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.”

Bashaer Fayyad-Kalouti never celebrates “Jerusalem Day,” and this year was no exception. The day, which for Jews marks the freeing of the city in the 1967 Six Day War, is not a festive occasion for her. Although Fayyad-Kalouti, the wife of the outgoing Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, is a resident of Jerusalem, and holds an official, blue, Israeli identity card, she is unlikely to exercise her right to vote in the coming municipal elections in November. The same holds for most of the 370,000 Palestinians living within the city’s municipal boundaries (more on this below).

For the Arabs of East Jerusalem, who constitute some 36% of the city’s population (according to Interior Ministry data), Jerusalem Day is a day of defeat and humiliation. Defeat, because on the morning of June 7, 1967, Israeli paratroopers conquered the Old City and the Western Wall; humiliation, because of the “March of Dancing Flags” held around the city each and every year on the 28th of the Jewish month of Iyar, to mark that day. Imagine this: thousands of young Israeli men and women dancing through the alleys of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, toward the plaza facing the Western Wall, singing the praises of the “city joined and united,” waving large national flags and sometimes calling out racist invective. A true “Jewish Pride Parade.” The Palestinian residents, looking at the merrymakers from their homes and shops, get the clearest of messages regarding who controls the city and who is controlled.

For an additional 31% of the city’s residents, the ultra-Orthodox non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, Jerusalem Day is just another day of the week invented by those who violate the sanctity of the Sabbath and dare call themselves “Jews.”

Under Jordanian rule (from 1948 to 1967), East Jerusalem covered only 6.4 square kilometers [640 hectares, or 2.47 square miles]. After the Six Day War, it was “reunited” with the western part of the city, which had been under Israeli control since 1948. Israel annexed an additional area of 65 square kilometers [6,500 hectares, or 250 square males] from the West Bank to the city’s municipal boundaries and the city has since been termed, “Reunited Jerusalem.”

In reality, it is far from being so. If we assume that the most salient expression of “union” between the two parts of the city joined together 46 years ago is uniformity and equality in provision of public services and infrastructure — then a tall fence of discrimination divides the conquering society from its conquered neighbor. And I’m not referring to the security separation Fence.

According to data compiled by Dr. Meir Margalit of the Meretz faction in Jerusalem’s city council, who is in charge of East Jerusalem affairs, as well as from the Ir Amim organization, out of the total 2011 municipal budget of NIS 4.7 billion [$1.32 billion], only some 500 million (10.7%) were allocated to the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, whose residents, as previously mentioned, constitute 36%-38% percent of the city’s population.

To drive home this point, here are several select data compiled in advance of Jerusalem Day by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel:

— 85% of the Palestinian children live below the poverty line; there are only three welfare centers for more than a third of the residents, compared with 18 in the western part of town; there’s a shortage of some 1,000 classrooms in the municipal school system for the Palestinian population. Despite its commitment to the Israeli Supreme Court to reduce the shortage, only several dozen are built each year.

— The area allotted and planned for housing construction constitutes only 14% of the area of East Jerusalem; the maximal floor area ratio in the Palestinian neighborhoods is 25%-50%, as opposed to 75%-125% in Jewish neighborhoods; only 13% of the housing units approved for construction in the city between 2005 and 2009 were in Palestinian neighborhoods; there are only four infant wellness clinics in the East, as opposed to 25 in the West; there’s a shortage of some 50 kilometers of sewage pipes and a resulting, prevalent use of septic tanks.

— No country in the world recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. There’s not a single embassy in the city and foreign dignitaries try as much as possible to refrain from meeting Israeli officials on the other side of the “municipal line” dividing the city, which is actually a section of the Green Line. The United States, Israel’s greatest friend, has not implemented the 1995 congressional resolution to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Every six months the US president signs a waiver postponing the move for reasons of national security. As far as the international community is concerned, sovereignty over Jerusalem is one of the issues that must be decided in negotiations over a two-state solution. For the US administration, The President Bill Clinton parameters, which propose adding the Palestinian neighborhoods to the West Bank under the sovereignty of a future Palestinian state is relevant today, as well.

But the facts that Israel has created on the ground are having the opposite effect. Construction of the 142-kilometer Separation Fence around the city and within its boundaries, closure of passage points from the city to the West Bank and curtailment of the Palestinian Authority’s activity in the eastern part of the city, have all deepened the distinction between the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian population living “across the fence.” Some 50,000 Palestinians live in the area between the Separation Fence and the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem that borders the West Bank (creating a new de facto territorial definition).

On the other hand, residents of East Jerusalem enjoy freedom of trade and movement that residents of the West Bank can only dream of. Therefore, the strategy of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s annexation appears to be making way for a “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach. More and more Palestinian students opt for Israeli matriculation exams and preparation courses for Israeli universities. In this regard, there are even claims that Israel is deliberately weakening the Palestinian school system in order to cause students to transfer to the Israeli one. Young residents of East Jerusalem work in the western part of the city and spend their leisure time there, dress like their Jewish peers and speak their language.

The number of Palestinian who converted their status from that of Jerusalem resident to that of Israeli citizen has soared from 85 in the year 2000 to 700 in 2010. According to the assessment of Israel’s Ministry of Interior, since 1967 some 10,000 residents of Arab Jerusalem have assumed Israeli citizenship, most of them in the last seven years. This new status grants them the right to vote to the Knesset, in addition to the right to vote for and be elected to the position of mayor and to the city council. But, as previously mentioned, if the past is anything to go by, the vast majority of Palestinians will not be going to vote in the coming November elections. For them, participating in the municipal elections is tantamount to recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the city.

Perhaps it’s time to try a new approach?

How about if Fayyad-Kalouti decides to run for mayor and for the city council at the head of a Palestinian group, with the support of all the Palestinian factions in East Jerusalem? If most of the Palestinian residents, who account for 36%-38% of the population, were to respond to the call and cast their ballots, Jerusalem would become an experiment in bi-nationalism — and perhaps mark an end to Zionism, as well; if the experiment succeeds, in the next elections in 2017 the Palestinian mayor could form a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox, who currently constitute 31% of residents, to divide the budgetary pie in a just manner, shut down the city on Sabbath and cancel Jerusalem Day.

In conclusion: We wish to thank successive Israeli governments for preferring hollow declarations and boastful pride parades to just and logical political solutions, for the most unique city in the world.

The April 30 announcement by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani that the Arab states agree in principle to a land swap between Israel and Palestine, based on the 1967 border lines, failed to stir any particular excitement among Israel’s top political offices. That is a natural reaction, given the views of those leaders — it’s obvious they cannot trade sovereign Israeli territories for other territories that they also regard as their own and call “Judea and Samaria,” despite the fact that the rest of the world defines them as “occupied territories.” This is a non-starter. Even a child understands that in order to trade stamps with a friend, both of them have to at least agree that each is the proprietor of his own collection. As far as Israel is concerned, it owns most of the other side’s stamps, as well.

In a previous article, I noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strenuously objects to recognizing the June 4, 1967 lines as a basis for discussion from which to launch negotiations on mutual exchanges of land. His stand is deeply rooted in the revisionist worldview on which he was raised and educated.

Zionist Revisionism espoused a diplomatic struggle alongside a military one as a solution to the problem of the Jewish exile that was to culminate in the establishment of a Hebrew state in the Land of Israel along both banks of the Jordan River. Netanyahu is thus part of a school that believes Israel already made a major historical compromise when it declared independence 65 years ago: it gave up its right to sovereignty over the east bank of the Jordan. This school of thought rejects the internationally accepted Palestinian approach, which contends that the Palestinians adopted a compromise 25 years ago when they gave up their demand for a state in all of Palestine and recognized UN Resolutions 242 and 338. Those resolutions, which essentially call for Israeli withdrawal to secure and agreed-upon boundaries, define the 1967 borders (known as the Green Line) as the "peace lines" between Israel and the Arab states. In doing so, they leave the Palestinians with no more than 22% of the land of Palestine as it was defined under the British Mandate (the land between Jordan and the Mediterranean).

When negotiations on a permanent arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians began at Camp David in the summer of 2000, the Palestinians responded favorably to the Israeli-American proposal to alter the 1967 boundaries in a way that would enable Israel to annex the large settlement blocks in the West Bank. After it became public knowledge that Palestinian President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) had reached understandings in 2008 with then-prime minister Ehud Olmert regarding an exchange of territories, the Arab League and the the Organization of Islamic Cooperation still reiterated their unequivocal support for the Arab Peace Initiative. Even the major turmoil in the Middle East, including the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, did not change the Initiative.

The land-swap arrangement is essential, not just as a precondition for negotiations but also as the sole formula for bridging differences between the sides over the issue of territory. It will enable Israel’s leadership to say it did not go back to the 1967 borders, as well as allow the Palestinians to say they did go back to them. For all intents and purposes, rejection of a land exchange is a rejection of a permanent settlement between the sides. This is why Hamas strenuously objects to land swaps. Paradoxically, the biggest revisionist of them all, former prime minister Menachem Begin and one of Likud's founders former prime minister Ariel Sharon were the ones who approved the interpretation of Resolution 242 as requiring Israeli withdrawal from the lands it conquered in the 1967 Six Day War — to the very last meter. Their interpretation is derived from their respective decisions to withdraw from all of the Sinai and Gaza Strip.

Also ironic is the fact that while the Arabs have been focusing only on the 1967 borders, Netanyahu keeps bringing up issues relating to the 1948 problem. This is the reason he insists in all of his speeches that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a precondition for negotiations. Just this week, in a meeting with the Foreign Ministry, he stubbornly reiterated that “the root of the conflict with the Palestinians is not the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar; it’s the Israeli cities of Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and Ashkelon.” He elegantly ignores the fact that Abu Mazen officially asked the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state within the bounds of the 1967 borders and subsequently said in a television interview that he wants to go back to his family’s home in the Israeli town of Safed — but only as a tourist.

The desire Netanyahu expressed at that meeting “to reach an arrangement with the Palestinians that would preclude Israel becoming a bi-national state, yet would provide it with stability and security” is no more than a regurgitation of the Bar-Ilan speech he made four years ago (which has since proven to be a bunch of hollow words). This time, too, Netanyahu refrained from mentioning the Palestinians’ inherent right to self- determination. When he talks of security, Netanyahu means complete Israeli control over the Jordan Valley. For the sake of clarity, the area of the Jordan Valley constitutes a third of the UN Resolution-granted territory the Palestinians claim between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In fact, Netanyahu’s impractical stance is moving Israel closer to the day it has to choose between two options: becoming a bi-national state or an apartheid state.

The willingness to exchange lands, expressed after the meetings of the Arab League delegation in Washington with US Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, is a step forward. But it’s not surprising. The Palestinian willingness to trade lands on the eastern side of the Green Line for territory within Israel had the Arab League's support from the very start, in 2002. As far as the Islamic states are concerned, as long as Abu Mazen doesn’t consider waiving sovereignty over the holy Muslim sites and handing the Jews control over Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount), he is entitled to exchange territory to his heart’s content. On the other hand, Netanyahu is adhering to the 2003 decision of the Sharon government, of which he was a member, rejecting the Arab Initiative. In fact, one of the 14 conditions the government attached to its May 2003 decision to adopt the Bush-era Road Map, states that Israel “rules out any response to the Saudi Initiative and the Arab Initiative.”

But with all due respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the fruitful cooperation between the United States and the Arab League is designed to achieve a far greater goal: the latest upheavals in the region have created a joint interest for the United States and the Sunni states: blocking the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis and strengthening Jordan, as well as preventing al-Qaeda’s penetration into the Sinai, Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Obama administration believes that a diplomatic breakthrough on the Israeli-Palestinian front, on the basis of the Arab Initiative, could supply the glue for a new regional alliance.

This approach enables Israel to enjoy immediate defense dividends, even before it is forced to make a single territorial compromise. Israel will be able to arrive at a two-state solution based on a broad consensus among all the Arab states regarding core issues. But time is not on Israel's side. The Arab League delegates hinted to their interlocutors in Washington that if diplomatic progress is not achieved within six months, the Arab League will withdraw its initiative. This will seal the tiny remaining crack in the window of opportunity for a peace agreement.

Sadly, only two Israeli government ministers saw fit to respond to the Qatari prime minister’s declaration — Justice Minister and HaTenua Party leader Tzipi Livni and Science Minister Yaakov Peri of the Yesh Atid Party. Peri, who served as head of the Shin Bet security agency (1988-1995), is one of the founders of the nonpartisan “Israeli Peace Initiative” movement, which for the past two years has been working to promote a regional approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Will these two be the only ones?

The apology that President Obama extracted from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the subsequent dramatic reconciliation with Turkey only go to show that everything in the Middle East is connected.

The Iranian nuclear program, the insurgency in Syria, the negotiations with the Palestinians and the Arab Spring – none of these topics can "go on leave." You cannot deal with the Syrian chemical threat without mending fences with Ankara. And you cannot mend fences with the Turks without taking action to mend fences with the Palestinians. We can now say that the turn of phrase "what's the connection?" which has been the quintessential Israeli stance to date is now "yok." In Turkish, this word denotes "no longer in existence" or "defunct." All of a sudden, the Prime Minister's Office passionately makes the case that Israel and Turkey have a joint interest to stop the Middle Eastern axis of evil.

Presumably, Netanyahu fully understands that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not make do with an apology and compensations to the families of the Marmara flotilla fatalities. The Muslim leader has undertaken to become the Palestinian savior, the messiah that will deliver the Palestinians from the Israeli occupation. The person who made peace with the Kurds and tried to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Syria will not sit quietly by if the diplomatic stalemate and the settlement activity lead to a third intifada.

And as for the remaining threats, one single sentence that came out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mouth on Wednesday [March 20] was worth the massive traffic jams on the roads leading to Jerusalem and the ocean of words, of similar proportions, that jammed Israeli airwaves during President Barack Obama’s visit. I am referring to the prime minister’s public pronouncement that he believes the president’s promise that he intends to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This announcement, made at a joint news conference in Jerusalem, is truly good news for us. It ensures that at least over the coming year we won’t go to sleep at night worrying about waking up to a report of an Israeli attack on Iran and being on the verge of a regional war as a result.

Starting this Passover holiday, and until the one next year, we won’t be hearing arguments in Israel’s Foreign Affairs and Security cabinet between proponents and opponents of an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Washington’s Jewish lobbyists will be freed of the need to mobilize the support of Republican members of Congress (who never miss a chance to use Israel as a hatchet with which to dig the political grave of the Democratic president) for a dangerous Israeli adventure in the Persian Gulf. On Wednesday, March 20, 2013, the Israeli public noted that the prime minister believes Obama will not allow Iran to complete its nuclear program. We all saw the Netanyahu family embracing Barack Obama. From now on, it will be hard to tell the Cohen family from [the town of] Ofakim that Obama is “a Muslim Israel basher.”

The removal, albeit temporary, of the Iranian problem from the agenda makes room for the issue of Iran’s plan to deepen Shiite influence in the Middle East, with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict serving to oil its wheels. Up to now, every time an important US or European personality bothered the prime minister with the question of the occupation, the settlements and the freeze in negotiations with the Palestinians, Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] would wave away the question as one would a pesky fly. He did so (as previously published on this site) when the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, tried to discuss the Palestinian issue with him. Bibi said it was a “marginal matter” and suggested focusing on the Iranian issue. He also vigorously rebutted the claim of the senior European diplomat that progress toward resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help the West block the Iranian progress in developing a nuclear capability.

Alongside a pledge not to bother him over the next few months with a strike on Iran, as well as the apology to the Turks, Obama was able to extract from Netanyahu the first positive statement in his third term about the two-state solution. But in order to force Netanyahu to reopen the Palestinian channel, Obama and Ashton need a bit of help from Palestinian Chairperson Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas]. The Palestinian leader needs to relieve Netanyahu of the excuse that it is the Palestinian leadership which refuses to negotiate with the occupier on ways of ending the occupation.

Al-Monitor has learned that Secretary of State John Kerry is planning a rescue operation from the settlement construction moratorium trap. Kerry's team will send Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairperson Abu Mazen an invitation for negotiations without preconditions, with the hope that both sides will avoid taking any unilateral actions during negotiations This way Abu Mazen will be able to tell his public that his demand for a construction freeze has been met, since everyone in the world regards the settlement enterprise as an unlawful and unilateral action. On the other hand, Netanyahu will dodge his first coalition crisis, giving the offensive word "freeze" a wide berth.

The ball is now in the court of the Palestinian leader. Even though Abu Mazen’s precondition for resuming negotiations — a freeze on construction in the settlements — is just and perfectly legal, a wise and courageous policy requires putting a freeze on this condition. True, Obama was the one who sent Abu Mazen up that “freeze” tree and left him there alone. But with each passing day, dozens of houses are being added to settlements and outposts; each passing day reduces the odds of the two-state solution. Thus, the settlements have turned into a dual trap: They both rob the Palestinians of their land and undermine negotiations on handing it back to them.

When the moment of truth arrives, if and when Bibi is forced to divulge his real two-state solution plan (assuming there is one), he will have to choose between a national coalition crisis with chairperson of HaBayit HaYehudi party Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and Likud Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin, or an international coalition crisis with Obama, Abu Mazen and Erdogan.

Don't be jealous of him.

When Labor Party chief Shelly Yacimovich reads the new survey by Tel Aviv University's Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence, she'll be able to smile and tell her campaign advisers: "I told you there was no need to get worked up about the peace blather from that Abu Mazen" - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The survey, conducted in May, finds that 80 percent of Israelis don't believe it's possible to make peace with the Palestinians. Half of them don't believe it's ever possible to make peace, while half don't believe it's possible in the foreseeable future. About two-thirds support a diplomatic solution, but many more still eagerly buy the convenient argument that there's no partner. What a pity.

The survey is part of a long-term study under way since 2002 led by four specialists from Tel Aviv University: professors Michael Hopp, Yochanan Peres, Izhak Schnell and Dan Jacobson. They compare their findings with similar studies they conducted in 2002, 2003 and 2005.

In the first, they interviewed 3,800 Jewish Israelis in Israel proper and the West Bank, in the second 1,100, in the third 500 and in the fourth 1,200. Each survey was carried out during a relatively quiet period by two research institutes and was found to be free of errors.

The (relatively ) good news is that 87 percent of secular Jewish Israelis believe in the need for peace with the Palestinians, but only half the religiously observant and a smaller percentage of the ultra-Orthodox believe this. Traditional Jews have moved to the right and are now in the middle of the road.

The marginal occupation

The study shows that the occupation has become a marginal element in the national debate among both secular and traditional Jews. Moreover, only about 20 percent of secular Jews see the demographic threat as an existential problem and only one-third believe the occupation and the settlements are creating a security threat to Israel.

In the poll, nearly half the respondents consider Palestinian terror a major security problem; this reflects the strong influence of the second intifada and the terror from the Gaza Strip, making it hard for large segments of the population to support a compromise with the Palestinians. "These findings might well show that the policy of continuing the creeping occupation and the settlements is indeed bearing fruit and leading a change in positions among the public, even if gradual," the rearchers write.

Within the Green Line, the number who consider themselves rightists or right-leaning has increased from 41 percent to 48 percent. Two-thirds of this increase comes at the expense of those who say they hold centrist positions. But between 2002 and 2012 the left has strengthened; it has grown from 20 percent to 25 percent of the population.

The study shows that the right's determination to take action to advance its goals is stronger than the left's. This is seen mainly in the willingness to act against government decisions to evacuate settlements or territory, although this willingness is limited to nonviolent means.

While 60 percent of the public supports a democratic solution to the conflict, 22 percent of Jewish residents of the West Bank prefer the authority of the rabbis to the authority of the elected institutions.

Only six percent of the respondents (14 percent of the settlers ) see the use of violence to prevent withdrawal from the West Bank as legitimate, while 59 percent (70 percent of the settlers ) believe that the public only has the right to fight for its beliefs within the law (compared with 31 percent and 45 percent respectively at the beginning of the decade ). Around 37 percent of the secular respondents see the settlers as pioneers, compared with 32 percent in 2005, and 35 percent see them as "the bedrock of our existence," compared with 23 percent in 2005.

But this is only theoretical support. About 70 percent of the respondents show a preference to remain where they are living today. Twenty percent of the religious would prefer to move to live in the territories, whereas 14 percent would prefer to leave the country.

It turns out that the hard core of settlers as represented by Gush Emunim, which has pushed the Israeli government and public to settle in the territories, hasn't spread its messianic ideology among the public, or even among the settlers. It turns out that the main motivations for living in the territories, including among many of the religious, are comfort and quality of life.

Compensation up to 300 percent

The researchers found that it's possible to evacuate half the settlers with their consent if they are offered compensation equivalent to up to 300 percent of the value of their property. While the willingness of Israelis inside the Green Line to compensate the settlers for a loss of property during an evacuation decreased last decade, the willingness to be evacuated increased. And there was no significant change in the percentage of those who would refuse any compensation.

The researchers found that the occupation splits the public between people with a neo-Zionist outlook who emphasize a nationalist-religious agenda and a moderate Zionist majority that focuses on the land inside the Green Line and promotes a social agenda.

Therefore, the right is advancing its agenda unhindered, the researchers say. It's exploiting the confusion among centrists who have lost faith in the ability to achieve peace; the occupation remains on the margins of their political concerns.

Still, the researchers conclude, "a leadership that takes responsibility for finding a compromise solution with the Palestinians is expected to receive the support of most of the public, just as most of the public supported [former Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan, despite its disadvantages."Did you get that, Shelly?