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.

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."

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.”

A prisoner swap with Hamas for the release of St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit will likely take place after January but before the Palestinian elections, which are to be held by June, The Jerusalem Post learned on Thursday.

The scheduled release on Friday of 20 Palestinian female security prisoners in exchange for a video recording of Schalit was an indication that talks on an exchange are on a "positive track," a foreign official involved in the mediation said, but he stressed that this did not mean a swap was imminent.

According to the latest credible assessments, Hamas will try to use a Schalit swap to gain votes in the upcoming Palestinian Authority elections, and the negotiations with Israel over the IDF tank gunner will likely advance in lock-step with the progress made in Hamas's reconciliation talks with Fatah in Egypt.

Earlier this week, Hamas announced that it had accepted an Egyptian proposal to hold presidential and parliamentary elections, initially scheduled for January, sometime in the first half of 2010.

"Hamas will want to use a massive prisoner swap to its advantage in the elections against Fatah," a foreign official said. "This is why the swap will likely take place sometime in the first part of next year."

On Wednesday, the security cabinet approved the release of the 20 prisoners in exchange for an up-to-date videotape of Schalit, in what is perceived as the first concrete move toward freeing the soldier since he was kidnapped more than three years ago.

The decision to release the Palestinians came at the recommendation of the team working for Schalit's release, headed by the prime minister's point man on the issue, Hagai Hadas, and was unanimously approved by the 15-member security cabinet.

Negotiations between Israel and Hamas, according to foreign sources, are currently focused on two issues - the final Israeli approval of the 450 names on the list of prisoners Hamas demands be released, and Hamas approval of an Israeli demand that the prisoners be released only to the Gaza Strip or overseas, and not to the West Bank.

Israel is under pressure from Egypt to approve additional names on the list. It has already approved more than half of them.

Hizbullah recruited an Israeli-Arab and ordered him to collect intelligence on IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi ahead of plans to assassinate him to avenge the death of the guerrilla group's military leader Imad Mughniyeh.

On Monday, an indictment was filed at the Petah Tikva District Court against Rawi Sultani, a 23-year-old Israeli-Arab from the town of Tira, alleging that he was recruited by Hizbullah in the summer of 2008 when he traveled to Morocco to attend a Balad Party summer camp.

The pan-Arab summer camp takes place every year in a different country, and was also attended by other Israeli-Arabs who are Balad activists.

During his stay at the camp, Sultani allegedly met Hizbullah operative Salman Harab, and provided him with information about Ashkenazi, particularly his routine at the Kfar Saba country club where the two occasionally worked out together.

The predominantly Arab town of Tira is just north of Kfar Saba, Ashkenazi's hometown.

Harab, a 26-year-old Lebanese Shi'ite Hizbullah operative, met personally with the group of Israeli Balad activists, introduced himself as a Hizubllah member, and gave them a lecture about the conflict and struggle against Israel, read the charge sheet.

Harab is also suspected of showing the group a video from Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV station about the Second Lebanon War.

In his interrogation, Sultani, who was arrested on August 10, told the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) that during the meeting with Harab at the summer camp, he told the Hizbullah operative that he had information about Ashkenazi. Sultani allegedly remained in touch with Harab after returning to Israel from Morocco, through his phone and via the Internet.

The Shin Bet and Israel Police International Serious Crimes Unit learned of the plot by tracking Sultani's email and Facebook correspondence with Hizbullah.

In December 2008, Sultani allegedly flew to Poland and met a Hizbullah operative known as 'Sami.' At the meeting, he is said to have presented 'Sami' with information he had collected about the IDF chief of staff, as well as on different ideas he had conjured about how to assassinate Ashkenazi.

Sultani also allegedly provided 'Sami' with information about other senior Israeli officials and about IDF bases in Israel.

After returning from Poland, Sultani kept in touch with both 'Sami' and Harab, according to the indictment.

Sultani's father and lawyer, Fuad Sultani, said that his son was innocent and that the indictment had been "inflated for political reasons."

The attorney said his son wasn't aware the men he met were Hizbullah agents, and that his meeting with 'Sami' in Poland was "a regular conversation between two students."

The Shin Bet has also questioned the other Israeli-Arabs who attended the camp in Morocco and who were in touch with Harab. After they denied maintaining contact with Harab, they were warned by the Shin Bet and were released

In a rare move, the Shin Bet on Monday released a photograph of Hizbullah Harab.

The plot against Ashkenazi is believed to have been part of Hizbullah's efforts to avenge the February 2008 assassination of Mughniyeh in a car bombing in Damascus. While Israel did not claim responsibility for the assassination, Hizbullah has declared its intention to avenge Mughniyeh's death by striking at Israel.

According to latest intelligence assessments, Hizbullah is believed to be in the midst of planning a retaliatory terror attack against Israel. According to foreign reports, a plot to bomb the Israeli embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan was recently foiled.

The assessment in the Israeli intelligence community is that Hizbullah would like to assassinate a senior Israeli official but is also trying to launch an attack overseas that will not have its direct fingerprints on.

A delegation of security officials secretly traveled to Jordan last week in an attempt to assuage concerns that Israel plans to transfer Palestinians from the West Bank to the Hashemite Kingdom, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The purpose of the visit was to ensure that strategic ties between the countries are not harmed.

The delegation was led by several officials from the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security Bureau, who met with senior officials close to King Abdullah II.

The visit was scheduled as part of Israeli efforts to ease Jordanian concerns regarding a proposal National Union MK Arye Eldad made in the Knesset two months ago that Palestinians be given Jordanian citizenship.

At the time, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh summoned Israel's envoy to Amman, Ya'acov Reuven, and issued a strong protest "over a debate in the Knesset on a motion on a so-called two states for the two peoples on the two banks of the Jordan River."

Defense officials said this week that despite Israeli assurances that the Netanyahu government was not planning on evicting Palestinians to Jordan, Amman's anxiety was still high, likely an indication that "the Jordanians are still concerned that Israel is considering Jordan as an alternative for a Palestinian state," one official said. "The visit was aimed at assuaging those fears and ensuring that strategic relations between the countries stay on track."

Alarmed by rumors regarding a US-backed scheme to turn Jordan into a homeland for Palestinians, Abdullah is planning a series of steps to foil any attempt to resettle Palestinian refugees in the kingdom.

The rumors were triggered by talks about a plan to establish a decentralized government in Jordan, where local communities would enjoy some form of autonomy.

The Jordanian authorities' decision to revoke the citizenship of Palestinians in Jordan - who make up more than 70 percent of the kingdom's population - added fuel to the fire by giving substance to the rumors.

At least 40,000 Palestinians are believed to have lost their status as Jordanian citizens in recent months.

Jordanian Interior Minister Nayef al-Kadi explained that the decision to rescind the citizenship of Palestinians was taken to preempt ostensible schemes to transform the kingdom into a Palestinian state.

"Jordan is not Palestine just as Palestine is not Jordan," the minister said in defense of the measure. "We want to help the Palestinians return to their homeland."

In recent months, the kingdom has been awash in rumors about a US-Israeli plan to turn Jordan into a Palestinian state.

The rumors, which increased in light of the revocation of the Palestinians' Jordanian citizenship, prompted the monarch to pay a surprise visit to the headquarters of the Jordanian Armed Forces over the weekend.

Addressing the army commanders, Abdullah said the rumors were aimed at harming Jordan's national unity and stability.

He added that the rumors were being circulated by people "with suspicious agendas" and urged all Jordanians to confront this "disease."

The king said that Jordan's commitment to the right of return of Palestinian refugees is "constant and unchangeable."

"No power can impose a position on Jordan that contradicts its interests," he said. "I stress again and clearly that there is no power that can dictate to us anything that is against the interests of Jordan and Jordanians."

The king also told his army commanders that the US had never pressured Jordan to absorb Palestinian refugees.

The king did not say who was behind the rumors, but he added that the majority of those who were trying to harm unity were inside the kingdom. "This is shameful and religiously prohibited," he said.

Political analysts in Amman said the monarch was "extremely nervous" because of the growing rumors. They said that the king and others members of the royal family were convinced that the new government in Israel was quietly pushing for the idea of transforming Jordan into a homeland for the Palestinians.

One analyst said that the king was planning to form a new government that would be able to "confront the grave challenges" facing Jordan.

He said that the fact that the king visited the army headquarters without being accompanied by Prime Minister Nader Dahabi was a sign of his dissatisfaction with the performance of the present government with regards to the rumors.

"The king is taking the rumors too seriously," the analyst said. "He's probably justified in doing so because many Jordanians are beginning to believe in the conspiracy theory according to which the future Palestinian state will be established in our kingdom."

Jordanian newspaper columnist Yasser Abu Hilaleh expressed fear that Israel had already begun carrying out a policy of transfer against Palestinians living in the West Bank.

"Many Palestinians have also lost their rights after leaving the West Bank to study or for medical treatment and did not return home," he noted. "The essence of the problem is how to help the Palestinians stick to their lands."•

Israel has a thing with timing, particularly around important diplomatic meetings.

In January, 2007, for example, then-prime minister Ehud Olmert flew down to Sharm el-Sheikh for a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Shortly before Olmert's plane took off, the IDF launched a rare daytime raid on downtown Ramallah in search of a terror suspect. Pictures of the raid - in which four people were killed and 20 wounded - were broadcast live on Al Jazeera. Needless to say, this was not constructive for the Olmert-Mubarak meeting.

On Monday, timing was again not taken into consideration with the Defense Ministry revealing in a court affidavit it had approved the construction of 50 homes in the West Bank settlement of Adam under a master plan for the Binyamin Region that includes the construction of 1,450 housing units.

The affidavit was filed just hours before Defense Minister Ehud Barak left for New York to meet with the US Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell to discuss America's demand that Israel stop exactly what the Defense Ministry affidavit was approving - continued settlement construction.

There are two possibilities regarding the bad timing in this case. One option is that the court had simply set the date for filing the affidavit without taking any external factors into account. However, one could ask why the Defense Ministry, which knew early last week about Barak's meeting with Mitchell, didn't just ask the court for an extension - something the ministry often does in similar cases.

The second possibility is that the filing of the affidavit as Barak left for the US was done on purpose to send a message to the Obama administration that Israel does not plan to cave in completely to America's demand for a settlement freeze. The construction in Adam is meant to pave the way for the evacuation of the illegal settlement of Migron, which is in itself just as important to the US - if not more so, since the outpost was built on private Palestinian land.

Barak, according to some officials, plans to offer the Americans a three month freeze on construction but will claim Israel needs to allow natural growth to continue, particularly in the settlement blocs.

So while Barak is limited in what he can propose to Mitchell regarding the settlements, he does have some maneuvering room on the issue of freedom of movement in the West Bank, the transfer of security over Palestinian towns to the Palestinian Authority and the evacuation of illegal outposts.

In their meeting, Barak will present Mitchell with a list of the gestures Israel has made to the PA over the past 18 months, including the removal of 21 manned roadblocks in the West Bank. A year-and-a-half ago, there were 35 manned checkpoints. Today, there are 14. The IDF has also removed over 100 dirt mounds that had been placed on roads in the West Bank, effectively blocking Palestinian traffic.

However, according to the Americans there is a lot more that can be done.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there are still 68 manned checkpoints throughout the West Bank, and an additional 24 "partial checkpoints" which are staffed, according to the agency, on an ad-hoc basis. In addition the checkpoints, OCHA claims that there are 521 obstacles in the West Bank - such as earth mounds - that block off Palestinian access to West Bank roads.

What was unique about OCHA's report was that it was the product of a first-of-its-kind joint survey of the West Bank roadblock situation by the UN and the IDF. The joint tour of the West Bank roadblocks was initiated by Col. Benny Shik, the IDF Central Command's chief engineering officer, who is responsible for dismantling the checkpoints.

The explanation for the discrepancy between the OCHA and IDF numbers has to do with the way one defines a checkpoint. The 14 that the IDF says it maintains in the West Bank are deep inside the territory and could potentially impact Palestinian movement even though they are not manned on a full-time basis.

After removing the 21 roadblocks over the past 18 months, a Palestinian can now travel from Jenin to Hebron without passing even one roadblock or undergoing even one inspection. While some roadblocks remain in the territory, the IDF says they don't have a major impact on Palestinian freedom of movement. At the same time, OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni is considering lifting some of the remaining checkpoints.

OCHA, on the other hand, includes unmanned checkpoints in its count. In addition, the OCHA number includes the crossings into Israel, since some of them are located just over the Green Line. The IDF does not count these since they are manned by the Border Police and do not impact Palestinian freedom of movement. There is also the question of OCHA's political motivations and whether its reports are objective. Israel doesn't think they are.

The motivation of both sides for conducting the joint tour, though, is clear. The IDF has an interest in getting the word out about the roadblocks it has lifted. At the same time, OCHA has the opportunity to obtain its information from the source, which is in this case the IDF.