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.”

When Yossi Alpher and I sat in my Jerusalem office in the year 2000, discussing plans for the first bitterlemons web magazine, we never imagined that it would grow to encompass four different publications and two books, or that it would span 12 years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

That was before the second Palestinian uprising and its crushing losses, before the construction of Israel's wall and the blockade of Gaza that have physically divided us, before 9/11 that made villains of Arabs and Muslims in the West, before the population of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank had finished doubling despite the peace accords. And, of course, it was before the Arab uprisings that are transforming the region at this very moment.

In the beginning of this project, my hope was that bitterlemons would provide a venue for the Palestinian voice to be heard. And to this day, I remain proud that we seem to have achieved this--that top international policymakers were able to read the opinions of Palestinians from many walks of life and political backgrounds and engage their ideas on this forum.

(In this regard, it remains a criticism of mine and others who observe the media that Palestinians are rarely heard on their own terms. Instead, they are presented responding to Israeli concerns and answering western-derived questions, as if Palestinians have no independent dreams or visions. We must all do better.)

Often in this project, we as editors have felt lucky. In the foreword to "The Best of Bitterlemons" compilation published in 2007, I noted that we rarely had trouble recruiting writers. Despite the feeling among many in the Arab world that contact with Israelis is tantamount to accepting Israel's occupation, seldom did authors decline an invitation. Lately, we have observed that this has changed, that even once-forthcoming Palestinians are less interested in sharing ideas with Israelis just across the way. Still, we have been able to present the voices of security chiefs and political prisoners, military generals and farmers losing land, spokespersons for armed groups and peaceniks in an equal and fair manner--rather differently than the situation on the ground.

Nevertheless, this achievement is bittersweet as the scenery around us grows ever more dark and uncertain. Two decades after the signing of the Declaration of Principles that many hoped would usher in the creation of a Palestinian state and independence, freedom and security, Palestinians and Israelis are barely conversational. The structures created by those agreements have atrophied, corrupted by an increasing imbalance in the Palestinian relationship with Israel. Every day, there is new word of land confiscations, arrests, demolitions, and legislative maneuvers to solidify Israel's control. Israel's political leaders are beholden to a tide of right-wing sentiment and Palestinian leaders are made to appear ever-smaller in their shrinking spheres of control.

We are now, it appears, at the lowest point in the arc of the pendulum, one that is swinging away from the two-state solution into a known unknown: an apartheid Israel. How this new "one-state" option will be transformed into a solution that provides freedom and security for all remains to be seen. We at bitterlemons are grateful to have been able to record over time the shift in this direction and hope the archive we have created will be useful to researchers for years to come.

And so, more than anything, we want to thank our readers and contributors (often one and the same) who shared their ideas with us and were not afraid to join this conversation. I personally would like to thank my co-editor Yossi Alpher for his tireless work on this shared project. The discussion will certainly continue--I am sure of this--until Palestinians achieve their freedom and self-determination by ending the Israeli occupation that started in 1967 and establishing an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alongside Israel, thereby realizing the international consensus over the two-state solution. Bitterlemons aspires to be a part of this, through new projects and platforms. But for now, we all wait with trepidation to see around the bend.

The formation of a new Israeli government coalition that includes the Kadima party was a dramatic development in Israeli politics and took many politicians and observers by surprise. It was not, however, very exciting for Palestinians. Despite their increasingly difficult conditions, and despite their interest in any change that might revive the comatose peace process with Israel, Palestinians could not find any reason to feel hope after this shift.

Like Shaul Mofaz's victory in the elections to lead Kadima, the participation of Kadima in the government coalition will not by itself produce a meaningful peace process that can end the occupation and consequently move towards peace and a two-state solution. The most convincing analysis concludes that this new coalition in Israel is aimed at achieving internal political objectives for Binyamin Netanyahu and the rest of his coalition. Among other things, it is meant to address proposed legislation that created tension within the previous coalition and made Netanyahu anxious. Also, it is meant to strengthen Netanyahu's control over his own party, given rancor he faced from far-right activists after calling for early Israeli elections (which have now been postponed).

Some analysts also expect that the coalition might be related to the prospect of war with Iran, but no one believes that this coalition will bring anything new to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The contents of Netanyahu's written reply to a letter sent by President Abbas seemed to confirm that assessment by more or less reiterating the same lines presented by the previous government coalition.

Rather, this new coalition indicates that Netanyahu is trying to take advantage of the regional environment and is getting comfortable in the reality that international actors are just not interested in investing politically in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The coming presidential election in the US, the financial crisis in Europe, and the "Arab spring" are leaving the Palestinians and their cause to the mercy of Israel's right-leaning governments. This prolonged situation is enabling Israel to continue its practices, creating new facts on the ground that will close the window of opportunity for the two-state solution.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian political scene is ripe for a solution, despite the conflict between Fateh and Hamas. This internal division is deepened, however, by the absence of any prospects for peace, making the future uncertain.

The only glimmer of hope in this gloomy situation arrived last week from Brussels in the statement of the Council of the European Union, which indicated that Europe may be moving away from verbal condemnation and critiques of Israeli violations of Palestinian rights and international law to practically holding Israel accountable. The statement's reiteration of the EU's official position on the illegality of Israeli settlements and their products was a constructive message for the Israeli and European publics. It was followed almost immediately by moves by both Denmark and South Africa, which decided that products originating with Israeli settlements in the West Bank must have different labels than those produced in Israel and should not enjoy preferential trade arrangements. This follows a similar policy step by the United Kingdom.

It is in Israel's long-term benefit to be reminded by its friends and allies that relationships with them will suffer if it continues breaking international law and circumscribing Palestinian rights in the occupied territories. Israeli positions and practices on the settlements specifically should be linked to the extent of its cooperation and friendship with other countries.

"Track II" or informal diplomacy played its most significant and constructive role in the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations prior to the Oslo breakthrough when the Palestine Liberation Organization started direct negotiations with the Israeli government. The reason track II talks flourished at that time--the late eighties and early nineties--was that Israel was refusing to deal directly with the Palestinian leadership.

To fill the void, Palestinians and Israelis worked separately to push for a peace process. And because direct talks were not possible, many of these initiatives ended in a kind of second-tier diplomacy where non-official or semi-official Palestinians met with Israelis.

After the two sides agreed to direct negotiations, which started in 1991, there was much less need for track II diplomacy because the official leaderships of both sides were able and willing to meet and negotiate directly. As such, since the Oslo negotiations, track II diplomacy has been largely marginal and fluctuated in frequency and importance, depending on the political situation and the parties' relationship. Despite the recent attempts by Israel to portray Palestinians as being unwilling to negotiate, the truth is that this conflict has been over-negotiated, a problem aggravated by the fact that the situation on the ground forces the parties into multiple and simultaneous channels of negotiations, coordination and other forms of interaction over still-unresolved political questions.

The most prominent example of track II diplomacy after the Oslo agreements was what became known as the Geneva initiative, where non-officials or officials involved outside their official capacity convened in meetings with the objective of agreeing on key final status issues in order to demonstrate that these issues are solvable. In that exercise a great variety of politicians on both sides made breakthroughs in numerous outstanding issues of the conflict. However, the actual contribution of this exercise to the formal negotiations was very, very limited. Since the Geneva Accord, there has been no official progress that was influenced or inspired by track II conclusions.

One negative reality of track II exercises is that they have been in some cases exploited and misused by opportunists who sought either to carve out a place for themselves in the political arena or were trying to make money out of them. Many donor countries, having the best intentions of trying to encourage interaction between the two sides in order to help along the formal Palestinian-Israeli relationship, have over the last 20 years encouraged project ideas and made money available for joint projects that bring Palestinians and Israelis together to do a variety of things, including activities that could be called track II efforts. In some cases, this largesse was exploited by Palestinians and Israelis who just wanted to enjoy the fruits of this generosity but didn't necessarily intend to solve political differences. This has resulted in the gradual deterioration of such efforts.

The other and more important reason that this type of diplomacy is waning can be attributed to the fact that Israel's government, Knesset and public opinion have been drifting towards the right--so much so that those who might have championed joint initiatives and track II efforts feel discouraged and have become less engaged.

Given the current political reality, the fact that the Israeli government position and Israeli practices do not allow for the resumption of formal negotiations, track II talks can play two useful roles. The first is to prepare the ground for serious negotiations when the climate changes, particularly when the United States presidential election has run its course and Israeli society becomes interested in a serious peace process once again.

The second role is bringing about joint efforts that can help defend Palestinian rights that are being violated on a daily basis by Israel's occupation apparatus and Israeli settlers, who seem to be encouraged in confronting Palestinians by their government. While the chance of renewing the peace process is currently limited, a collapse of the status quo--the worst case scenario--is also possible if no efforts are made to maintain a baseline of gains. Track II diplomacy can play a role here and its players should include Palestinians, Israelis and members of the international community.

Several weeks ago, at a Doha conference promoting solidarity with occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas encouraged Arabs and Muslims to visit the occupied city as a form of support for Palestinians under occupation. This call generated a great debate, one simultaneously enflamed by a series of controversial visits to Jerusalem holy sites by prominent Arab personalities. Among these visitors were the sheikh of al-Azhar mosque in Cairo (one of the top religious leaders in the Muslim world), a high-ranking member of the Jordanian royal family, and a number of prominent Egyptian Copts.

There have been three main positions adopted in this debate. The first was to criticize and attack these visits because they might be considered normalization of relations with Israel. (Visiting Jerusalem requires an Israeli visa or permit or other facilitation and Israel controls the borders of the Palestinian territories and is in direct control of occupied East Jerusalem.) The most prominent figure leading the criticism of the Palestinian president's request that supporters of the Palestinian cause visit Jerusalem and of the actual visits that took place was Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is based in Doha and appears regularly on the al-Jazeera satellite channel. He is known as being supportive of Islamic political movements in the Arab world and he is also a critic of the Oslo agreements and the Palestinian Authority.

On the other side of the fight was the Palestinian Authority's minister of Islamic Waqf, Mahmoud al-Habbash, who was very vocal and articulate in defending the idea of Arabs and Muslims visiting East Jerusalem. He argued that these visits support the Palestinian right to Jerusalem, constitute a form of solidarity with Palestinians in the city, and boost the Arab and Islamic presence at Arab and Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem.

The main slogan used first by Abbas and later by others in promoting this initiative is that "visiting the prisoner should not be considered normalization with the jailer." Out of loyalty to the original author of this famous saying, it should be said that the first person to come up with this expression was the late Faisal Husseini, one of Jerusalem's most important political leaders.

There is a third view--perhaps the most popular--that became apparent during this debate. This view states that the pertinent question is not whether visiting Jerusalem is correct or not, but rather that one should ask, what are the circumstances of the visit? Those people who support the idea of Arabs and Muslims visiting the holy sites in Jerusalem believe that such visits can be useful and helpful to Palestinians if they are done in the open, in a transparent manner, and if those visitors are able to interact with Palestinians and express their solidarity and support. Visits that are carried out in secret and without the knowledge of or interaction with the Palestinian public do not serve the required purpose and instead allow Israel to claim that it is the one facilitating pilgrimage and visitation to the city.

In all cases, it is important to say--and hopefully such visits would highlight this reality--that Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian holy sites in the city are subject to terrible discrimination and oppressive treatment by the Israeli occupiers, even in comparison with how this occupation treats the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. As such, those who care about the fate of the city and its people need to redouble their efforts to end Israel's occupation and allow for the creation of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is a precondition for the two-state solution and a peaceful settlement.