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.”

A new leftist European Jewish group, JCall, has written a letter to be delivered Sunday to the European Parliament calling for a cessation of what it calls systematic support for Israeli government decisions.

JCall, which describes itself as "the European J Street" and is to be officially launched Sunday with the presentation of the letter, has raised a storm with its call to stop construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem.

The letter is signed by some 3,000 Jewish intellectuals, among them philosophers Bernard Henri-Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, considered some of Israel's strongest defenders among French intellectuals. Signatories also include Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the student protests in the 1960s and now a member of the European Parliament, as well as other Jewish members of the European Parliament.

The letter calls occupation and settlements "morally and politically wrong," noting that they "feed the unacceptable delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad."

According to Prof. Zeev Sternhell, "The French Jewish left has decided that the official institutions do not represent most French Jews, and following the example of J Street, have decided that the time has come to do the same thing in Europe." He supports the letter but hasn't signed it.

Richard Prasquier, the chairman of CRIF, the committee representing French Jewish organizations, harshly criticized the document, saying that the petition will serve Israel's enemies.

The document calls on the European Union and the United States to pressure both parties "and help them achieve a reasonable and rapid solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict."

It says that systematic support of Israeli government policy is dangerous.

Meanwhile, Israel has repeatedly protested that the PA is using money from donor countries to promote a ban on products from the settlements.

A second meeting of the Knesset Economics Committee on the matter is to take place today. In the first meeting, Foreign Ministry official Yael Rabia-Tzadok told the MKs that the campaign to confiscate goods manufactured in settlements has moved ahead since the new economics minister in the PA government has taken office, Hassan Abu-Labda. She said PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad supports the campaign

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday said that Israel's failure to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians was a greater threat to the country than a nuclear Iran, Army Radio reported.

"The lack of a solution to the problem of border demarcation within the historic Land of Israel - and not an Iranian bomb - is the most serious threat to Israel's future," Barak told a Tel Aviv conference.

Barak called on the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, to return to the negotiating table. Abbas has so far refused to restart talks until Israel freezes settlement building in the West bank, including in east Jerusalem.

Abbas recently complained to Saudi King Abdullah over heavy pressure on him, particularly from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, to renew talks with Israel, the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported on Tuesday.

Mubarak told Abbas that Egypt would "wash its hands" of the Palestinian issue unless the Palestinians backed down from demands for a total freeze, the newspaper said.

Palestinian media reported on Monday that Abbas has continued to insist on a complete freeze but may accept a new proposal by U.S. envoy George Mitchell that would build trust between Israel and the Palestinians and improve the quality of life for Palestinians in the West Bank.

United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon on Thursday urged Palestinians and Israelis to resume peace negotiations, declaring that failure to do so could destroy any chances of progress.

"In the absence of talks, confidence between the parties has diminished," the UN chief said at a meeting of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in New York.

"Tensions have risen in East Jerusalem. People in Gaza and southern Israel continue to suffer from violence," he added. "If we do not move forward on the political process soon, we risk sliding backwards."

Ban reiterated that the international community opposed Israel's continued construction and presence in Arab East Jerusalem, and warned that settlement activity would prevent the achievement of a viable two-state solution.

"This is in no one's interest, least of all Israel's," he said. "Settlement activity undermines trust between the two parties, seems to pre-judge the outcome of the future permanent status negotiations, and imperils the basis for the two-State solution."

He added that Israel's activity in East Jerusalem - including demolitions of Arab houses, revocation of Palestinian identity cards, and construction - have not only "stoked tensions in the city, but also has the potential to endanger stability in the region."

"It bears repeating that the international community does not recognize Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, which remains part of the occupied Palestinian territory," said Ban. "A way must be found, through negotiations, for Jerusalem to emerge as the capital of two states living side-by-side in peace and security, with arrangements for the holy sites acceptable to all."

Officials in Jerusalem slammed Ban's comments as one-sided, saying it was time the international body reevaluate its own approach and ask why it has failed to follow through with its own resolutions.

In particular, the officials were referring to the continued flow of arms between Hezbollah, Iran and Hamas.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Ban has misread the obstacles preventing a resumption of peace talks, adding that the failure was a result of conditions set by the Palestinians and Arab states.

U.S. launches new Mideast effort

Meanwhile, the U.S.' special Middle East envoy has launched a new effort aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, just as President Barack Obama expressed pessimism about the prospects.

Already complicating envoy George Mitchell's mission was a new demand by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an Israeli military presence in the West Bank to stop weapons smuggling, even after formation of a Palestinian state.

Mitchell met late Thursday with Netanyahu, whose office released a brief statement saying they discussed ways to move the peace process forward and that contacts would continue.

As Mitchell began his mission, Obama admitted that he overreached in the Middle East.

In an interview with Time Magazine published Thursday, Obama said "internal conflicts made it hard for the Israelis and Palestinians to restart talks, and I think that we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that."

He said Israel found it very hard to move with any bold gestures, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had Hamas looking over his shoulder.

"I think it is absolutely true that what we did this year didn't produce the kind of breakthrough that we wanted and if we had anticipated some of these political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high," Obama concluded.

Before meeting President Shimon Peres earlier on Thursday, Mitchell pledged to soldier on. He said Obama's vision is a Palestinian state alongside Israel in peace. "We will pursue [that] until we achieve that objective," Mitchell said.

The envoy is set to meet with Palestinian officials in the West Bank on Friday.

Mitchell has been laboring without success for a year to get both sides back to the negotiating table, and Netanyahu's new demand made his mission even tougher.

Netanyahu said Israel must maintain a presence on the eastern side of a prospective Palestinian state to keep militants from using the territory to launch rockets at Israel's heartland.

The eastern side of such a state would be the part of the Jordan Valley that lies in the West Bank.

Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh rejected the demand. "The Palestinian leadership will not accept a single Israeli soldier on Palestinian land after ending the Israeli occupation," he told The Associated Press.

The Palestinians have refused to sit down with Israel until it stops all construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, saying it is eating up lands they claim for their future state. Israel, which captured both areas in the 1967 Six-Day War, has slowed settlement construction in the West Bank, but has applied no restrictions in east Jerusalem, which Netanyahu hopes to retain.

Israel also says negotiations should begin immediately with no conditions, but the Palestinians accuse Israel of heaping plenty of conditions of its own, including the demilitarization of a future Palestinian state, the retention of East Jerusalem and now, a military presence along Jordan's border.

The Israeli leader heads a coalition largely opposed to the sweeping territorial concessions that would be necessary to clinch a peace deal with the Palestinians. He himself had long refused to endorse the concept of Palestinian statehood, doing so only in June under intense U.S. pressure.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later this month in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, government sources said Thursday.

"There is a possibility of a breakthrough surrounding the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority," senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office said earlier Thursday.

The Egyptian administration began efforts to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table following Netanyahu's recent visit in Cairo, the officials said.

"Israel's idea of an Egypt-hosted peace summit with Abbas was proposed during Netanyahu's talks with Mubarak," an Israeli official told Reuters. Another official confirmed Netanyahu had raised the summit idea.

They added that Abbas was expected to arrive in Cairo next week to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. They said further that the Egyptian diplomacy was being closely coordinated with the American administration.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Abbas, said the region "will see important political activity in the next two weeks."

The plan is to send Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to Washington after Abbas meets with Mubarak, to brief the American administration on any progress.

The Egyptian initiative apparently stems from promises made by Netanyahu to Mubarak during his trip earlier this week regarding Israel's commitment to peace talks. Netanyahu presented Mubarak with agreements reached between Israel and the U.S. regarding the preconditions for talks, including the issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian demand to return to 1967 borders

Abbas: Israel sabotages Palestinian achievements by killing us

Meanwhile, Abbas accused Israel on Thursday of trying to sabotage Palestinian achievements - mainly the enforcement of law and order, stability and security in the West Bank - through its military incursions and killing of Palestinians.

In an address in Ramallah marking the 45th anniversary of the first attack by his Fatah organization against Israel, on January 3, 1965, Abbas said the Palestinian people would not fall into the Israeli trap and resort to violence to retaliate against these Israeli actions.

He said, however, that the Palestinians will continue to fight for their freedom through what he described as "legitimate resistance" guaranteed by international law.

"As we make achievements," he said, "the Israeli government and the more extreme elements escalate their measures against us."

The Israeli killing of six Palestinians over the weekend in Gaza and the West Bank city of Nablus was "a despicable and atrocious act," he said.

Israel "seeks through these provocative and ongoing acts to drag us to a violent reaction to relieve itself from international isolation by making us appear as the aggressor," said Abbas, urging the Palestinians not to do anything "uncalculated."

Israel said the three killed in the West Bank were behind the fatal shooting December 24 of an Israeli settler in the northern West bank, and the three in the Gaza Strip had been killed while approaching the border fence armed with explosive devices.

Abbas said the international community has "an unprecedented understanding of our position," stressing that no country, not even the United States, backed Israel's settlement policy.

He urged the Israelis to accept the Palestinian hand stretched for peace saying "peace between us should be based on the principle of your withdrawal from our land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem."

He said "peace alongside your state is what will bring security, stability and coexistence."

Recalling the first anniversary of a 21-day Israeli offensive in Gaza, which left over 1,400 Palestinians dead, thousands wounded and heavy damage to homes and infrastructure, Abbas said the Palestinian Authority will follow up on recommendations by Richard Goldstone on that war "until we bring every war criminal before the International Court of Justice."

South African justice Goldstone accused Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since June 2007, of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, but in different proportions, in a report commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council.