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 good news that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “wants the Israeli government to explain restrictions on Palestinian-Americans travelling on US passports in Israel and the Palestinian territories” spread like wildfire in the occupied Palestinian territories. Rice has apparently listened to something from the Palestinian side.

Maybe she saw the ads that the Palestinian grassroots Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry into the occupied lands had placed in all the local papers during her most recent visit — a photograph of her and President Mahmoud Abbas with the caption “Wish we could be there to help you!”, meaning that Americans, and Palestinian-Americans especially, are being denied entry into the occupied Palestinian territories, and so are also denied the opportunity to play a role in the peace making she was seeking.

But elation must be tempered with caution, because the experience of Palestinians with the Israeli government from whom Rice is asking “an explanation” is never straightforward. The Israeli government’s response so far is as follows: “We are aware of this issue, and we are looking into it at senior levels,” an Israeli official said yesterday. “We are waiting to receive additional information from the administration.”

It sounds reasonable and measured. It’s as though these officials were talking about a computer glitch: “We are aware of the problem; we are looking into it.” One is being led to believe that it is “an administrative” issue that has nothing to do with the government — some kind of bureaucratic misunderstanding.

If the Israeli government really wants to be helpful, it would gather the following specific information from “the administration” at its borders: how many foreign passport holders, including Americans, have been denied entry to the occupied Palestinian territories yesterday? How many since June of 2006? How many since 2000? How many family unification applications is the Israeli administration sitting on? What nationalities are involved?

These are important questions, since that’s what journalists and politicians have been asking the grassroots Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to provide. How many?

For various reasons, it has been difficult for the campaign to come by comprehensive figures. In addition to posting an entry denial form on its website (www.righttoenter.ps) and the cases it has documented as a result of word-of-mouth referrals, the campaign is now looking into organising a grassroots Allenby Watch volunteer cadre to be stationed daily on the Jordanian side of the King Hussein Bridge simply to document the daily denials, as people are sent back to Jordan from the Israeli border.

The watch would be similar to Machsom Watch, a voluntary group of Israeli women who have been conducting daily observations at military checkpoints to monitor human rights abuses.

People, of course, are also being denied entry at Sheikh Hussein border crossing and at Ben Gurion Airport. It would be so much easier if the Israeli government found out such “additional information” from its administration and handed it over to the press and to the US State Department, wouldn’t it?

The legitimate Palestinian fear is that the Israeli side would obfuscate the probe that Rice has called for. During her last visit, Rice asked Israel “to ease some travel restrictions on Palestinians and open certain crossings to help people go about their daily duties”.

She was referring to the siege of Gaza and restrictions on Palestinian travel, not to the systematic denial of entry of foreign passport holders into the West Bank.

The knee-jerk reaction of “security” is not even plausible in the latter case. Israel’s “security” measures, like so many that takes against the Palestinians, are disproportionate and the suffering they entail tremendous. Often, Israeli military action is not motivated by security, but by a desire for brutal collective punishment, as has been evident in Gaza since June 25 when the Israeli soldier was captured.

Rice’s probe has not started with a big bang, as evidenced by the following excerpt from the US Department of State press briefing of October 12:

Question: One other thing, then. She [Condoleezza Rice at American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP)] made some reference to travel by Palestinian Americans having difficulty I suppose getting to either Israel or the territories. Can you elaborate on that at all?

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack: Yeah. There have been some cases, more than a handful, where there have been some difficulties [for] people that previously have been able to freely cross between Israeli areas and Palestinian areas [and] aren’t able to do so.

Question: US citizens?

McCormack: Yes. Well, they may be

Question: Or whatever.

McCormack: Yeah, maybe dual citizens. Regardless, they hold US passports as American citizens, so it doesn’t make a difference.

Question: Right.

McCormack: And this was brought to the attention of the secretary, and it’s something that she’s looking into and she’s going to raise with Israeli officials.

Question: Has she reached any temporary conclusions? Is it some discrimination or is it based on thin suspicions of terrorism? Is it

McCormack: You know, I think

Question: Is it generic bigotry? What is it?

McCormack: I’m not going to try to, you know, characterise and broad-brush, Barry. I think that each — obviously, each individual case will be different. But the fact is there’s more than a handful of these cases, and it is something that has got her attention. We’re talking about American citizens here.

Question: Passport holders?

McCormack: Yeah.

Question: Thank you.

It’s been clear from the start that the reason behind the visa denial policy about which the Israeli government is now collecting “additional information” from its administration was motivated politically.

The policy is meant to put pressure on the Hamas-led government and to punish Palestinians generally, as the majority of foreign passport holders who are denied entry have family connections in the occupied Palestinian territories and they and their families are very, very unhappy. Another end Israel means to achieve through this policy is to isolate the West Bank in various ways: there are, thus, few internationals in the West Bank to witnesses Israeli aggressions, and little or no international expertise to develop education, business, health or government.

If all this would come out in Rice’s probe, perhaps the US would pressure Israel to ease these restrictions not just for its nationals but also for all internationals (and especially Palestinian expatriate nationals) who wish to visit or reside in the occupied territories for legitimate reasons.

Israel is implementing an undeclared policy of denying foreign nationals entry/re-entry into the occupied Palestinian territories in order to achieve the following political objectives: isolate the Palestinians, continue its control over demographics in favour of the Jewish population, and punish the Palestinians personally and developmentally because of the January election results.

Israel’s security claims regarding this policy are false. In many cases, this policy amounts to deportation. Many of those now being denied entry are, in fact, residents of the occupied territories (for family or work reasons). They had achieved this residency status legally (in some cases for decades on end) by relying on a system that Israel allowed in order to avoid giving out permanent or temporary residency status in the occupied territories. Such people are unable to apply for a permit to reenter through the Israeli consulates in various countries.

Until June 2006, this system allowed foreign nationals to enter on a three-month tourist visa. There were visa denials then as well (the case of Jordanians has always been especially severe), but they were not applied as systematically as they are now to holders of non-Arab nationalities. As the visa expiration date neared, such temporary visa holders resorted to exiting and re-entering the occupied territories, thus gaining an extension.

When Israel started implementing this policy at the borders (the announcement in Ma’ariv that gave the first alert was on June 22, 2006), many of the people who had been following this system for years were caught unawares.

Foreign nationals who are denied entry (whether they are coming in for the first time or are re-entering) are being told that they must get a permit. However, when they contact the Israeli consulates in their countries, people quickly discover that there is no such thing to be had. Nationals of various countries who have been denied entry have complained to the consulates of their countries in Israel, but these consulates, though sympathetic, have not been able to do anything.

It is possible for foreign nationals working with an international organisation registered with the Israeli ministry of social affairs to obtain a B-type visa if the organisation applies on their behalf two months in advance.

It is possible for foreign nationals whose visas have not yet expired (i.e., who are residing in the occupied territories legally on some sort of visa) to apply for renewal “up to four times” through the Palestinian ministry of civil affairs (which acts as the conduit of such applications to the Israeli authorities). But beyond that, there is no redress. Many spouses whose children, wives or husbands are now stranded outside the country have tried to get a permit through this Palestinian ministry or the District Civilian Affairs Office (DCO) or Beit Eel with no avail.

In terms of numbers, the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-entry in the occupied Palestinian territories has documented dozens of cases, but this is the tip of the iceberg. Contact person for documentation is Anita Abdullah (anita@birzeit.edu).

B’Tselem estimates that there are 16,000 foreign nationals living with their families “illegally” in the occupied territories, and are therefore restricted in their movements and travel. This figure gives a sense of the scope of the problem with regard to residency/family unification as it relates to those needing to achieve it in some legal way.

B’Tselem also estimates that since the start of the Intifada in September 2000, the Israeli authorities have refused to process 120,000 family unification applications.

The policy of denying visas is closely related to family unification, because entering and reentering on a temporary visa had been a mechanism by which people denied family unification through the limited and restricted procedures that Israel had been imposing could achieve it. In many cases, the spouse being denied entry is the major breadwinner in a family, and that person’s job is in the occupied territories. So the economic burden is heavy.

Additionally, businesspeople who need to reside in the occupied territories because of job or investment opportunities (as opposed to living with their families and also contributing to the economy) are being denied entry and the required residency. The same goes for teachers, researchers and students at universities and schools. In short, Palestinians are being deprived of foreign expertise of any kind unless it comes in an international aid package.

In Gaza and north of the West Bank, the Israelis are taking down what should never have been put up in the first place (their illegal settlements), all the while muttering, "they haven't made us do it; we are doing it on our own". On the West Bank, the Israelis are busy constructing what must in future be taken down. It must.

So much back-breaking, deal-breaking work for the future (not to mention all the expense for the US taxpayer, who is footing the bill of what goes up)! Day by day, what will have to be dismantled grows, concrete slab by concrete slab, what has to be "withdrawn" proliferates, and there is no one to stop it or even to protest against it. On the contrary, Israel continues to hoodwink the US Senate and the House of Representatives, some of whose members are now considering attaching even stiffer conditions on aid to Palestine based on one red herring issue dangled by Israel after another.

But the world should keep its focus on the real leads to the conflict, the real incitements - like the abomination of the wall, and now the construction of "processing terminals" for people and goods to be run by civilian operators employing "smart cards" or biometric hand screens in place of physical security checks. So much for high tech enterprise and growing the knowledge economy in the Middle East! And who needs the military after the Israelis impose their peace on their terms?

The two new terminals for Gaza are Erez (for people) and Karni (al-Mintar) (for goods). For the West Bank, the terminals will all be located on the Wall line (not the Green Line) at Bitunia, Jalameh, Kalandia, Qalqilya, Ma'ale Efrayim, Tarqumia, and near Bethlehem. Cost: $27-$38 million each, of which, according to Ha'aretz, the US will contribute 40%.

The large processing terminal at Kalandia is now taking shape. It is the mechanism by which the West Bank is being isolated from Jerusalem, the crossroads of so many walls. It's a big construction site with ample parking that looks obscene next to the congested Palestinian shops, public transport and narrow Ramallah-Jerusalem road against which the construction pushes up - the better to grab land on the Jerusalem side of the barrier, my dear.

Would you call any of this, at the very least, "hurtful and insulting"? That's what Israeli officials are calling the private construction, by the Palestinian business community in San Salvador, of a park near the city's Jerusalem Street named after the late Palestinian leader Yaser Arafat. Oh, yes, Israel is so irked by this park that it is delaying the return to San Salvador of Ambassador Yonatan Peled.

Since showing diplomatic displeasure is a toothless option for the Palestinians, other countries ought to speak up for them against what Israel continues to do. But this doesn't happen, unfortunately. Where was the displeasure, the withdrawing of ambassadors when Israel, for example, built Canada Park?

Canada Park (named in honor of the Canadian funds that built it) extends illegally for 7,500 pine-forested acres built by Israel over the ruins of three Palestinian villages, Amwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba, and across what used to be no man's land between Jordan and Israel. In 1967, Palestinians were forcibly expelled from these villages never to be allowed to return.

Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan knows only too well of the options the Palestinians have to react to what's "hurtful and insulting". He is warning that "Israel's current actions, its settlement policies and its isolation of Jerusalem from the West Bank, are paving the way for a third Intifada."

So why aren't Abbas and all his make-believe cabinet, all the newly-elected Hamas officials, not sitting in peaceful protest in front of the stone crushers on the Kalandia construction site right now? Are they waiting for the VIP lounge to be built, or are they afraid they might be scooped up by a bulldozer and eviscerated, as happened to peace activist Rachel Corrie?

Why aren't Egypt and Jordan withdrawing their representatives from Israel?

Why aren't the US and Europe calling, in the strongest terms possible, for an immediate halt to the illegal wall construction and for the dismantling of the miles already up, for a halt to the illegal Kalandia construction, to the continued illegal Israeli settlements? Why are they not withdrawing their ambassadors from Israel?

By not protesting, by accepting Israeli actions implicitly or explicitly as "security" policies, they are buying into the biggest hoax in history. They are leaving the Palestinians no option but to fight back - one kind of force (the kind that grabs land, builds walls and barriers and constructs illegal settlements under the protection of the Israeli army) with another kind of force (the kind that throws stones and mortar shells and explodes people in the market place), and then let each individual's conscience sort out which is defense and which is terrorism.

It will take some effort to get out from under the biggest Israeli hoax of all time. You have to use imagination: "You have to imagine what it feels like to wake up one morning in your own house, the house your grandfather built long before the state of Israel existed, and to find the official notice on the wall. Your home, where you have lived your life, is soon to be destroyed; you and your children will be refugees."

So wrote Professor David Shulman, a member of Taayush/Hacampus-lo-shotek (Students and Faculty against the Occupation) in The Electronic Intifada a few days ago (link below) in connection with 88 homes slated for demolition in the Al-Bustan neighbourhood of Silwan, as a result of which some 1,000 innocent people will lose everything in order to create yet another Jewish island in East Jerusalem.

May courageous leaders see the hoax for what it is and intervene before Israel's brand of terrorism leads to yet another Intifada.

Rima Merriman is a freelance writer and a communications specialist. She worked in the West Bank for four months in late 2004. This article was first published in The Jordan Times on June 16 2005.

These 10 photos were taken on 22 May 2005 and show the passage from the point of arrival at the border of Gaza to the point of entry into Gaza. A sign at the entrance to the passage says in faulty Arabic: “Continuing with violence results in the withholding of ease of access and luxury for the people.” The passage is similar to the design developed by Temple Grandin (an assistant professor at Colorado State University) for the routing of cattle as they are led to slaughter. The Israelis are on the scene through remote control. When a person exiting from Gaza approaches the turnstile, a disembodied voice, rough and rude, tells him or her to drop bags to the floor, to lift up clothes, turn around, etc.

The waiting is interminable when there are a lot of people. Most of the time now, the place is deserted, as very few permits are given to people to get out or to go in. One photo shows Israeli soldiers erecting a barrier on top of a barrier. In Gaza, the entire population is effectively imprisoned. Not only are the many refugees and their descendants blocked by Israel from returning to their homes in places like Bir Sabe’ (now Beersheba), but so also are thousands of laborers prevented from earning a living in Israel or the West Bank.

Rima Merriman is a freelance writer and a communications specialist. She worked in the West Bank for four months in late 2004.