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.”

While the Bush administration (or shall we say ‘Bush regime’?) is pressing ahead with its short-sighted isolationist policy of urging the international community to boycott a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA), and effectively punish the Palestinian ‘people’ for freely practicing what the US itself has clearly failed to achieve through wars (i.e. spreading democracy in the Middle East), the European Union has unblocked some funds (US$ 145 million) to the Palestinians in order to meet their most pressing needs, but made it clear that it has yet to reconsider further financial assistance to the PA after Hamas is formally sworn in. Meanwhile, the UN has issued a report cautioning that the occupied Palestinian territories will face a real threat of financial and institutional collapse (basically, all-out chaos) in the immediate future, should funds be cut off.

The Palestinians, in effect, are desperately trapped in the middle of what appears to be a prolonged interim period in which the foundations of their very existence (food, water, medicine, energy, etc) are determined by decision-makers in Washington DC, whose distorted version of reality has finally clouded their ability to meet the minimal ethical standards of humanity.

Have you forgotten why the Palestinians are impoverished in the first place, why we are unable to independently sustain our own social and economic development? In case we do need to state the obvious here, we have been living (or dying) under Israel’s brutal military occupation since 1967 (not to mention since 1948), arguably as a result of your inability/unwillingness to hold Israel accountable for its repeated violation of every single principle of international law (or must the universal applicability of international law also be regulated?).

Israel’s occupation of our land has deprived us of the right to utilise our natural resources; Israel’s strangulating restrictions on our freedom of movement (within our land) has diminished our potential to trade and create jobs; Israel’s repeated destruction of our institutions has limited our ability to accelerate and uphold our nation-building process; Israel’s continued rejection of our inalienable rights and basic national aspirations (i.e. freedom, liberty, and independence, in which you take pride in your own society) has shattered our hopes for justice; and most dangerously, Israel’s premeditated targeting (killing and maiming) of our civilians has provoked the radicalisation of our traditionally secular and progressive society.

The price we must now pay for these atrocities is starvation by verdict. Or is it “…like an appointment with a dietician…the Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die” as the Israeli Prime Minister’s advisor Dov Weissglas so revoltingly and shamelessly put it, in reference to Israel’s contemplated measures towards the Palestinians under Hamas’ leadership?

Before rushing to issue ultimatums, before racing to condition international funding to the Palestinian people with Hamas’ acceptance of the state of Israel’s “right to exist,” while you continue to prolong the Palestinian people’s existence in limbo, ask Israel where it intends to draw the borders of its state: is it the June 1967 boundaries, in accordance with the universally-adopted UN Resolution 242, or is it the unilateral borders imposed by its Apartheid Wall, which annexes 46% of the West Bank, ultimately leaving the Palestinians with fragmented Bantustans to realize George W. Bush’s “enlightened” vision for “…two states, living side by side in peace?”

Meanwhile, while you continue to urge Hamas to abide by the agreements signed between the PLO and Israel since 1993, under your auspices, take a moment to consider Israel’s climactic illegal settlement expansion during the “moderate” Labour leadership of Ehud Barak, in which a total of at least 5,000 settlement housing units were built, in violation of these very agreements you want Hamas to honour.

And as you spend sleepless nights over Israel’s security paranoia in light of Hamas’ election victory, perhaps you can make good use of your time by reading about Israel’s appalling human rights record in the Palestinian territories (it is a nightmare!) Equally enlightening is the consistent pattern of Israel’s policy of rewarding any truce declared by the Palestinian side with extra-judicial killings and political assassinations.

To end on a slightly lighter note; if you are tempted to dismiss my views as “apologetic for Hamas” I am sorry to disappoint you: I am a Palestinian-Christian, and as secular as they come.

Rami Bathish is director of the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH).

Note: the views expressed in this article only represent those of its author, and not of MIFTAH.

When a friend of mine generously offered to get me a special permit to join the convoy accompanying the Latin Patriarch from Jerusalem to Bethlehem for the Christmas celebrations, I was thrilled, I accepted without hesitation. Not only was I going to drive through red traffic lights all the way to Bethlehem, but the Israeli Police and army were there to make sure it went smoothly!

I did take part in the convoy, and I did go through red lights (ostensibly); unfortunately, I had not realised that these were the red lights of my very principles as a Palestinian, principles in which I take pride. What was I doing? Why was I driving to Bethlehem under the "protection" of my occupier? The very occupier who cold-bloodedly killed more than 300 of my people over the past three months, the occupier who made half of my people refugees, the occupier who denies my people's right to freedom.

The misery did not end there and then. I had stashed a Palestinian flag under my seat to reveal once we entered the Palestinian-controlled part of Bethlehem, as a gesture of national expression. When we finally parked the cars to join the procession by foot to Manger Square, I decided to take the flag with me. A friend of mine was eager to carry the flag all the way into the Church of the Nativity, and he did. George proudly raised the only Palestinian flag in that procession, attracting foreign journalists and photographers; it was almost as glamorous as that VIP convoy.

When we entered the church, I was absolutely shocked with the reaction of a Greek Orthodox priest. The priest approached us with anger and a clear gesture of protest. According to him, "...this is no place to carry the Palestinian flag." He said that "...this church is neither Palestinian nor Greek!" Greek? I could not resist answering back, so I said calmly, yet with a clearly sharp tone, "This is Palestinian." His "intelligent" response was that we cannot go into Al-Aqsa mosque raising the Greek flag! Anyway, we had no intention of starting a quarrel (especially with a Greek Orthodox priest) so we folded the flag and wished him a Merry Christmas.

I want to unfold my flag in the face of the whole world, in every church, in every mosque, in every corner of my country. I do not need to go to my Bethlehem accompanied by Israeli soldiers or police. I am a Palestinian. My religion is rooted in Palestinian culture and heritage. It is time for Palestinian-Christians to assert themselves more clearly as an integral part of Palestinian society.

Today would have been the perfect opportunity to make that expression. If there were a thousand Palestinian flags raised alongside George's in Manger Square, CNN's camera lenses would have conveyed to the whole world a crucial and valuable message from the Palestinian-Christian community: We are here not only to celebrate Christmas, but more importantly to assert our Palestinian identity, and to take a stance against Israeli occupation and oppression.

I will not praise here the important Palestinian-Christian role throughout the history of the Palestinian struggle. By doing so, I would indirectly doubt its legitimacy. Rather, I want to question its current standing, let alone its continuity. Yet I do not think that such an inquiry is possible without, first, re-assessing today's "Palestinianness" of the Palestinian-Christian community.

This is not an article; it is not even an essay. It is simply a question. How do we (Palestinian-Christians) perceive our Palestinian identity? We are as oppressed as all Palestinians, and yet the majority of us occasionally suffer from an illusion that we "have feathers on our heads." Why?

Meanwhile, on my way back home to Ramallah, I joined a far greater convoy. It was the daily one-hour traffic jam at Qalandia refugee camp, which is caused by Israeli closures.

Nabil is a Palestinian friend of mine whose family was forced out of northern Palestine in 1948. He was born in Lebanon in 1973, lived in Tal Al-Za’tar refugee camp until the age of five, and finally moved with his family to Vienna (Austria) in 1978 due to the civil war. I met Nabil in Vienna in 1984, we attended secondary school together, and we have been best friends ever since.

On many occasions, Nabil and I would talk about Palestine, its past, its present, and its future. We would even talk admiringly about Palestinian food; the conversation often ended with a sense of homesickness. Strange, Nabil has never seen Palestine; he used to spend most of his summer vacations in Beirut, just like I used to spend mine in Jerusalem.

Yet, I have never met anybody speak so proudly of Palestine as Nabil. Whenever somebody would ask him about his original hometown in Palestine, he would reply with a passionate tone, saying “Alma, Qada’ Safad (Alma, in the suburb of Safad).”

It always struck me how Nabil spoke of “Alma, Qada’ Safad” with such pride, passion, and familiarity; sometimes I felt that he perceived ‘Palestine’ as a dream land, a perfect place untouched by the merciless hand of time. His perception of Palestine differed from mine; it was a more idealistic perception.

Today, I took a day trip to the north of Palestine; I visited Nazareth and Lake Tiberias. The freshness of spring only made the beautiful scenery between Nazareth and the Tiberias area more hypnotic. The seemingly endless green fields, the giant mountains, the colourful flowers; it really seemed like a perfect place, untouched by time.

As we descended towards Lake Tiberias, my admiration of the scenery was interrupted by the tour guide’s explanation that “…the town on top of the high mountain to the left is called Safad.” I was thrilled. I immediately thought of Nabil, and his good old "Alma, Qada’ Safad!" The tour guide explained that Safad is the highest town in Palestine; it is 900 meters above sea level, which gives it a magnificent view of Lake Tiberias and the surrounding mountains. He also explained that Safad is an old city, very much like Jerusalem, with narrow roads and plenty of ancient mosques and churches. At that moment I was happy, I had promised Nabil that when he eventually comes to visit me in Palestine, I would take him to his original hometown. Now, I thought, not only will he be able to see Safad, but he will also be proud of its beauty.

Later in the afternoon, I went to speak to the guide. He was an old man, yet his knowledge about Palestine and its history was amazing. I briefly explained to him that I have a personal interest in Safad and its surrounding villages, and I asked him whether or not there are any Palestinians living in Safad. He said that Safad was invaded by Israeli forces overnight in 1948, its Palestinian inhabitants were terrorized and driven out, and most of its surrounding villages have been demolished. “What about Alma?” I said. “Alma no longer exists,” he replied pointing to a map he had on the table, “Alma was completely destroyed in 1948.” He then pointed on his map the exact location of Alma, and explained that, instead, there is an Israeli ‘colony’ of about 2000 inhabitants living there.

Alma is now called Ammiat, in Hebrew. But for Nabil, I am sure, it will always be Alma, Qada' Safad.

Like all Palestinian refugee camps, Qalandia camp is an overcrowded ghetto where the hardship of being a refugee becomes just another reality of life; where the promise for a better future lies deep beneath the ruins of past and present conflict.

Anybody travelling into Ramallah from the south will pass through Qalandia refugee camp. I take that route daily, in the morning and in the afternoon. The seemingly endless bumpy road through the camp does not exceed one kilometre, yet it never fails to leave miles of thought in my mind; sometimes anger, sometimes sadness, and sometimes even a sense of selfish thankfulness for what I have.

Today, it left a feeling of painful guilt in my mind.

As I waited in a long line of traffic through Qalandia, I noticed a crowd of children on my right, some of them had slingshots, and others just had stones. The boys appeared to be excited about something, the kind of excitement little children have when something is about to happen. This is probably the same feeling I often had when I was a child myself, playing football or hide-and-seek, or even watching my favourite cartoon on television. What were these children doing?

On my left, at the top of a small hill overlooking the main road, I saw about a dozen Israeli soldiers, full gear, camouflaged; some even had their tear gas rifles ready. But one soldier caught my attention more than the others; he was a ‘sharpshooter’, a sniper. I must have been one of the few people who took notice of his presence. He lay on the ground, at the edge of a rock, ready to shoot, like a skilful predator disguised in the shadow of its prey. He was close enough to hit any desired target; he was close enough to kill somebody. What did this sniper have in mind?

The line of traffic between the soldiers and the children started moving again. The site of the excited children soon became another vague image in my rear view mirror, and then it disappeared.

I wondered what would happen later on in Qalandia. I wondered if any of these boys would get hurt. And I wondered if any of these boys will eventually get killed. Did the sniper hit his target? Did the predator strike its prey?

Qalandia has witnessed some of the worst clashes over the past five months. There were times when the clashes were so fierce that I had to take the alternative road to Ramallah, through the camp itself. That would be another journey into guilt and thankfulness at the same time.

The narrow roads in Qalandia, the visible poverty, and the site of bare-footed children would haunt the by-passer like a bad dream. But then again, the traffic always seems to find its way out of Qalandia.

Its 9:30 in the evening, a news report just confirmed that a 15-year old boy was shot dead in Qalandia today. I guess the sniper hit his target.

Perhaps the line of traffic must finally make a stop in Qalandia, and stand between the prey and the predator, in the narrow roads of the camp, with the bare-footed Awlad Al-Mukhayyam.