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.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Tuesday for a referendum to resolve a power struggle with Hamas, highlighting bitter divisions on a day of mourning for Yasser Arafat.

Tens of thousands gathered at Arafat's gravesite in the West Bank city of Ramallah for the fourth anniversary of the former Palestinian leader's death. Hamas, which seized Gaza last year after routing Abbas's forces, barred Arafat memorials there.

Abbas, who controls the West Bank, and Hamas have traded blame since reconciliation efforts broke down last week. Egypt postponed talks meant to end the rift when Hamas decided to boycott, demanding Fatah release prisoners.

A key dispute is over when to hold an election.

Abbas has proposed holding a simultaneous presidential and parliamentary poll in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, arguing the law gives him the right to remain in office until 2010.

Hamas demands presidential elections by January 9 when it says Abbas' four-year term ends, but objects to an early parliamentary poll. Hamas won control of parliament in 2006 and argues its lawmakers should serve a full four years until 2010.

Abbas suggested putting the decision about when to hold elections to the general public.

"If they (Hamas) are self-confident, let them accept elections. If they don't, we will seek a referendum," Abbas told the crowd. "We will go back to the people to resolve the crisis," by deciding whether an early parliamentary and presidential poll should be held, Abbas said.

Islamist Hamas said Palestinians can no longer trust Abbas, who heads the secular Fatah movement, as leader.

"He can no longer be trusted with the rights of our people," Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman said. "We cannot build hopes for the success of the dialogue and this brings us closer to not giving him another chance to decide our people's fate."

A statement issued by Hamas Interior Minister Said Seyyam in Gaza said: "President Abbas's speech shows that he and his colleagues at the Muqata in Ramallah are suffering from a moral and psychological crisis."

Abbas called on Arab leaders to intervene in the dispute. "Let the Arabs act and we will accept their position, whatever it is," he said.

Trade is blooming in Nablus after eight years of commercial drought, as Arabs from Israel return to shop in a city declared off-limits in 2000 as a font of Palestinian militancy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"I have not set foot in Nablus since the beginning of the Intifada in 2000," said Njeidat, a chef from the Galilee area to the north, home to many of Israel's million Arab citizens.

He came down with his family a few days ago and filled his car with purchases including the prized Nablus kunafa, a sweet Arab delicacy that has been out of bounds to him because of the formidable network of Israeli checkpoints and security walls.

This month Israel is allowing its Arab citizens, previously barred from Palestinian-controlled areas, to enter West Bank cities as part of an effort to provide a badly-needed economic boost. The door is open for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in two weeks.

Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint simply waved the visitors through. In a reversal of roles Palestinian police stopped the drivers to check registration papers.

"We have to do this to ensure no stolen cars enter Nablus and to ensure your safety. Thank you and welcome to Nablus," one policeman told an Israeli Arab driver, with a winning smile.

Chamber of Commerce President Basel Kanaan said such a scene would have been impossible had Nablus not been a focal point of a recent U.S.-backed Palestinian law-and-order campaign.

"The Israeli decision to allow the entry of Israeli-Arabs to Nablus is good. But our economy will only improve if occupation ends," Kanaan said.

STEP BY STEP

No one is betting when that might be. But Nablus hopes Israel will extend the new freedom beyond its planned duration for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"We hope this move will last beyond Ramadan to help revive the economy of Nablus," said Kanaan's deputy Omar Hashem, as Israeli Arab visitors drove in past welcome signs declaring: "Nablus prospers with you".

Nablus, historically the West Bank's commercial hub, was largely controlled by gunmen in the wake of the September 2000 Palestinian uprising, and was a symbol of lawlessness.

Unemployment in the city climbed to 40 percent as travel bans bit into economic activity.

Now Western-backed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad wants Israel to help improve trade by removing the barriers, and Middle East envoy Tony Blair is also pressing to reduce checkpoints.

Fayyad's law-and-order campaign has shown enough success to convince Israel to test relaxing the ban.

The stimulating potential of such a step was clear at the Nablus mall, which was bustling with relatively affluent Israeli Arab families on a buying spree.

They swarmed over sweets shops and crowded into narrow alleys of the city to buy clothes, furniture, and vegetables. And some feted relatives and old friends at reunion dinners.

"This will help boost the Palestinian economy, plus we can buy cheaper," said Maysoon Abu Kishek, from the city of Lod in Israel.

Nablus businessman Othman Musleh agreed. "Now there's a sense of hope that the economy will gradually pick up."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday in a last-minute bid to clinch an agreement a day before his Kadima party holds an election to replace him.

"Olmert will make a last-ditch effort to reach a deal, but I doubt they can finalize anything in tonight's meeting," an Israeli political source said.

Senior Abbas aides said the Palestinians had rejected Israeli proposals to sign a "shelf" deal, which would not go into effect until Abbas regained control of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were launched at an international conference in Annapolis, Maryland last November with the aim of concluding an agreement in 2008. The negotiations have shown few signs of progress.

Olmert appealed on Monday for a partial peace deal before he steps down, but Abbas wants a detailed accord that would settle sensitive issues such as the future of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, borders and Jewish settlements.

"We will not sign any deal before we are assured that it is comprehensive and doesn't delay any of the core issues. It should be detailed," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Abbas aide.

"We also want implementation mechanisms, and international guarantees for implementation, as well as international implementation monitoring," Abed Rabbo said.

The two leaders planned to hold talks in Jerusalem at 9 p.m. (1800 GMT).

Olmert, who faces possible indictment in a corruption scandal, has promised to resign after his Kadima party holds a leadership election on Wednesday.

But barring any decision to take a leave of absence, he could stay on as caretaker prime minister for weeks or months until a new government is formed.

Western diplomats and Palestinian officials said negotiators have come close to agreement on some issues such as borders but it was highly unlikely an accord could be clinched this year, before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office.

Diplomatic sources and Palestinian officials said the sides had already started drafting a position paper that includes points of agreement and disagreement, but they were nowhere near a full deal.

Senior Abbas aides said he told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in an hour-long telephone conversation three days ago that Washington should not blame either side if they failed to reach an agreement this year.

The Palestinians, the aides said, were seeking a document from Bush summarizing the talks and calling for negotiations to immediately resume under the next U.S. administration.

A new chapter in the history of Hebron is being inscribed in a Palestinian police blotter.

The record shows that in August Palestinian police arrested 139 people on suspicion of crimes ranging from murder, drug dealing and illegal arms trading. Nearly 700 traffic tickets were handed out.

After years of rule by gunmen in the Palestinian side of the divided city in the occupied West Bank, some 400 pistol-toting Palestinian policemen in blue uniforms are beginning to make a difference, residents said.

"I feel the security conditions have improved. I feel safer now walking the streets and there are fewer armed conflicts," Umm Nidal, a 49-year-old housewife, told Reuters.

Shopkeeper Mahmoud Oweida said the armed men who dominated life in Hebron were off the streets and the sound of gunfire had disappeared.

Six months ago, Palestinian policemen started implementing a Western-backed security plan in the part of Hebron assigned to Palestinian control under interim Palestinian-Israeli peace deals.

Not everyone is pleased by the deployment.

Residents of the Palestinian controlled area have long turned to local tribal leaders to settle disputes and clamp down on crime. Their role grew in importance after a Palestinian uprising began in 2000 and Israel destroyed the Palestinian security infrastructure in the West Bank.

"Our tribal laws complement the laws of the government but the police force cannot replace our role," said Zuheir Maraqa, the most influential clan leader in the Hebron area.

Flashpoint

Hebron's Israeli-controlled section, where about 650 Jewish settlers protected by Israeli soldiers live in the midst of around 30,000 Palestinians, is off-limits to Palestinian police.

Under a 1997 Hebron agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, they can enter only after coordination with Israeli authorities that is difficult to obtain. The Israeli response was always no, Awad said.

“The Israeli soldiers care less about our complaints. Our conditions have worsened as a result of attacks by settlers.

“There's no-one to protect us here," said 72-year-old Ragheb Jaber.

Hebron's Old City, in the Israeli-controlled sector, has often been a flashpoint of violence between settlers and Palestinians.

"We have succeeded in some areas but being prevented from working in the [Israeli-controlled] area has been a major obstacle," said Ramadan Awad, chief of the Palestinian police in Hebron.

Security forces in the West Bank loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received US and European aid after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in June 2007 and he sacked the Hamas-led government in response.

The well-equipped forces, trained in Jordan and funded by the United States and the European Union, have since been deployed, with Israel's approval, in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, where they have made inroads in restoring law and order.

"We wanted those forces to come to Hebron to help us but Israel has rejected our repeated requests to deploy police from outside Hebron," Awad said.

"So we waged a security campaign using the 400 local police and security men, armed only with pistols, to end the state of chaos," he said.

Israeli officials have objected to a major Palestinian police deployment in the city on the grounds that proximity with Israeli forces and settlers would raise tensions.

Pia Haenni, a member of a European monitoring force in Hebron, noted a general improvement in the overall security situation in the city since the police deployment.

But he said regular Israeli army raids against suspected militants in the the Palestinian-controlled area, the continuing influence of clan leaders and a lack of equipment for police were hampering the work of the local force.

Awad said his men were motivated by a sense of pride in their mission.

He recalled an incident several weeks ago that nearly led to a confrontation between Palestinian police and Israeli soldiers in Hebron.

Israeli authorities, Awad said, had rejected his request to send members of his force to arrest Palestinians who had fled into the Israeli-run area after attacking policemen.

"So I took a police force of 150 men and went to the Old City," he said. "We were confronted by the Israeli army. They raised their guns in our faces and prevented us from proceeding." Awad said the soldiers ultimately relented after a lengthy argument and police entered the Israeli-controlled area, where they arrested five wanted men, seized weapons, narcotics and stolen goods and destroyed a drug den in a four-hour operation.