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.”

The reason for the latest disruption in Hamas' relations with Fatah can be found in a brief video clip aired by an Israeli television station on Rosh Hashanah eve. It showed a disabled Fatah operative from the Gaza Strip, who is currently hospitalized in Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center. The man was recovering from wounds he had sustained several months ago in fights with Hamas operatives.

The wounded Fatah man walked up to a group of Israel Defense Forces soldiers who had been wounded in last week's Qassam strike on the IDF basic training base in Zikim. The Palestinian wished the soldiers well and told them that, contrary to Hamas, he and his friends were in favor of peace.

Back in Gaza, Hamas' spokespeople seized the opportunity by issuing a torrent of condemnations of the Fatah man congratulating the soldiers of the Zionist occupation. Both Hamas and Fatah never miss out on an opportunity to slander and inveigh against the other. Recently - and this trend is confirmed by opinion polls carried out in the territories - Hamas' popularity seems to be declining. In the meantime, Fatah appears to be getting stronger.

This development stems in part from the violence Hamas' Executive Force, which is in control of Gaza's streets, employs against Fatah. A well-known example is the footage of prayers held in the streets of Gaza. Fatah's Gaza operatives have declared that they would rather pray in the street than enter the mosques where sermons are delivered that include incitement against Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas' Executive Force responded by saying that praying on the street constitutes a disruption of public order, and dispersed the worshipers by force.

The result was a plethora of pictures showing Hamas men beating supplicants. The Palestinian public was outraged. Human rights organizations in Gaza and in the West Bank declared that preventing people from praying was an unpardonable crime.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' prime minister in Gaza, and his men are practically begging to engage in dialogue and to reconcile with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. But he remains intransigent. He will only talk to Hamas if its leaders undo the bloody coup they staged in Gaza and issue an apology. That is not going to happen, and so the gulf between Hamas and Fatah has remained - and possibly even widened.

This ongoing rupture affects a host of issues, first among them the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, the IDF soldier Hamas abducted more than a year ago, and his exchange for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners. Everybody realizes that it would be a great achievement for Hamas if negotiations were to succeed and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be released after having been convicted for security-related offenses.

All the parties involved - the Egyptians, Abbas' men, European and Arab mediators and Israeli representatives - do not wish to present Hamas with any sort of achievement. And so the talks have become stuck in a stalemate.

The rupture between Hamas and Fatah is a serious factor adding difficulty to the regional summit on the Middle East that the Americans are planning for November in Washington. It limits the conference's chances of success.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is trying to promote the summit in her visit to the region, but in the past few days it has become doubtful whether the meeting will take place at all. There is no exact date, no list of participants. Naturally, there is no agenda either.

Syria isn't invited. The Saudis are hesitant about participating without securing an Arab consensus first. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says it's better not to hold the summit, because its failure could cause crippling damage. Abbas, who will be heading to the United Nations General Assembly next week, is disappointed in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert because he and his representatives won't commit to a schedule for the negotiations or the implementation of the Agreement of Principles.

Palestinian sources says Israel's government - which is interested in the summit taking place - should make much more effort (concessions, in other words) to make the Arabs attend the Washington conference. But the same sources add that Israel's representatives are hesitant about reaching compromises with Abbas because of his weakness and Fatah's rupture with Hamas.

The conclusion is that it's best to be pessimistic. The upcoming weeks will see much talk about negotiations, but not about political changes. Least of all, there will be discussion over significant changes in the reality in the West Bank and Gaza.

Preparations for the regional conference are ostensibly advancing apace - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) are close to agreeing on a joint declaration of principles. But matters on the ground remain enervated as ever. In view of the existing reality in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, all the talk about declarations, conferences and principles isn't worth much. One only has to look at the headlines in the Arabic press in general and the Palestinian press in particular, which report daily on the dead and wounded, on incidents they term massacres or cold-blooded murder, and add to these the reports by the women from Machsom Watch recounting acts of abuse and humiliation - to understand that the gap between talk and action is immense.

The present preoccupation with the itemized list of principles - temporary borders, Jerusalem neighborhoods, passage to Gaza, the so-called "sacred basin" (including the Mount of Olives and the Silwan neighborhood), the settlement blocs and return of refugees - now increasingly resembles flipping through the worn pages of an old book. In the years since the Oslo accords, the parties' representatives have gone over these matters time and again, ad nauseam. Seven years ago the bloody events of the Al-Aqsa Intifada erupted, and in the meantime Arafat has died of his ailment or was assassinated, the construction of the separation fences and walls has nearly been completed, and a Hamas regime has arisen in Gaza, which refuses to compromise, splitting the Palestinian homeland in two. Against this backdrop, the documents from Camp David 2000, along with the Taba accord and the Clinton plan, look like ancient scrolls that may be useful to historians, but not to statesmen dealing with the present.

These claims were confirmed last weekend in a public opinion poll published by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, whose director, Ghassan Khatib, served as minister of planning in the Palestinian government. Ever since Palestinian polls erred in conjecturing the results of the parliamentary elections and failed to predict Hamas' dramatic victory, there has been a tendency to question the credibility of these surveys. Yet, in this case, some of the poll's findings cannot be doubted. The most striking one is that almost 94 percent of Palestinians object to any form of Israeli control over the Al-Aqsa compound - neither above nor below. Another interesting finding is that 82 percent of those polled are not willing to allow settlement blocs to remain under Israeli control. And most important of all: Close to 70 percent support the return of all refugees to their homeland (i.e., within the confines of the State of Israel), and they reject notions of compensation, a partial return of refugees, or the right to return only to a Palestinian state.

When you compare these data, and similar findings, with polls conducted in the past, it becomes clear that the Palestinian public's opinions have become more extreme. The fact that the peace process has failed, that we are mired in crises accompanied by constant bloodshed, and that the plight of the Palestinians is worsening, has not made the Palestinian public more moderate, but rather the opposite.

The conclusion is that the problem lies not with the Palestinian politicians, but with the general public. In other words, you can pressure Abu Mazen and his associates, and persuade them to make concessions and compromise, but it won't advance a thing. What you have to do is persuade the people, and that can only be done through the economy.

Two weeks ago, I went with friends to visit the mayor of Hebron, Khaled Osaily. He spoke about the trouble of supplying electricity and water, and especially about the city's growing unemployment. Hebron used to be an important center for shoe manufacturing, for Israel and overseas, but now the cheap Chinese wares have ruined everything. According to Osaily, the Israeli defense establishment will soon finish building the fences and the facilities for the cargo terminal at Tarkumiya, and then a death knell will sound for the Hebron hills, because the number of trucks that will pass through the terminal every day will be greatly reduced.

Osaily practically begs that more transit permits be granted for laborers to work in Israel. He says that if this is not done, Hebron will become a second Gaza. In other words, so long as Israel keeps raising the separation wall and the Palestinians keep getting poorer - all the debates about principles for a peace agreement are pretty worthless.

In a telephone interview broadcast on BBC's Arabic-language network a few days ago, an Arab journalist asked Yasser Abed Rabbo in Ramallah: "Who, in your eyes, is the enemy: Israel or Hamas?" Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's steering committee, was a minister in previous Palestinian governments and is currently considered one of the people closest to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). His views against Hamas are among the most rabid in the PA.

Even before Abed Rabbo managed to answer, the journalist hastened to explain that he was asking who the enemy is because the PA is conducting a dialogue with the government of Israel, whereas it is refusing to speak to Hamas. Abed Rabbo, who sounded astonished by the question, did not reply; instead, he lambasted the journalist: "You are cheap and insulting." The journalist replied: "I suggest that you watch your tongue." Abed Rabbo repeated, "you are cheap and insulting" and slammed down the phone.

The fact that Abu Mazen and representatives of Prime Minister Salam Fayad's government in the West Bank are holding talks with Israel's government at the same time as they are boycotting and refusing to talk with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip is the harshest accusation that Hamas spokesmen have leveled against Abu Mazen. Last Friday, Abbas issued a presidential order that sentenced every member of Hamas's Executive Force in Gaza to three to seven years in jail. This force is in complete control of the Gaza Strip, and Abu Obeideh, a spokesman for the organization, responded to the order with mockery and scorn.

In the harsh media war between the sides, Hamas spokesmen recently whipped out a video cassette that they found when they took over PA offices in Gaza. The cassette shows Abu Mazen at a meeting with Fatah activists in Gaza, where he asked them about the clashes with Hamas. One of the activists answered: You have nothing to worry about. It will take us less than one ghalwa to wipe out Hamas. A ghalwa is the few seconds for which black coffee can be allowed to boil before it must be removed from the fire so that it does not boil over. The cassette was broadcast on the Hamas television channel, Al Aqsa, and prompted scores of jokes about "Abu Ghalwa" and the false information that Mohammed Dahlan and his people fed Abu Mazen about their strength vis-a-vis Hamas.

Now, too, the information that PA officials in the West Bank and Hamas officials in Gaza are disseminating about each other must be examined carefully. Senior PA officials, like Abbas advisor Nabil Amar and Minister of Information Riad Maliki, have declared that shortages and despair prevail under the Hamas regime in Gaza and that it will end "much faster than people think." Two journalists from Gaza with whom I spoke last Saturday said that the opposite is the case: Quiet and order prevail in the Gaza Strip, and there is personal security such as has not been experienced for years. According to them, there are shortages in Gaza, but they are not terrible. Hamas is even interested in exaggerating the talk about distress and shortages so that international organizations will transfer more aid to Gaza.

The clear impression is that neither side will be able to make the other side surrender - and certainly not in the near future. The Hamas regime in Gaza will survive. Abu Mazen's PA in the West Bank will continue to boycott it, and it will also continue to conduct negotiations with Israel over an agreement on principles, which might well be achieved in the coming weeks. But this will obviously be a virtual agreement, because the road to implementation is still long, and without Hamas, such an agreement is in any case of little value.

Neither side is capable of defeating the other, and therefore, they will have no alternative but to negotiate and arrive at an agreement sooner or later. The Palestinian public in both Gaza and the West Bank wants national unity, as do many parts of the Arab world and the international community. Therefore, the pressure in this direction on leaders in both Gaza and the West Bank will increase, until in the end, Hamas and the PA will come to an arrangement. Israel's adamant opposition to any compromise and its threats against Abu Mazen should he make concessions to Hamas will not succeed in preventing this.

A magnificent mausoleum was built over the grave of Yasser Arafat in the courtyard of the Muqata in Ramallah, but the ghost of the late Palestinian Authority chairman continues to haunt the Palestinian leadership. Last week Arafat's admirers commemorated the 78th anniversary of his birth, and former aide Bassam Abu Sharif convened a press conference to mark the event. Abu Sharif demanded that former French President Jacques Chirac disclose the cause of Arafat's death, or, to be more precise, the type of poison that killed him.

Many Palestinians believe that the Mossad poisoned Arafat. A senior Palestinian official once said he did not understand why Israel did not admit to it. When Israel's plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein ended in the Tze'elim 2 training accident, nothing was concealed, he said. And when the Mossad agents who attempted to assassinate Khaled Meshal in Amman failed, then, too, Israel accepted responsibility for its actions. In other words, Israel admits its failures, so why is it denying its success in this case?

Every once in a while, a witness emerges. A few months ago, Ramallah residents reported that Arafat's dentist died when his immune system collapsed, possibly after coming into contact with poison while treating Arafat.

No official, complete and clear explanation of Arafat's death ever has been issued, despite the commission of inquiry appointed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas used the issue in its last election campaign, claiming that the Fatah leadership refuses to investigate the affair seriously for fear of revealing that one or more senior officials were accessories in his poisoning.

The most shocking revelation, however, came last weekend in the wake of a live television interview with Dr. Ashraf Kurdi, Arafat's Jordanian physician. Kurdi, speaking to Al Jazeera in an Amman studio, said HIV antibodies were detected in Arafat's blood. The station immediately halted the broadcast.

Afterward, Kurdi clarified the matter, saying he believed that Arafat was deliberately infected with the HIV virus in order to obscure the real cause of death and in order to blacken his name. (Rumors about Arafat being homosexual were once rife, and homosexuality is condemned in traditional Arab society.) Kurdi, who was Arafat's personal physician for 18 years, added that everything regarding Arafat's death was very odd: "I would usually be summoned to attend to Arafat immediately, even when all he had was a simple cold. But when his medical situation was really deteriorating, they chose not to call me at all. His wife, Suha, would not allow me to travel with him to the hospital in Paris; no doctor at the French military hospital contacted me for details about his health; and after he died, the current PA chairman [Kurdi did not mention Mahmoud Abbas by name - D.R.] did not allow his grave to be reopened in order to determine the cause of death."

It is hard to say whether the affair has any political significance today. The rumor mill is active in both Arab and Palestinian politics. Most of what goes around is nonsense. Kurdi is a respected man and a former Jordanian health minister. His statements are very damaging to Abbas and his associates, who he presents as hiding something about Arafat's death. Reporters in Ramallah told me that Kurdi could not have said these things without consulting with the very highest levels in the Hashemite kingdom. Does someone in Jordan want to damage Abbas? Hard to tell. In any event, in Ramallah this weekend the talk was that Jordanian officials, like their Egyptian counterparts, are angry with Abbas for acceding to the American and Israeli demands for a full boycott of Hamas at a time when the neighboring states want the PA to reach a compromise with the Islamic group. The reason: Leaders in Amman and Cairo have concluded it is unwise to provoke the Islamic opposition in Jordan and Egypt or their supporters. Abbas categorically refuses to talk with Hamas. The Arafat affair that fell into the Jordanians' lap was an excellent opportunity to get back at him, and they took advantage of it.