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.”

I met Karen AbuZayd, the head of UNRWA, when she was sitting in the basement dining room of a trendy London hotel beside a mirror on which an artist has written in gold letters: "this is shit."It is understandable that Mrs AbuZayd, whose UN agency looks after the welfare of Palestinian refugees, did not wish to be photographed in front of the art work. But the message on the mirror aptly sums up the dramatic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, as she was the first to point out.

The Israeli blockade has caused an ever worsening crisis for the 1.5m Palestinians in Gaza since it was imposed after the election of Hamas in January 2006. Israel has refused to lift the blockade for as long as the Palestinian militants’ rockets come over the fence.

With the press barred from crossing into Gaza for the past month, Mrs AbuZayd brought me up to date with the current misery and hardship for the Palestinian population trapped inside.

Ninety five percent of the private sector has collapsed since June. Of the 1.1m registered Palestinian refugees in Gaza, 800,000 need food distribution. Electricity supplies are on for eight hours a day. 120,000 people have not had water for a week. They are cooking with wood in high rise apartments, which is an obvious fire risk.

UNRWA has not built any houses for the growing refugee population because sand and gravel cannot be brought into the territory. Children are going to school in shifts because of the lack of teachers. Some are falling asleep at their desks because there isn’t enough food at home, so the UN has introduced a feeding programme for them at school. When they go home, they have to study by candlelight.

Mrs AbuZayd has now run out of superlatives for describing how bad things are. She has been based in Gaza for the last eight years, and has therefore been there through kidnappings and the violent eviction of Fatah by Hamas.

On the humanitarian front, she says that every time you think the situation can’t get any worse, it does. She pointed at the mirror, before concluding: "it’s grim."

The UN official responsible for the welfare of 4.6 million Palestinian refugees has accused Israel of extending its punishment of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip to include international humanitarian staff.

Karen AbuZayd, who is based in Gaza City, said that Israeli authorities have within the past month stopped UN staff based in Gaza from using the diplomatic pouch. They gave no reason for the move, which is a clear breach of international law.

“We can’t send the mail out or get any mail in. I don’t think they could give a reason because there is no way they could justify it,” said Mrs AbuZayd, an American who is commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA is the main provider of basic services – such as education and health – to registered Palestine refugees, including 1.1 million in Gaza.

Two weeks ago the Israelis issued for the first time a written list of goods that cannot be sent into Gaza for UN humanitarian needs, she said. The list, which has baffled UN officials, includes spices, kitchenware, glassware, yarn and paper.

“They are punishing the international community that’s inside,” said Mrs AbuZayd. “For our own office, we are having trouble in keeping it going, because we’re not allowed to bring in spare parts,” she added. UN cars are lying idle for lack of tyres and oil, office photocopiers cannot be mended and computers are not allowed into Gaza. “And we’re supposed to have privileges and immunities,” she added.

As the restrictions have been extended, the international press has been barred from entering Gaza for the past month, and is challenging the Israeli decision in the Supreme Court.

The UNRWA chief officer is to meet the new Israeli co-ordinator, General Amos Gilad, next week to discuss the latest developments. It will be their first meeting since his appointment in September. Until now, the United Nations has privately protested against the decisions but Mrs AbuZayd’s decision to speak out publicly about the crisis is a sign of the level of frustration within the UN.

The Israeli blockade has caused an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza since it was imposed after the election of Hamas in January 2006. But Israel has refused to ease the measures on the ground that Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets on Israel from the territory.

The spokesman for London’s Israeli embassy, Lior Ben-Dor, today said that the restrictions were due to safety concerns. “We can’t operate the checkpoints because we are not willing to risk the lives of Israelis,” he said.best wishes,

Ten European Union foreign ministers have signed an open letter to Tony Blair to urge him to study prospects for an international force to patrol the Palestinian territories, in his new role as Middle East envoy.

"Dear Tony," the letter began, signed by ministers from the EU's Mediterranean countries who met last week in Slovenia. The letter, published in Le Monde, was the brainchild of the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner.

The ministers argued that it was time to move on from the "failed" road map, the internationally agreed blueprint for peace. They stressed that a "robust international force" should only be considered in the context of a future agreed peace plan, "without being a substitute for one".

The former prime minister's remit was defined by the Quartet which appointed him on 27 June, confining him to promoting Palestinian economic development and advising on building the institutions of a future Palestinian state. The Quartet groups the US, Russia, the UN and the EU.

The letter also urged Mr Blair to push Israel for immediate measures to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, including a mass prisoner release, and called for a reopening of the main crossing points to ease the humanitarian crisis in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The ministers who signed the document, in addition to France, were from Slovenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Spain, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Romania.

Military action against Iran would backfire against Israel, which in turn would face "dire and far-reaching" consequences, a leading British foreign policy think-tank believes.

Chatham House says in a report that it is "widely assumed" that preparations are "well under way" in both America and Israel for military action against targets related to Iran's nuclear programme. The report by Yossi Mekelberg examines the possible responses by Iran, which may retaliate with massive ballistic missile attacks on Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv or Haifa, resulting in "substantial loss of life".

Israel's relations with moderate Arab states would also be harmed, as any military attack would be seen as an offensive against the Muslim world and would fuel Islamic extremism.

"An Israeli military operation against Iran would hurt Israel's long-term interests. It would be detrimental to Israel's overall security and the political and economic consequences would be dire and far-reaching," the report warns.

Israel says the issue of curbing Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programme is a problem for the international community. But it has been made clear by the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, that if the international community failed to prevent Iran from obtaining a weapon, Israel would take the steps to do so.

While the report describes such a possibility as remote, it says that if diplomatic efforts fail, "the US and Israel would feel that force is justified and might act militarily either together or separately, regardless of international consent. This could have disastrous consequences."

Mr Mekelberg concurs with other analysts who have warned that military action against Iran could provoke fallout against US forces in Iraq. And like previous studies, the report points out that any attack would be unlikely to halt Iran's nuclear programme, and would only delay it "for a while."

The report concludes that international efforts should continue to focus on diplomatic and economic sanctions that could persuade the Iranian authorities to comply with UN demands. The report argues that Israel could consider open deterrence by coming clean on its nuclear arsenal as an alternative to military action, an option the Israelis are unlikely to contemplate.

The UN Security Council is calling on Iran to halt uranium enrichment - which can produce fuel for a nuclear weapon - in return for negotiations. But Iran, which says its intentions are peaceful, defied a deadline which passed last month, exposing Tehran to expanded sanctions.

Iranian state-run television said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to brief the UN Security Council about his country's nuclear plans, but did not give further details.