the Palestinian citizens, and maintain their human rights.

Governments have come and gone, one president has died and another was elected to succeed him, prime ministers have resigned, an intifada broke out, Israeli military attacks followed one another in rapid succession, Gaza disengaged from the West Bank − but the ICHR has pursued its goal unwaveringly. It records complaints, takes up matters with local authorities, monitors developments, deters, petitions the courts and submits reports ‏(first to the PA president, then to the prime minister and afterward to the public‏).

Underlying the rigid ceremoniousness of the ICHR and its evolution into an organized bureaucracy with its own routine is a clear philosophy: conditions of foreign rule and military assaults must not be used as excuses to cheapen human life and infringe upon people’s rights.

Death tops the list

The report contains a list of 140 Palestinians who were killed in 2012 under unnatural circumstances ‏(and not by the Israeli army or in road accidents‏). Among the causes of death were the collapse of a tunnel in Rafah, home accidents, medical negligence, murder at the hands of unknown assailants, and brawls between families. The ICHR insists that the authorities examine and investigate every case of unnatural death. Each instance is elaborated: “investigative file opened,” “no examination made,” “no details made available,” “no results.”

Topping the list of violations is death: Eleven Palestinians died in detention facilities, two in the West Bank and nine in Gaza ‏(of whom seven were accused of collaborating with Israel and were murdered by unknown armed attackers‏). In Gaza, six convicted persons who were condemned to death were executed contrary to a law which requires the president to sign the death sentence. The courts in the West Bank have stopped handing down the death penalty, but the recommendation/demand by the ICHR to erase the death penalty from the penalty code has not yet been adopted. The most widespread infringement of rights − or, at least, the one most reported − is that of the right to due process ‏(789 complaints − 563 in the West Bank, 226 in the Strip‏).

This is followed, in descending order, by violation of the right to hold a position in the public service; the right to fair treatment by the authorities; the right to physical safety and security while in detention; rights of the incapacitated; the right to social security; failure to obey court orders; prevention of access to official documents; prevention of access to state judicial services; infringement of the work of the legislative council; and infringement of freedom of association and freedom of expression.

Of the complaints, 459 were lodged by women or in the name of women. These deal mainly with violation of the right to hold a job: Both in Gaza and the West Bank, the governments dismissed female teachers who were identified with the rival political stream.

There were 226 complaints by children or made in the name of children − against being placed in detention instead of in educational and corrective institutions, and against failure to protect them from exploitation and abuse.

The 325 complaints against the Preventive Security agency in the West Bank constituted the largest number of complaints against one body. Most were about torture, followed by unlawful conditions of detention and interrogation; prevention of family visits; prevention of medical treatment; and home searches without a proper warrant.

Of these cases, 212 were closed: Satisfactory results were obtained in 100 cases, unsatisfactory results in 42 cases, 23 cases were not responded to by Preventive Security, and 47 cases were not pursued at the request of the complainant. There were 106 complaints against the Gaza Strip’s equivalent of Preventive Security, known as Internal Security and subordinate to the Interior Ministry.

In 2012, 1,474 of the cases dealt with by the ICHR were closed, 46 percent (678‏) satisfactorily ‏(as compared with 36 percent in 2011‏). With regard to complaints of torture and cruel treatment of individuals in detention, the authorities, both in Gaza and the West Bank, have one response: They deny the allegations. The report’s authors note this fact, though the wording they use intimates that they do not accept the denials as the last word.

On the civil side, the bodies against which most complaints were made were the Social Affairs Ministry (310) and the Education and Higher Education Ministry (237) both in the West Bank.

Many of the violations are the result of the Palestinians’ 2007 political split into two governments. This development also added an unwritten and unforeseen task for the ICHR. The commission has become the major state body that operates both in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, and implements one policy under one administration. It’s true that the Palestinian Water Authority is also continuing, under one administration, to fulfill its thankless task of trying to develop the water and sewage infrastructures − not only in the West Bank but in the Gaza Strip as well. Apart from that, the Palestinians have two prime ministers, two education ministers, two interior ministers, two separate judicial systems, two competing state news agencies, and so on.

The Hamas authorities in Gaza have no reason to object to the presence of the Ramallah-based water authority, as only in this way will the donations and funds continue to arrive that will enable services to be provided in this near-disaster area. ‏(More than 95 percent of the water pumped in the Gaza Strip aquifer is not fit for drinking and must undergo prior treatment.‏)

In contrast, the ICHR does not provide services or money, but comes only with allegations and demands. Two years ago, Hamas threatened to shut down the ICHR offices in Gaza, claiming that in the intra-Palestinian conflict, the commission is on the side of the PA. This ignored the fact that in the West Bank, the ICHR is in the forefront of those protecting the rights of Hamas people who are arrested without trial, or are fired from their jobs, or cannot find work because of their political allegiance.

The Hamas government intended to establish a human-rights commission of its own. A great many conversations and visits by senior ICHR personnel to Gaza were needed in order to persuade Hamas that the commission is impartial in the internal conflict, and in order to dissuade it from creating yet another institutional duality. Indeed, by its sheer existence and in the wake of the work it does, the ICHR has become the leading institution that’s trying to put a stop to the tectonic drifting apart of the Palestinian society in Gaza and the society in the West Bank.

Israel’s crippling blockade of the coastal territory of Gaza is pushing desperate young Palestinians to ever more extreme measures in the search for livelihoods, despite an agreement granting Gazans greater access to their agricultural land.

In search of work, some Gazans try to enter Israel by jumping the fence that separates it from Gaza. Others continue to be shot dead or are seriously injured by Israeli soldiers as they try to farm land bordering the fence, and still others who choose an underground path die when tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt collapse.

Yet an agreement between Hamas and Israel’s COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) following a ceasefire in November stated that Gazans would be able to access most of their agricultural land in Israel’s self-declared 300-metre buffer zone, which runs along the border, by reducing the zone to 100 metres.

The buffer zone is comprised of some of Gaza’s most fertile land in a territory desperately lacking space. Gaza is one of the most densely populated territories in the world, with more than 1.5 million people squashed into an area 41 kilometres long and six to 12 kilometres wide.

Despite the Hamas-COGAT agreement, “the situation remains volatile and unpredictable, and the farmers are extremely vulnerable,” Muhammad Suliman, from the Gaza-based human rights organisation Al Mezan, told IPS. “Palestinians continue to be shot and killed in and near the buffer zone at certain times, while at other times nothing happens.”

Meanwhile, fishermen at work within the Israeli-imposed fishing zone, which was three nautical miles until Israel announced on May 21 that it would extend the zone to six nautical miles, are also being shot at and arrested.

Forced to rely on aid

A bitter paradox is unfolding in that while Gaza’s economic desperation has been somewhat buffered by a rise in international aid and work by non-governmental organisations in the strip, unemployment has skyrocketed, and Gaza is now one of the world’s most aid-dependent territories.

“More than 85 percent of Gazans are dependent on aid to survive, while youth unemployment stands at over 55 percent,” Suliman said.

“The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is going around begging the international community for donations to help Gazans survive economically,” a spokesperson for UNRWA, Chris Gunness, told IPS. “Wouldn’t it be better for Israel to lift its blockade and allow Gazans to be self-sufficient?”

“Unless the blockade is lifted and some of the world’s most entrepreneurial and business-minded people are allowed to leave Gaza in pursuit of business ventures, Gaza will remain increasingly desperate and dependent on international aid,” Gunness added.

Increasing attacks

According to Al Mezan, Israeli naval attacks on Gazan fishermen have escalated since the November ceasefire, including the sinking of six Palestinian fishing boats and damage to nine power generators and 41 lamplights used by fishermen at night during the first week of May. The Israeli navy also shot at Palestinian fishing boats in 13 separate incidents.

Al Mezan stated that last week Israelis shot with machine guns at a group of fishing boats off the coast of Beit Lahiya in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Israeli military boats arrested two men, Mahmoud Zayid, 27, and his brother Khalid, 25, from a small fishing boat, which was about 400 meters off the coast and approximately 1.5 nautical miles south of the Northern Israeli restricted zone.

In another attack on May 19, Israeli naval vessels opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Deir Al-Balah in the Middle Gaza district. The boats were also within the Israeli-sanctioned fishing zone, about three nautical miles from shore, when they were attacked.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Palestinian fishermen were permitted to go 20 nautical miles out to sea. Since Israel imposed the blockade in 2006, the area has been reduced to 6 nautical miles, to devastating effect. In 2006, 2,500 tonnes of sardine were caught, in comparison to 234 tonnes in 2012.

According to the international aid organisation Oxfam, such economic restrictions by Israel are pushing young Gazans to risk their lives by jumping the fence into Israel to seek employment or entering the tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.

Working in conjunction with Oxfam, Al Mezan reported that in the last year 101 people attempted to climb the perimeter fence, with 53 of those younger than 18. And according to Al Mezan’s Suliman, 18 Palestinians were also killed and 26 injured in the tunnels.

In one case last year, a young man, Mahmoud, and two of his friends tried to climb the fence. Mahmoud’s two friends were shot dead by Israeli soldiers while Mahmoud escaped with a bullet injury to his leg. The young man had lost his previous part-time job at a café, where he earned 4 dollars a day. Desperate to help support his large family, Mahmoud had taken the risk of entering Israel.

90 Palestinians, including 11 children and three women, were killed in the buffer zone in the last three years, and as Suliman pointed out, “while some of these were fighters killed during Israel’s military assault on Gaza last November, most of those killed were civilians.”

A senior Palestinian official yesterday expressed pessimism about returning to negotiations with Israel as John Kerry, the US secretary of state, continued his efforts to revive the deadlocked peace process.

Hanan Ashrawi, an official on the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee, said that the Palestinians were "sceptical" Israel would agree to stop settlement activity to resume talks.

"It would be difficult to see a breakthrough unless the US takes a stand on the fact that the occupation cannot continue and to come up with an effective plan that has a clear time frame for negotiations," she said.

Her remarks came after Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, and Mr Kerry, who has made four visits to the region since taking office in February, met in Ramallah yesterday.

Mr Kerry held talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders yesterday in a bid to return the two sides to negotiations that collapsed in late 2010 following a dispute over the building of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Mr Kerry has pushed for the Arab Peace Initiative, a 2002 plan that offers full Arab recognition of Israel if it were to give up the occupied territories, as a framework for new talks. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has so far steered clear of Mr Kerry's proposal.

A top Israeli official yesterday also indicated that Mr Kerry's efforts would be challenged by some members of the predominantly right-wing Israeli government who oppose Palestinian statehood.

Tzipi Livni, the Israeli justice minister and a centrist political figure charged with leading negotiations with the Palestinians, told an Israeli radio station that "there are ideological differences at the heart of the government" on the Palestinian issue.

Suggesting that settlers and their supporters in the government were taking advantage of the stalemate to expand settlements, she added that the lack of negotiations "only serves the interests of those who think that each passing day allows them to build a new house".

Mr Kerry himself yesterday conceded that his peace efforts faced scepticism on both sides. Speaking before a meeting in Jerusalem with Mr Netanyahu, he said: "I know this region well enough to know that there is scepticism. In some corridors, there is cynicism. And there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment."

Still, he added, there have been "very serious" meetings and discussions. Indicating he wanted to make progress on issues such as addressing Israel's security concerns regarding Palestinian statehood, he said that US General John Allen, who had US and Nato forces in Afghanistan until February, was also "already here on the ground, working with his counterparts on the issues of security".

Mr Kerry appeared to be pushing for gestures from both sides.

On Monday, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the Palestinians had done all the legal work needed to join 63 United Nations agencies but were holding off on applying to give Mr Kerry's peace efforts a chance. Mr Erekat said that "there is a good opportunity now" for an attempt at restarting talks.

In November, the Palestinians angered Israel and the US after a successful diplomatic campaign resulted in the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voting to upgrade their UN status to a non-member observer state.

Some Israeli media reported this month that Mr Netanyahu had implemented a partial freeze on settlement activity in the West Bank, territory the Palestinians want for a future state along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

However, Hagit Ofran, an activist with the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, which tracks settlement activity, said "there is no freeze that we can report".

"The construction on the ground continues, the promotion of building plans in settlements continues, and the government recently announced to the supreme court that it plans to legalise four unauthorised settlements."

According to Ms Ofran, the Israeli government had not issued new tenders since taking power in March, but such a lull in issuing tenders is "not rare" and actions on the ground pointed to continued expansion of settlements, which Peace Now said occupy 9 per cent of West Bank territory.

Yossi Alpher, an Israeli political analyst, said there was no "sufficient basis of agreement between the two sides to restart negotiations" and that conditions were "not ripe for serious talks".

At least partly, he added, that is because the predominantly right-wing government of Mr Netanyahu was unlikely to "come close" to an offer that had been made by Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister from 2006 to 2009, to the Palestinians in 2008.

In 2011, Mr Olmert publicly disclosed that his offer to Mr Abbas included Israel keeping at least 5.9 per cent of the West Bank on which settlements were built, sharing Jerusalem - with the disputed city's holy sites to be overseen by a multinational committee, and allowing a limited number of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel while compensating the rest. Mr Abbas never made a concrete response to the offer, according to news reports, and peacemaking attempts were in any case derailed when Israel launched its onslaught on Gaza a few weeks later in December 2008.

William Hague has warned the Israelis and Palestinians that the prospect of a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict is slipping away and that the region faces a bleak future if the latest US-sponsored push for talks is not capitalised on.

Speaking at the end of a two-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Foreign Secretary conceded that despite four visits to the region in just two months by the US Secretary of State John Kerry there was not yet any substantial progress between the two sides.

“I don’t think we’re a position to say that necessary compromises have already been made, but minds are being concentrated and my advice to all concerned is that unless there is bold leadership to make the most of this opportunity then we face a bleak situation in the Middle East – a truly bleak situation.”

While some influential figures on both sides have expressed optimism that a breakthrough can be found, there has also been a high level of scepticism over whether Mr Kerry’s latest efforts will bear fruit. The Palestinians are especially disenchanted, a point recognised by Mr Kerry – who is also in the region – when he raised the issue of settlement building in the West Bank with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during yesterday.

Describing leaders from both sides as being “intensively engaged” in the discussions, Mr Hague called on them to grasp the latest diplomatic push, warning that it could be the last time the international community invests so much energy and time in the problem.

“It’s very important for this opportunity to be seized by all concerned. It is a moment of opportunity that will not easily recur in terms of the United States putting in tremendous energy into trying to re-start negotiations… There isn’t going to be a moment in American diplomacy [like this again]… so it is very important in weeks, not months, to make the most of this opportunity,” Mr Hague said. “We’re getting nearer now to everyone having to decide whether they’re going to be really serious about this. The moment is quite close.

“It is vital that we now have the bold, decisive leadership to allow this to succeed. I think that the consequences of it not succeeding – for both Israelis and Palestinians – would be very severe. There is a real urgency. The two-state solution is slipping away – it doesn’t have much longer to go. We never like to say that it’s the last attempt at anything – but we’re getting near…”

Despite the renewed international effort to restart the talks between the two sides, who have not met directly since 2010, there appears at this stage to suggest that the two sides are even getting to point where they are even prepared to sit down together.

Asked whether there was a Plan B, should the latest initiative fail, Mr Hague said: “I don’t think it’s helpful to speculate publicly about Plan Bs – except to say there isn’t any Plan B that comes anywhere near to Plan A.”

There are formidable obstacles in the way of any final agreement, not least the status of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital, and the right of refugees to return to any future Palestinian state.

The international community supports a two-state solution largely based on United Nations Resolution 242, passed in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, which ordered a return to borders that were in place before the conflict. The wording of the resolution requires Israel to withdraw from all occupied territories, but it is widely accepted that land swaps would be part of any deal.

Israel is insistent that any agreement takes account of its security, although there are members of the Israeli cabinet who publicly argue against the existence of a Palestinian state.

What came over Itamar Alon? No one can answer with certainty what exactly caused Alon’s sudden wild, murderous attack at a bank in Be’er Sheva. He took his secrets to the grave. But Alon’s background provides several hints.

The height of Alon’s success in his wretched life was his military service. Alon was an officer in the Israel Defense Forces’ Combat Engineering Corps and in the Border Police. His mother says he was a wonderful soldier. Everything following Alon’s military service screams failure. From this it can be assumed that something went wrong somewhere along his way from the army and Border Police to civilian life. An isolated flickering of success occurred in 2002, when Alon, the security guard, killed a terrorist in his city. He received a letter of commendation for doing so.

In the Combat Engineering Corps, and principally in the Border Police, Alon learned not just how to use a weapon but to use it with ease. He served in the territories. That has singular significance: The Border Police is the sickest corps of the occupation administration. The reasons are sociological and ethnic and are linked to the background of most of its policemen −− Russians, Druze, Ethiopians and residents of Israel’s geographic periphery, who are cynically and not coincidentally sent by Israel to be the spearhead of its violent rule over the Palestinians and who, not coincidentally, become extremely brutal.

In the Border Police, Alon learned not just how to shoot but how to behave rudely, violently and to solve problems with weapons while receiving respect and glory for doing so. The headline earlier this week that declared, “The hero that became a murderer,” is misleading. The line between hero and murderer in the territories is a very blurry one. Many cannot identify it, and there are those, like Officer Alon, who do not recognize the blurry boundary between the territories and Israel proper.

For Alon, the bastards changed the rules: What is almost allowed in Hebron is forbidden in Be’er Sheva. Not every alumnus of military service in the territories internalizes this lesson.

There is a thread that ties two other stories to Alon’s: The same day that Alon fired at every passerby at the bank, another Border Police officer, Superintendent Nir Somech, was convicted of killing his neighbor, Ben Tal. Several weeks before that another soldier from the Border Police, Golan Cohen, killed his wife, Esther Avraham. One can of course dismiss these three incidents as coincidences. It’s also possible not to.

Following the killing spree at the bank, people are talking about changing the policy regarding civilian gun ownership. This, of course, is an important step but also relatively easy. Following every war, Israel is busy with its shell shock victims. At the same time, it ignores its other no less miserable victims, those of the violent service in the territories. Many of them, who killed, arrested, hit, injured and rudely broke into homes at the dead of night, walk among us. Most of them perhaps recover from their own shell shock, but not all. Perhaps Alon was one of these.

A report published several months ago by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs presented disturbing figures: 31 percent of Vietnam veterans, 10 percent of Gulf War veterans, 11 percent of Afghanistan veterans and 20 percent of Iraq war veterans were diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Thirty percent of the 834,463 American veterans who received treatment in recent years from the department were diagnosed with PTSD.

Service in the territories is also a kind of war in terms of its mental consequences. It is always very violent. Prof. Yaakov Rofe, a mental disorder expert, wrote two days ago in Israel Hayom about Alon: “He was a man whose behavioral repertoire is characterized by violent activities and his past actions in the Border Police, which included shooting and violence. These kinds of people tend in moments of anger to vent their feelings through violence.”

It’s also worth remembering this when taking stock of the price of the occupation. Alon and his victims are part of this price. They too are victims of Israel’s hostile actions.