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.”

It was not just among Americans that Barack Obama raised great expectations when he won last year’s US presidential elections. In this part of the world, people believed that he would solve the Palestinian issue. Repeated signs from him that restarting and solving the Middle East peace process was a foreign policy priority reinforced that view. As a result, Arab and Muslim attitudes toward the US softened.

Now, however, people are beginning to lose confidence. Despite talks with Arab leaders, despite Obama’s Cairo speech about re-engagement with the world of Islam, they see the peace process once again bogged down, this time on the issue of settlements. They recognize that immediate responsibility lies with Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu who, by refusing Washington’s demands that settlement expansion stop, has cunningly shunted the process into a siding — exactly where he wants it. But they also see, in the face of such calculated obduracy, Obama’s unwillingness to stand up to the Israelis. There are not threats, no warnings of a boycott, nothing to show that Washington is serious about a settlement.

Compare this to the Washington’s spat with Switzerland, which is, after all, also supposed to be an ally and friend.

In order to find out if some Americans were cheating the taxman, Washington demanded the Swiss divulge details on US citizens with Swiss bank accounts. When the Swiss said it went against their banking secrecy laws, Washington threatened sanctions. Faced with that, the Swiss capitulated: Washington will get the bank details.

Why no similar action against Israel over the settlements? Yet again, it is one rule for Israel, another for everyone else.

Arab faith in Obama is beginning to wear thin as a result. That is dangerous. Expectations dashed can too easily turn into fury — and that would play straight into the hands of the terrorists and America’s enemies. Having let everyone believe that he was different to previous presidents and that he would bring peace to the Middle East, Obama has to deliver.

Washington thinks that it has to sort out all the details before a settlement can be finalized. There lies the problem. There will never be peace if all the details have to be sorted out first.

Obama can sever the Gordian knot by simply saying that on a certain date, the US will recognize Palestine. That will concentrate minds wonderfully, especially Israeli minds. And if Palestine borders have not been fully agreed with the Israelis by that date, so what? Everyone knows that Arab peace plan, endorsed by the Arab League, offers full recognition to Israel in return for returning to pre-1967 borders.

In any case, there are plenty of independent countries with border problems or someone sitting on part of their territory — Cyprus, Georgia and Azerbaijan to name but three. Moreover, recognition is not the end of the process; it is merely the start of a new chapter.

Next week Obama gets down to work again after the summer break. Palestine has to be a priority. He has to take a high-profile step that shows he is determined to make peace happen and that he is not going to be stopped by Netanyahu’s machinations. Simply announcing a resumption of the peace process will not be enough. It has been resumed so many times before to no effect. Without a bold and imaginative step, Arab and Muslim trust in Obama will wither.

When Israeli officials this week meet US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, when President Barack Obama unveils his Middle East peace plan at the UN in New York next month, and when Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas hold a possible first encounter on the sidelines of the General Assembly, the common denominator issue will be Israeli settlement building. The Jewish outposts have for decades been one of the biggest obstacles in the way of a settlement but recently the issue has taken on a new dimension.

Israel and the US have apparently been working on a package deal whereby the former would accept a moratorium on settlement building for a period ranging from six months to two years but would insist on completing thousands of settler units currently being built throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel will also not accept any restrictions on what it does in Jerusalem, part of which is occupied territory.

Israel agreed to freeze settlement activity as part of the 2003 road map peace plan but it looks as if it will not be the comprehensive freeze that the Americans — and Palestinians — wanted. Yet the Israelis are apparently confident that the Americans would persuade the Palestinians to go along with the deal they’re poised to make.

Although the settlements are illegal, Israeli officials are sticking like glue to the unwritten understanding with the administration of US President George W. Bush that allowed limited expansion within existing settlements to continue to allow for the “natural growth” of the communities living there. Armed with such US protection, Netanyahu’s government has been building settlements here, there and everywhere. It claims it has not published tenders for new housing units in settlements since it came to power in April. But the Israeli group Peace Now, which monitors building in settlements, says government-backed projects make up only 40 percent of construction and that building has been continuing on the ground in many places. Peace Now underscored the mendacity of Israeli claims that settlement construction was being frozen, saying that in the first half of 2009 Israel constructed 600 new buildings in West Bank settlements. The construction of permanent homes has risen by eight percent since last year.

Peace Now also said there were currently 40,000 new buildings authorized for construction. Construction was also under way in 10 out of 23 outposts that Defense Minister Ehud Barak committed to ending,

Abbas will supposedly not reopen negotiations until Israel halts its settlement activities, however, the Obama administration seems to have lost the showdown with the Netanyahu government over the settlement issue and is now hoping that settlements can be treated more satisfactorily in bilateral talks between the two sides. This assumption is a definitive retreat from the original US position that Israel must first freeze settlement construction as part of its obligations under the road map.

Even though the Palestine Authority is committed not to re-engage in talks without a settlement freeze, there are signs it is retreating from this position, if only to demonstrate to the Americans, for the umpteenth time, Palestinian willingness to engage in talks in the face of complete Israel intransigence. This risks losing for the PA its recently enhanced popularity if another exhausting round of peace talks with Israel proves fruitless, as most Palestinians believe it will be, barring decisive US intervention. However, such intercession looks very unlikely.

Egypt continues its efforts to mediate between Fatah and Hamas; Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has publicly upbraided them for their destructive divisions; yet Fatah and Hamas refuse to put their dispute aside and work together for the Palestinians’ common good.

There have been seemingly endless rounds of talks between the two in Egypt in which agreements are made at one session only to be disputed and unmade at the next. There was supposed to be a final round today to include other Palestinian bodies and interest groups, at which there was to be signed an agreement. As expected, it has been postponed — until after Eid. This is unacceptable — and no one should have any illusion that the delay is out of respect for Ramadan; on the contrary Ramadan is the perfect time for seeking reconciliation. It is because there remains a yawning chasm between the two groups. There is no agreement on any of the major points — coordination between them, a unity government, joint security forces or the upcoming elections — just seething hatred.

Hamas insists that there will be no elections in Gaza before a deal is agreed yet refuses to make the necessary compromises for one to happen, insisting as well on preconditions (notably that Fatah release the hundreds of Hamas members it is holding).

Fatah is no better; it has just arrested more Hamas members on the West Bank and sacked 17 pro-Hamas teachers there.

The truth is that so great is their mutual hatred they cannot bring themselves to end the feud. For both, the objective remains the humiliation and destruction of the other. Hamas is determined to remain in control of Gaza, Fatah of the West Bank. Both refuse to budge, fearing that whoever blinks first will be the loser. This week’s prisoner release orders, of 50 Fatah prisoners in Gaza then of 200 Hamas prisoners in the West Bank, was just a propaganda ploy, each side hoping to present themselves in good light and ensuring the other is blamed for the foundering talks.

The Palestinian people are being held ransom by a leadership that is small minded and selfish. As King Abdullah said in his appeal earlier this month, the divide has been more destructive to the Palestinians cause than years of Israeli aggression. But Fatah and Hamas are not listening — not to King Abdullah, not to Egypt, not to their own people desperate for a united leadership to stand up to the Israelis and win them their place in the sun.

Such arrogance is despicable. It is no wonder that ordinary Palestinians and other Arabs increasingly hold the two organizations in contempt.

The Palestinians are a people divided because of their leaders’ shameful rivalry — and the Israelis rule. It is all very well blaming the Israelis for creating the circumstances and taking advantage of them, but only Fatah and Hamas can change this destructive paradigm. Others can help, can urge reconciliation. Only the two groups can make the compromises needed if there is to be a settlement. They have missed this deadline. They should use this Ramadan to reach out in penitence, to forgive each other, work together and become the real leaders the Palestinians need. At present they are a squabbling outrage. That suits the Israelis perfectly.

A couple of months ago, Israel’s controversial, very right-wing foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, was in London for talks with the British government as part of a four-nation European trip. It was his first visit abroad as foreign minister and it would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when he met British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, if only to have seen the body language. All the reports point to a cold get-together. Miliband who, only a couple of days earlier in Washington, had been effusive in his praise of President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace plans, calling them a once-in-a-generation opportunity to end the intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is said to have been unhappy at having to meet Lieberman, who had virtually invited himself to London. The fact that there was almost no press coverage of the visit certainly implies that. It was the same during his visits to Paris, Rome and Berlin. No photo calls, no joint press conferences. None of the foreign ministers wanted to be seen near Lieberman. We cannot blame them.

It seems moreover, that he will not be going back to France in a hurry. The French do not want him back. The Israeli media are full of reports that when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Paris last week for talks, President Nicolas Sarkozy advised him to get rid of Lieberman and replace him with former foreign minister and now opposition leader Tzipi Livni. Sarkozy allegedly went so far as to say that he would never meet Lieberman. To Netanyahu’s comment that in private, Lieberman is very nice and very different, Sarkozy’s response that right-wing French leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was also quite charming in private was a fair comment, and the fact that he then felt constrained to withdraw the comparison when Netanyahu protested does not undermine the fundamental truth of what he said. The two are very similar; both are neo-fascists. There is a history of vile politicians being “nice” in private. Hitler was said to be charming in private. Saddam Hussein may have been nice in private as well, although given that he was prone to murdering members of his own family, that may be taking the comparison too far.

Needless to say, Lieberman’s supporters are strutting around with unconvincing moral indignation, calling this an unacceptable intrusion into Israel’s internal affairs. That is rich coming from a state that is never backward in commenting on foreign politicians’ merits and their suitability for the jobs they hold; their record of openly interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, not least the US, is monumental. In any event, Sarkozy’s reported comments were in private and it is perfectly normal for international figures to discuss such matters privately. It would be strange if they did not.

However, while we fully understand Sarkozy’s distaste, we do not agree with him. We do not think that Netanyahu should get rid of his odious foreign minister. Lieberman is the real, ugly malevolent face of an ugly and malevolent government. The more the rest of the world sees him, the more it will be brought face to face with that fact. It may well be uncomfortable for Sarkozy and others who have to meet such repellent characters, but to suggest that an oppressive and arrogant regime should conduct its dealings with the rest of the world through a more politically acceptable mouthpiece sounds like a call to hypocrisy.