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.”

Few events in Mideast peacemaking history have been subjected to as much cynicism as today's Annapolis meeting. This is due to the perceived lack of planning in the lead-up to the meeting, mismanagement of expectations, and the reported gaps between Israelis and Palestinians over the text of a joint declaration at the meeting's conclusion.

A closer look however reveals that prospects for the meeting may not be so bleak. Following six and a half years of aversion in getting involved in Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution, the U.S. is now seriously engaged. Just as important is the unprecedented tying in of Palestinian statehood with American interests. Speaking in Ramallah on Oct. 15, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice unequivocally stated that a Palestinian state was an American national interest.

Another first is the mutual trust by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the sincerity of the other in wanting peace. Finally, there is the changed Mideast political environment, one that is close to the tipping point in terms of the spread of violent radicalism. This has focused minds in the U.S., Israel and among moderate Arab states. All of these dots have connected to make reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in all parties' interests.

The question, then, becomes how to take these factors and leverage them into making the Annapolis meeting and what follows it a success. The first step in doing so is establishing a definition of success that is realistic and achievable in the general context of steady progress in concluding a final peace settlement and laying the foundations of a Palestinian state. It was clear from the beginning that there was insufficient time to reach agreement on a joint document that addresses the "core" final status issues of borders, Jerusalem and refugees by the time of the Annapolis meeting. Instead there will be a document re-launching final status negotiations leading to a peace agreement.

The other Palestinian demand was attaching a timeline to the negotiations, and here the U.S. adopted the Palestinian position. Rice has stated that the objective is to conclude Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on Palestinian statehood by the end of the Bush presidency. Fourteen months of serious and sincere negotiations are realistic and achievable for reaching a final settlement.

With realism and achievability as the contexts in which success is defined, two tracks must progress in tandem. The first track is the initiation of a serious process of negotiations between the parties leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state based on internationally accepted parameters and the Arab Peace Initiative. This is the much-mentioned "political horizon" that is so critical to re-establishing Palestinians' faith in their ability to achieve statehood through political negotiations. Progress on this track will result in increased Arab involvement in the process, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Arab participation is critical in both reassuring a skeptical Israeli public and giving Palestinians the political support to make the necessary tough political decisions. The role of the U.S. must be to closely oversee, monitor and shepherd the process with accountability and consequences for recalcitrant action by either side.

Equally important is the second track, which is a visible and marked improvement of conditions on the ground. Internally, Palestinians are primarily concerned with establishing law and order. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has taken significant steps toward re-establishing security with the recent deployment of thousands of Palestinian police across the West Bank, most notably in Nablus.

Parallel to that must be Israeli actions that demonstrate Israel's sincere commitment to a two-state solution, most critically a settlement freeze and the removal of illegal outposts. On this issue, the U.S. has become increasingly engaged. Last month, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, speaking at an American Task Force on Palestine event, stated: "Israel should halt settlement expansion, remove unauthorized outposts, and reduce its footprint in the West Bank." The announced partial Israeli settlement freeze and removal of outposts is a step in the right direction and needs to be implemented fully. In addition, Palestinian prisoners could be released in steady batches. Palestinian movement of people and goods throughout the West Bank and in and out of Gaza in order to resuscitate the devastated economy must be facilitated.

Can all of this be accomplished without Palestinian unity and the continued exclusion of Hamas?

Initially, yes. As the chairman of the PLO, it is within Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' mandate to negotiate with Israel. Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza has decreased its support among Palestinians, reducing its spoiler ability. Future progress on the political track coupled with improvements on the ground will further weaken Hamas, allowing Abbas to negotiate the inevitable agreement with them for national unity from a position of strength and based on acceptable conditions.

Conversely, a failure in the post-Annapolis process coupled with no improvements in Palestinian daily life will strengthen Hamas, weaken Abbas and likely result in increased violence. The larger consequence will be the death of two-state-solution prospects for the foreseeable future. The U.S. and the Middle East at large will all suffer the consequences of that.

The recent military takeover of Gaza by Hamas has completely reshuffled the cards of the Palestinian political deck. As with any political earthquake of this magnitude, the new situation presents both opportunities and dangers. What will determine which prevails are the policies that will be adopted to deal with the new realities.

Before exploring what these new policies must be in the context of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, it is worth analyzing the failed polices that resulted in the outcome in Gaza, as it is a safe bet that this outcome was not the intended one, save for Hamas, Syria and Iran.

There is no shortage of blame to go around. The Palestinian leadership did not decisively deal either with the growing military threat of Hamas as a militia, nor with the deep rot afflicting Fatah. Hamas, as the new Palestinian political actor, failed to address the international aid embargo levied against the Palestinians and the conditions for its removal. Elements within both Hamas and Fatah unhappy with the Mecca coalition government were encouraged in the belief that they could destroy the other.

Farther afield, Israeli and US policies that focused on isolating Hamas without focusing nearly as much on strengthening Abbas with more than words further weakened the Palestinian president internally and rallied Palestinians around the Hamas "underdog." The Quartet conditions, while necessary as an end result, were unrealistic in their time-frame and their inflexibility in encouraging Hamas's groping movement toward them.

Iran, aspiring to be the main regional power, adopted the Palestinian cause for its own interests and supplied weapons and money to Hamas through a problematic Sinai-Gaza border.

FORMULATING new policies that might achieve their intended results requires first and foremost recognizing three realities. First is that there can be no stability and security for Palestinians, Israelis and the region without minimal unity among the Palestinians, just as there can be no peace process without minimal Palestinian consensus.

Second is that a policy of feeding the West Bank and starving Gaza is illusionary. No current or future Palestinian leader worth his salt will sit idly by while 1.5 million civilians in Gaza suffer collective punishment for the Hamas take-over. In addition, a hungry and seething population will not blame Hamas for its condition but will instead undoubtedly swell the ranks not only of Hamas, but also much more ominously of al-Qaida and affiliated organizations.

Third is that Hamas cannot be eliminated from the Palestinian political scene or destroyed militarily. Owing much of its formative development to Israeli support and its official political ascendancy to the insistence of the US on the elections that brought it to power, it has become a permanent fixture of the Palestinian landscape, supported by a sizable minority of Palestinians and Iranian and Syrian patrons.

GIVEN THESE three realities, the formulation of policies that preserve Palestinian unity, realize Israeli security, and set the path toward a peaceful and negotiated settlement of the conflict based on the two-state solution need to contain the following ingredients.

The Palestinian president and new prime and finance ministers must be allowed freedom in disbursing international aid not only to the West Bank but also to Gaza, whether to meet Gaza's humanitarian needs or to pay the salaries of those workers in Gaza, including members of the security services, whose allegiance is to the new government.

Efforts to strengthen Abbas and his platform of achieving statehood through peaceful negotiations must move beyond lip service and include Israeli freezing of settlements and removal of outposts and checkpoints, releasing Palestinian prisoners, resuming the handover of Palestinian tax revenues and last but certainly not least, beginning serious talks on a final political settlement.

Justified efforts to isolate Hamas militarily, diplomatically, and politically must allow the organization an out, a path to evolving into strictly a political organization through meeting conditions within a realistic time-frame.

Immediately, would be Hamas's total adherence to a cease-fire and giving Abbas complete authority to negotiate a permanent settlement with Israel.

Later, would be recognition of Israel.

Otherwise Hamas will return to its role as a spoiler outside the political arena with violent consequences for Israelis and Palestinians.

STRENGTHENING Abbas and reforming Fatah will allow Abbas to negotiate a future power-sharing agreement with a reforming Hamas from a position of equality and credibility with the Palestinian people. It will also make statehood look real enough to Palestinians for the majority to abandon Hamas's vision and appeal.

When Palestinians come to believe that a real two-state deal is available through Abbas, many will reconsider their support of Hamas as has consistently been shown by polls showing a majority of Palestinians supporting a two-state solution.

Finally, the US as the indispensable actor to the conflict must re-engage in a serious and sustained manner. Though too late to achieve the Bush vision of a Palestinian state in the remaining months of his presidency, serious groundwork can be laid upon which the next administration can build.

The alternative is not simply the end of the Palestinian dream of statehood, but the maturing of the most extreme Islamist elements already in evidence in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. That whirlwind will be reaped by all.

As progress toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stalls, an old idea has gained increased currency in some circles: one bi-national state for both Israelis and Palestinians. There are a number of variations of this argument, but proponents essentially call for forgoing the concept of two distinct national entities. Instead, they advocate that Israelis and Palestinians share the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River in one state.

The idea of a bi-national state is not a new one. Several prominent Jewish intellectuals in mandatory Palestine between the two world wars advocated such an arrangement, though they had little political influence. Originally, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) advocated the establishment of a democratic Palestinian Arab state in all of mandatory Palestine, with Jews as citizens of this state. In 1987, the PLO and Palestinian National Council (PNC) formally embraced the two-state solution, calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state in all of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. This continues to be the position of the PLO and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. The recent resurgence in discussion about the bi-national concept is essentially due to the lack of movement toward a negotiated two-state solution coupled with what are deemed irrevocable Israeli facts on the ground in the occupied territories, making the possibility of a viable and independent Palestinian state remote.

What makes the one-state argument seductive is that it sounds theoretically reasonable. Israeli facts on the ground, primarily settlements, control of vital resources, and the appropriation of critical parts of a future Palestinian state including East Jerusalem through the separation barrier, are serious challenges to the two-state concept. The idea of "one man, one vote" is fundamentally democratic. The land in question is small and the two societies are intertwined to some extent.

But however well intentioned proponents of a bi-national state are, their argument suffers from fatal flaws. The first is that international support for the idea barely exists. All of the relevant international world powers and institutions, including the U.S., United Nations, European Union and Arab League, support a two-state solution.

More important, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians continue to desire to express their national aspirations in an independent state of their own where they will be first class citizens.

On the Israeli side, the bi-national idea predictably has no support. To assume that Israeli Jews would willingly give up on the idea of a Jewish state is to show lack of understanding of the existential need of Jews for a state of their own after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust.

To Israelis and Jews, a bi-national state means a state where they will be a minority, equating in their eyes to calls for their destruction.

For Palestinians, the danger of talking now about a one-state solution is that it diverts critically needed energies from the still achievable goal of two states, and destroys decades-long work towards achieving international recognition of the need for a Palestinian state, essentially returning them to square one. Since no realistic individual can assume that Israelis will willingly give up on a Jewish, Israeli state, it condemns the two peoples to decades of bloody conflict in the pursuit of an unachievable goal.

Even if such a state were to miraculously come into being, Palestinians would very likely be an underclass, with decades if not more of civil rights to fight for. Worse, with such a bitter history of violence between the two peoples, it is easy to foresee degeneration into Balkans-style and ceaseless inter-communal conflict.

What is required at the present time is a refocusing of efforts toward surmounting the challenges facing a two-state solution, the parameters of which are well known and have been accepted by all parties: a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem, and a negotiated settlement of the refugee issue.

In terms of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, though all illegal under international law, it is also recognized that some Israeli settlement blocs, accounting for 4 percent to 5 percent of the West Bank, will be incorporated into Israel as part of a negotiated and equitable land swap. The rest of the settlers would return to Israel proper. Negotiation and the application of political power can separate settlers from the settlements and bring down walls.

This is achievable because the majority of Israelis realize that the settlement enterprise has been an obstacle to peace.

It is true that time is running out on the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israelis, Palestinians and the U.S. need to shoulder their responsibilities to create a viable and contiguous Palestinian state living alongside Israel in peace. Such a state is in the interest of all these parties and remains the only way to fulfill Palestinian national aspirations and address Israel's security and integration into the Middle East.

Achieving a two-state solution is admittedly difficult, but replacing it with something far less achievable is not the answer. The Palestinian national project is hardly any less achievable than Jewish hopes for a state of their own as recently as 70 years ago. The alternative is continued and expanding conflict with the real danger of degeneration into a holy war between Muslims and Jews.

At the end of that fight there will neither be one nor two states.

Raafat Dajani is the executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine, an organization advocating the U.S. national interest in a two-state solution.

The past weeks have seen an unprecedented and ominous deterioration in the internal Palestinian security situation. The "red line" of Palestinians never shedding Palestinian blood has been crossed, and for the first time in their tragic and tumultuous history, Palestinians are facing the prospect of a civil war and the death of the dream of a Palestinian state. At least 20 Palestinians have died in factional clashes in the past month.

Until now, despite the expected political divisions characterizing any society, Palestinians had remained united despite the most challenging of circumstances, chief among them a 40-year Israeli occupation that controlled every aspect of their lives.

The defeat of the secular Fatah party in the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections set the stage for more fundamental splits in Palestinian society and a deteriorating internal security situation. Frustrated by Fatah's corruption and inability to deliver on Palestinian statehood, the Palestinian people punished Fatah by voting Hamas into power. Hamas, while never in power or even part of the political system, had nevertheless garnered increased support among Palestinians for essentially being the "anti-Fatah." It was clean, disciplined, and delivered on many of the social services that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority was supposed to but had not.

The the taking over of the reins of Palestinian governance by Hamas exposed the fundamental ideological difference between it and the PLO, the umbrella Palestinian organization dominated by Fatah, of which Hamas is not a part. For Hamas, armed resistance to the Israeli occupation is valid, including suicide bombings against Israeli civilians in response to Palestinian civilian deaths. Political negotiations might begin, but only after Israel withdrew completely from Palestinian land occupied since 1967, since political negotiations with Israel prior to that have proven to be fruitless.

The PLO on the other hand, now headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, had foresworn the use of violence as a tool to end the occupation and advocated political negotiations with Israel as the only way to end the occupation and achieve Palestinian statehood. The use of violence, whether sanctioned by international law or not, is not in Palestinian interests on any number of levels.

With Hamas in power barely five months, the Palestinian situation has considerably worsened. A number of factors have contributed to this. An international sanctions regime is in effect against the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA) government for its refusal to meet the three conditions set by the international community for aid: recognizing Israel's existence, recognizing past Israeli-Palestinian agreements, and renouncing the use of violence. The result is that the PA has been unable to pay salaries or deliver basic services to the Palestinian population.

Fatah, after refusing to join Hamas in a coalition government and unhappy with its electoral loss, is behaving as if still in power. It is using its overwhelming presence in the civil service and security forces to hinder Hamas' ability to govern. Hamas on the other hand, unprepared for its electoral triumph, is behaving as if still in opposition, invoking steadfastness as a substitute for policy and introducing provocative measures of its own.

Even as Hamas and Fatah leaders repeatedly profess their determination to avoid violent conflict, they are both using low-level violence on the streets as they jockey for power.

The latest manifestation of this jockeying is the issue of a referendum on what has become known as the "Prisoners Document." This is an 18-point plan drawn up by Palestinian prisoners of all factions in Israeli jails, Hamas and Fatah included. Given the almost mythic status of Palestinian prisoners in Palestinian society, this document carries much weight. Calling, among other things, for a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, its importance is in the recognition of Israel this implies. Sensing the political opportunity this creates for restarting negotiations and addressing the sanctions against Palestinians, Abbas has adopted the document and called on Hamas to accept it or put the document to a referendum, issuing a presidential degree for a July 26 vote if Hamas demurs. Surveys show strong Palestinian support for a referendum and predict a "yes" vote for the document. Hamas has balked, perceiving this as a vote against its legitimacy, and in response initiated a parliamentary motion declaring the July 26 referendum illegal. The vote on that motion has been postponed, with both sides realizing that the brinkmanship is creating a momentum of violence on the streets that is on the verge of spiraling out of control. The coming days may prove to be a critical turning point for Palestinians. Will their historic national unity prevail or will the issue of the referendum light the match of wide-scale internal conflict? It is critical that Palestinians realize that a civil war would be a humanitarian disaster and would increase support in Israel and worldwide for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan to unilaterally draw new Israeli-Palestinian borders in Israel's favor. More importantly, a civil war will mean that the Palestinian national project for statehood will be dead and buried.

Rafi Dajani is the executive director of The American Task Force on Palestine. This text first appeared in ABC News.com