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 current Palestinian leadership is committed to peace with Israel, the Israeli prime minister said today as senior figures discussed a possible division of Jerusalem.

Ehud Olmert said he planned to make every effort to pursue peace with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, as he laid out his agenda.

"The current Palestinian leadership is not a terrorist leadership," Mr Olmert said. "President Abu Mazen and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are committed to all the agreements signed with Israel, and I believe that they want to move ahead together with us on a route that will bring about a change in the reality of relations between us and them."

Mr Olmert's positive comments about the Fatah leadership came amid preparations for a US-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, on November 15.

As Mr Olmert praised Mr Abbas's commitment to a peace deal, senior Israeli officials discussed a possible division of Jerusalem in public, signalling an Israeli shift on one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East conflict.

In recent weeks, the Israeli deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, has floated the idea of Israel giving up outlying Arab districts of the city, much to the anger of Israeli hardliners.

Mr Ramon today raised the proposal in radio interviews, but was vague on the extent of Israeli control in the Old City, its holy sites and Arab neighbourhoods in the centre of Jerusalem.

A central Palestinian demand is that their future capital should be established in all of the Israeli-annexed area of the city. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are supposed to present a joint declaration of principles that would guide negotiators in future peace talks at next month's conference.

The fate of Jerusalem would be central to any peace deal. Israel has long maintained that it would never cede control over any areas of Jerusalem, including the Arab neighbourhoods captured in the 1967 war and annexed. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, including the walled Old City with key Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines, as a capital.

Mr Ramon said Israel would not hand over the Old City and neighbouring areas - known as the "holy basin" - yet also spoke of a special arrangement in the Old City. Previous negotiations have raised the idea of turning oversight to an international body.

"I agree that all the Palestinian neighbourhoods except the Arab neighbourhoods in the holy basin ... would be transferred," Mr Ramon told Army Radio.

The Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, refused to comment on Mr Ramon's proposal, but said there have been no agreements on Jerusalem in preliminary talks so far.

"We haven't started negotiations. It's premature to say anything about these issues," he said.

Mr Olmert's office said that Mr Ramon's comments reflected his own opinion, and not that of the prime minister.

The Old City contains the holiest shrine in Judaism, the Temple Mount, and the third holiest site in Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque. Mr Ramon, a member of Mr Olmert's Kadima party, argued that Israel could only benefit from such an arrangement.

It would no longer have to pay social benefits to tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and could possibly win international recognition for its annexation of parts of Jerusalem.

Mr Ramon noted that Kadima's two main coalition partners, the centre-left Labour and the hardline Israel Beitenu, both want to hand over Arab neighbourhoods, but disagree on how many.

The leader of Israel Beitenu, Avigdor Lieberman, confirmed in an interview with Israel Radio that he is in favour of handing over some of the neighbourhoods. The debate on Jerusalem reflects a growing Israeli consensus about the need for a division, but disagreement remains on how much of the city to give up.

In a statement to the Commons, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, said the current talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders offered the best chance of final status negotiations since 2000.

However, former US diplomats warned the Bush administration last week that it was setting itself up for failure at next month's conference by neglecting to lay the groundwork for a successful meeting of American, Israeli and Arab leaders.

More controversially, the former officials urged the administration to drop its insistence on isolating Syria and Hamas, which seized control of Gaza from Fatah in June.

"Maximising the prospects for a successful meeting entails finding a way to deal with both Hamas and Syria," they argued in a letter sent to the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice

A planned Middle East conference must be "substantive" and bring a Palestinian state closer, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said today.

Speaking at a joint news conference with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, at Ramallah, in the West Bank, she said participants must not "simply meet for the sake of meeting". Ms Rice is holding talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an attempt to convince them of the usefulness of the US-backed meeting, scheduled to take place in November.

Mr Abbas told the news conference that some Arab countries were hesitant to confirm their attendance because the objectives of the talks were unclear. "I think many issues need to be clarified, and I think it's the duty of the hosts of the conference," he said, referring to the US.

"When things are clarified, I think the Arab countries - and I'm not ... speaking on their behalf - will attend that conference." Mr Abbas said he expected the conference to launch serious negotiations with Israel.

"We believe the time is right for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, and for living side by side in peace and security with the state of Israel," he said. The Palestinians want the conference to lead to the outline of a peace deal, complete with a timetable, while Israel wants a more vague declaration of intent.

Key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia have said they would only attend if concrete results were achieved. Ms Rice, who yesterday met the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the US was trying to help both sides reach "common understanding", but did not say whether the meeting would address the hardest issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mr Olmert, who will meet Ms Rice again today, has warned against expecting more than a declaration of principles for establishing a Palestinian state. Mr Abbas, however, wants a deal that goes beyond previous agreements on the broad outlines of how the 60-year-old conflict can be resolved.

He wants it to set a framework for resolving core disputes on borders, security and the status of Jerusalem and of Palestinian refugees from territory that is now part of Israel. "It could range from zero to a full-blown agreement," a senior state department official told reporters when asked how Ms Rice could reconcile the two positions. "They are not in a position yet to put a label on it.

"Labels are really not a very good way to capture what is going on. This appears to be a serious discussion about fundamental issues." However, the chances of a deal appear remote at this late stage in the Bush presidency. The previous US president, Bill Clinton, also tried to broker an agreement in the dying days of his administration, but his attempts ended in frustration.

Ms Rice's latest peace mission has been overshadowed by Israel's declaration of Gaza as an "enemy entity", accompanied by a threat to cut vital supplies of fuel and electricity. Israel's decision followed almost daily rocket attacks from Gaza, but Mr Abbas denounced the decision as "oppressive" and said it would increase the suffering of Gaza's residents.

However, he did not call off the peace efforts in response to the move. Mr Olmert's office said the decision still required a legal review, suggesting it could be a means to put pressure on Gaza militants to halt their rocket attacks.

Israel's security cabinet today declared Gaza an "enemy entity", paving the way for possible cuts in fuel and water to the Hamas-controlled territory.

The decision, described by Hamas as a "declaration of war", follows almost daily rocket attacks from Gaza at southern Israel.

So far, Israeli air strikes and limited incursions against the rocket launchers have failed to stop the rocket fire. Gaza is almost entirely dependent on Israel for vital supplies. "It is a declaration of war and continues the criminal, terrorist, Zionist actions against our people," a Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, said. The increase in tension between Israel and Hamas Islamists, who seized control of Gaza from their Fatah rivals in June, coincided with a visit to the region by the US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice.

Speaking in Israel today, Ms Rice pledged that the US "will not abandon the innocent Palestinians in Gaza". But Ms Rice tempered her support for the Palestinian people by adding that Gaza "is a hostile entity to us as well".

Before touching down she said that "critical issues" would be tackled at a US-led peace conference that Palestinians hope will move them closer to statehood.

Speaking to reporters during her flight to Israel, Ms Rice said she hoped her brief trip would build momentum ahead of the gathering and bridge differences on key issues, including borders, Jerusalem, refugees and security.

"Everyone expects it [the conference] to be serious and substantive and everybody expects it to address critical issues. We don't expect anything less," she said.

"The idea that somehow the president of the United States would call an international meeting so that we could all have a photo-op is very far-fetched," said Ms Rice, who will be in the Middle East for just over 24 hours.

Ms Rice is scheduled to meet the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, in Jerusalem before evening talks with the prime minister, Ehud Olmert. She is to see the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, tomorrow.

The conference is expected to be held in the Washington area around mid-November. Mr Abbas is under pressure from his Fatah party to skip the event unless an outcome putting Palestinians firmly on the road to statehood is assured.

The Palestinians want a "framework agreement" with a timetable for implementation and Arab diplomats say anything less would make it hard for countries such as Saudi Arabia to attend.

"We can't simply continue to say we want a two-state solution, we have got to start to move towards one," Ms Rice told reporters before a refuelling stop in Shannon, Ireland.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Abbas aide, said the Palestinians would seek the establishment of a "follow-up committee" after the conference to "supervise final-status talks" with Israel.

Six months after the international gathering, participants would reconvene to assess the results, Mr Rabbo said.

A Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said discussions with Ms Rice would also focus on measures that Mr Abbas wants Israel to take before the conference, such as a relaxation in travel restrictions in the West Bank and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli officials are expected to tell Ms Rice that 24 unmanned barriers in the West Bank would be removed initially. If no security concerns arose, Israel would then remove one checkpoint manned by soldiers, Israeli sources said, but such moves would fall far short of Palestinian expectations.

Israel harbours doubts about the ability of Mr Abbas, whose writ is now confined to the West Bank, to push through any peace deal or deliver on security pledges.

Israel is ready to hold peace talks with Syria, the speaker of the US House of Representatives said today after meeting the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, in Damascus.

Nancy Pelosi's trip has angered the Bush administration, which accused the Democrats of sending mixed signals to Syria, listed by the US state department as a sponsor of terrorism.

Ms Pelosi told reporters that she had passed Israel's message on during her discussions with the Syrian leader. "[Our] meeting with the president enabled us to communicate a message from prime minister [Ehud] Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks," she said.

Mr Olmert met Ms Pelosi at the weekend, asking her to pass on a message to Mr Assad that Israel was willing to talk to Syria if it openly took steps to stop supporting terrorism.

The visit to Damascus by Ms Pelosi has irritated the White House. Despite recommendations from the Iraq Study Group to start a dialogue with Syria and Iran, the Bush administration sees little point in such contacts until both countries change their behaviour.

"A lot of people have gone to see president Assad and yet we haven't seen action. He hasn't responded. Sending delegations doesn't work. It's simply been counterproductive," George Bush said yesterday.

Ms Pelosi defended her trip as an opportunity to rebuild lost confidence between Washington and Damascus and to tell Syrian leaders that Israel will only participate in peace talks if Syria stops supporting Palestinian militants.

The US accuses Syria of allowing Iraqi Sunni insurgents to operate from its territory, of backing the Hizbullah and Hamas militant groups and of trying to destabilise the Lebanese government. Syria denies the allegations.

Relations between the US and Syria hit a low point in early 2005, when Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus following the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, which many Lebanese blame on Syria.

But Syria's isolation has eased recently with visits by US congressmen and some European officials.

The Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, was quoted in the state-run press today as saying Syria was "wary of the sudden US openness" and would respond cautiously.

"Syria will not hurriedly offer concessions when it refused to offer them under much greater pressure from the United States in the past," he said.

Ms Pelosi's visit to Damascus is the latest sign of Democratic assertiveness in foreign policy, following votes in the House and the Senate setting out a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, in defiance of a veto threat from the White House.

The House speaker, the third highest ranked elected official in the US, behind the president and the vice-president, is the most senior American politician to visit Syria since relations between the countries went into deep freeze in 2003.

Earlier this week, Mr Olmert, proposed that Israel hold a regional conference with its neighbours to discuss a land-for-peace initiative drawn up by Arab leaders at a summit in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, last week.

The plan calls for a settlement including a Palestinian state in land occupied by Israel in 1967 and a "just solution" for the 4 million Palestinian refugees.

Mr Olmert at the time also took a conciliatory line with Syria, insisting his country had no plans to launch any military action against Damascus.