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.”

Watching her blind aunt and uncle struggle to navigate the steep slopes and scant sidewalks of this hilly city, one Palestinian girl decided to reinvent the stick.

Armed with spare parts that are hard to find in the West Bank, Asil Abu Lil and two classmates patched together an obstacle-detecting cane that has won them a trip to San Jose, California, for Intel Corp.'s international youth science fair.

The three girls are the first Palestinians to participate in the prestigious event.

"Of course, I want to go to America, but this project is important for the blind and we want it to help them," Asil said.

Students from more than 50 countries will compete in next month's International Science and Engineering Fair, vying for the grand prize of $75,000.

The 14-year-old girls built the beeping walking stick for a class project at their United Nations-funded girls' school. The cane uses two infrared sensors, one front-facing and one in the tip of the cane, to detect obstacles and drop-offs.

The students produced two prototypes after making multiple trips to Ramallah, about 45 minutes away and past two Israeli checkpoints, to scour electronics stores for proper circuits and sensors.

Although various types of laser canes have existed since the early 1970s, the girls' design resolves a fundamental flaw in previous models by detecting holes in the ground, said Mark Uslan, director of the American Federation of the Blind's technology division.

The cane beeps when it passes over a hole or steps going downward.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency provides schooling to more than a quarter million children in Gaza and the West Bank, often in crowded schools that run two shifts of students a day.

"These girls are the Albert Einsteins of tomorrow," said Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the agency. "We need to teach the next generation rational thought, to think through problems and talk about problems. "It's a microcosm of the peace process, if you like, and we need to spend time and invest in education because that is the peace dividend of tomorrow."

The girls beat dozens of contestants in the West Bank to win the prize. But even after that, they ran into one last obstacle: There was only enough prize money to allow two girls to make the trip. After drawing lots, Asil was to be left behind as her classmates headed to San Jose.

UN workers heard this and pooled money last week to purchase an additional ticket. When Asil heard the news on Monday, she broke into tears, leaping up from the table to embrace her classmates.

"Even when I'll be old, I will remember this time forever," Asil said

Amnesty International is accusing Israel of pumping disproportionate amounts of drinking water from an aquifer it controls in the West Bank, depriving local Palestinians of their fair share.

The London-based human rights group also said in a report released Tuesday, that Israel has blocked infrastructure projects that would improve existing water supplies to Palestinians, both in the West Bank and those living in the Gaza Strip.

"This scarcity has affected every walk of life for Palestinians," Amnesty's researcher on Israel, Donatella Rovera, told The Associated Press in an interview Monday, ahead of the report's release. "A greater amount of water has to be granted to them."

The report especially focuses on the so-called Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank. It says that Israel uses more than 80 percent of water drawn from the aquifer and while the Jewish state has other water sources, the aquifer is the West Bank's sole supply of water.

Government spokesman Mark Regev called Amnesty's claims "completely ludicrous". He said Israel holds the legal right to the aquifer since it was the first to discover, develop and pump from it.

Regev said Israel pumps less water from the Mountain Aquifer today than it did in 1967, and Palestinian consumption of fresh water has actually tripled in that time.

He blamed the Palestinians for not investing in development in the West Bank and said they have failed even to drill wells that have already been approved.

But Amnesty charged that Israel routinely denies Palestinians permits to launch desperately needed water sanitation and infrastructure projects in the West Bank.

90-95% of Gaza's water contaminated

Israelis use more than four times the amount of water per person on average than do Palestinians, whose consumption falls far below the minimum amount recommended by the World Health Organization, the report said.

The 450,000 Israelis who live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem use more water than the 2.3 million Palestinian residents, Amnesty said.

Shaul Arlosoroff, a leading authority on water acquisition and use, said Israeli restrictions in the West Bank are meant to protect an already taxed aquifer from overpumping.

In the report, Amnesty also cited serious problems with water supply to the Gaza Strip.

Since Hamas seized control of the coastal territory in 2007, Gaza's long-standing problems with sewage and water sanitation facilities have deteriorated, Rovera said. During Israel's offensive in Gaza last year, water and sewage pipes suffered severe damage.

Rovera said the water situation in Gaza had reached a "crisis point," with 90 percent to 95 percent of the water supply contaminated and unfit for human consumption.

An Israeli blockade of Gaza has halted any repairs to the strip's overburdened sewage and water networks, preventing materials and equipment to repair the infrastructure from getting in, Rovera said.

"This is a false, manipulative report whose results were predetermined," Tsviki Bar Hai, head of Har Hevron Regional Council, said in response.

"This is demonstrated by the report saying there are 450,000 settlers, when the actual number is 300,000. in the past few years, he added, "There has been an increase in water theft by Palestinians. Over three million cubic meters of water were stolen in the Hebron area alone in the past year."

Israel on Monday deported a former U.S. congresswoman, a Nobel peace prize laureate and other activists who were arrested and jailed after trying to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli navy commandeered their boat last week as it tried to sail from Cyprus to Gaza. It was the latest in a series of trips by activists trying to bring attention to the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the territory after the Islamic militant Hamas seized power there two years ago.

There were 21 passengers and three tons of medical aid on board, and most of the activists were quickly expelled. But Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire and former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, along with six other activists, remained in Israeli custody while the government arranged flights for them, according to Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad. They were deported by late Monday afternoon, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Israel says the embargo is a response to Hamas' hostility toward the Jewish state, including attacks by Gaza militants against crossings used to deliver cargo into the coastal strip.

The blockade has caused significant economic hardship in Gaza, sparking widespread criticism and growing international calls to ease the closure. Gaza suffers shortages of many basic items, such as cooking oil, diapers and construction materials needed to rebuild the area following an Israeli military offensive early this year.

McKinney is a former representative from Georgia and was the Green Party's candidate for president in 2008. Long a controversial figure in U.S. politics, McKinney drew fire for suggesting the administration of President George W. Bush might have known in advance about the Sept. 11 attacks and profited from them.

The Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. Jewish anti-racism group, decried anti-Semitic comments made by some of her supporters after her defeat in a 2006 Democratic runoff election. The ADL criticized her for not distancing herself from those statements or from a statement by her father blaming Jews for her congressional defeat in 2002.

In a statement written in jail and posted over the weekend on the Web site of the Free Gaza movement, the sponsors of the ship, McKinney complained that she had been arrested "because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza."

"If Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state," she wrote.

Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel peace prize for her work among Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, has long been a pro-Palestinian advocate. She was wounded by an Israeli rubber bullet during a protest against Israel's West Bank separation barrier in 2007.

Israel has allowed several of the protest boats to dock in Gaza but has blocked others. Last year, one of the boats was damaged in a collision with an Israeli naval vessel.

Israel says the aid supplies on board the most recent boat will be transferred to Gaza after being cleared by authorities.

Progress in peace negotiations must come before Arab recognition of Israel, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview with Israel TV broadcast late Tuesday.

Mubarak also addressed American suggestions that the 2002 Arab initiative, offering Israel normal relations with the Arab world if Israel withdraws from all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and Golan Heights, could be amended. He categorically rejected that idea and said the only road to peace is the creation of a Palestinian state.

Mubarak met Israel's new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheik. Netanyahu has not endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state, preferring economic development first.

In the TV interview, Mubarak said he believes the Israeli leader wants peace, but stressed that he must accept the idea of a Palestinian state or terrorism and violence would take hold. The interview was aired on Israel TV's main evening newscast while Egypt's official MENA news agency carried a transcript.

Netanyahu, Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are heading to Washington later this month for separate meetings with President Barack Obama.

Arab diplomats have said that Washington asked Arab countries to amend the Arab initiative to make it more palatable to Israel. The plan offers Israel collective Arab recognition, peace and normal relations in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territory it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war, the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees.

"Obama is very precise in all what he does. He acts rationally and logically, after he listens to his advisers well, and listens to the opinions of the countries he deals with," Mubarak said.

Mubarak said Arab countries will not normalize relations with Israel until there is progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

"You shouldn't say normalization (with Arab countries) and then we make progress (on peace). No. You make some great progress and encourage Arab countries," he said. "If we reach a solution on the peace question, the Arab countries will be ready to have relations with Israel."

Israel has said that since it was not a party to drawing up the initiative, it does not have to endorse it and instead proposes negotiations based on the initiative. Among other problems, Israelis are concerned that the Arab proposal can be interpreted to endorse the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees and millions of their descendants to Israel — a prospect Israel has always rejected.

Several diplomats have said that the Americans are asking Arab nations to drop demands for a right of return for Palestinian refugees and agree to either resettle them in the host countries or in the Palestinian territories.

Mubarak ruled out amending the initiative.

"Don't keep asking for an amendment. It will not be amended so long as you ask for it. All the countries are not approving the amendment," he said.

In Sharm el Sheik, Netanyahu sought Egypt's help in building a coalition of Arab nations against Iran, according to Israeli officials. He has sought to redirect the Middle East agenda by focusing on Iran as the key threat to stability, framing the Middle East conflict as one between moderates and extremists.

Mubarak said in the interview that Egypt's views on the threat Iran poses are different from those of Israel.

He also said Egypt favors a Middle East without nuclear weapons, broadly hinting that he meant eliminating Israel's stockpile of nuclear bombs. Israel does not confirm or deny possessing nuclear weapons.