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 colored strings of lights are now decorating its streets. As you drive past homes you now see Christmas trees proudly placed in front of windows so that all may see. Manger Street is full of traffic at night but no one is complaining for everyone is waiting their turn to receive candy from one of the many Santa Clauses dancing with joy in the street. Everywhere you go you hear Christmas songs played from small radios placed in front of stores or on balconies. In Manger Square, the main Christmas tree shines with bright colors and decorations. The joy is doubled in this holy city this year as both the Palestinian Christians and the Muslim communities celebrate. Christmas and Eid Al-Adha (the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice) have come together this year.

It would have been easy and even justified for Bethlehem and its families not to do anything this Christmas and Eid season and to just sit back and complain about how bad things are. It would have been accepted if people say we can not afford anything because unemployment is at it highest level in years. It would have made sense if people complained that the Separation Wall and barriers (build by the Israeli government and now surrounding the entire city) have cut them of from the world and broken their spirit. It would have been justified to blame the Israeli occupation, its aggressive military, and checkpoints for destroying any hope for any future, but that will not happen in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem has chosen to overcome all obstacles and stand resilient in the face of all challenges. Bethlehem has chosen to stand committed to its historic role and responsibility as the bearer and the keeper of the Christmas spirit. Bethlehem has decided to be the place where hope for peace is born once again.

Land may be stolen for building illegal settlement, walls may be built to imprison entire communities, the body may be broken with acts of violence and torture, but the spirit of Bethlehem will never surrender.

This Christmas season remember Bethlehem … Remember Bethlehem not for the pain and violence it faces but for the joy and resilience it possesses.

The Palestinian nonviolent movement is as old as the Palestinian liberation movement itself. As far back as the 1930s, Palestinians engaged in nonviolent protests and demonstrations against the British Mandate authorities. This form of protest peaked with the breakout of the 1987 intifada. That uprising, which was for the most part nonviolent in nature, brought immediate international recognition to the Palestinian people, forced Israeli society to recognize Palestinians as a "people" and to recognize their legitimate leadership, and finally led to a peace process. The failure of that peace process, known as the Oslo peace process was not due to the means that led to the negotiating table, on the contrary; it was largely due to the lack of continued mobilization and support by the Palestinian leadership of the popular Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement. Nonviolent resistance should have continued as a means to balance the imbalance at the negotiating table, viewed by the Palestinian leadership as the only way of attaining the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.

The failure of the peace process led to the breakout of the second intifada in 2000. Again, Palestinians initially engaged in nonviolent forms of resistance, but the Israeli military response to these protests was more brutal and forceful than at any time before during the occupation. This convinced some groups within the Palestinian community that only the use of arms and suicide attacks to balance out the pain being heaped upon Palestinians would be effective in making the occupation as costly as possible to the Israeli public. This, however, combined with the lack of a clear strategy and a clear vision to mobilize the Palestinian population in nonviolent forms of resistance, emboldened the Israeli government to take full advantage of the change in the rules of engagement after September 11, 2001 and attempt to de-legitimize the entire Palestinian liberation movement, linking its goals with the means used to achieve them. The Palestinian armed resistance, labeled as "terrorism" by Israel, was portrayed as the goal of the Palestinian liberation movement rather than a means, justified or otherwise.

The legitimacy of the goals of freedom and independence should not be viewed through the lens of the "means" used to achieve these goals. The struggle to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state does not gain or lose legitimacy if nonviolent means are preferred over violent means and vice versa. Even with the changes in international politics and a steadily growing voice within the Palestinian community criticizing and condemning the armed resistance, particularly those actions that target Israeli civilians, the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle is embedded in international law, international conventions on human rights and numerous United Nations resolutions, up until and including the most recent decision by the International Court of Justice regarding the separation wall.

A more important question deals with the issue of efficacy. Are the means used effective in achieving the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people?

When discussing armed resistance, Palestinians must recognize both the internal and international implications of continuing the armed resistance. The gross imbalance of power, the unrestrained and brutal actions of the Israeli military, and the change in the direction of world politics have left Palestinians defenseless and isolated in the face of daily aggressions. The armed resistance, even armed defense, has been effective only in creating excuses for greater Israeli aggression.

But to say that one is ineffective is not to show that the other isn't. When it comes to nonviolent resistance, the question most people ask is how do you nonviolently resist your prison guard when you are in prison? How do you resist the occupation when you are surrounded by walls and fences? Examples of nonviolent resistance from across the world highlight one important factor: direct confrontation and contact with the enemy is vital to expose that enemy's brutality and unjust policies. In Palestine today, however, Palestinians are trapped in a prison. Going on hunger strike means absolutely nothing, while protesting and marching means walking around in circles. So what nonviolent tactics can be used effectively to expose the occupation and affect its end?

The answer is threefold. First, a strong leadership committed to the principles of nonviolent resistance and community building must be established. The initial focus will be on the need to unify Palestinian communities and reestablish trust between the leadership and the people. This should be followed by the development of a long-term internal strategy to build a nonviolent resistance movement on a massive scale.

Secondly, the Palestinian population inside and outside of Palestine must be mobilized in mass campaigns beginning with a boycott of Israeli products campaign and moving on to more dangerous protests at check points, on settler roads, and near international border crossings.

Finally and simultaneously, the Arab, Muslim, international streets as well as the Israeli peace camp must also be mobilized to support this nonviolent Palestinian movement. Sustained and significant popular protests against Israel will eventually pressure the Israeli government to take the necessary steps towards peace.

Nonviolent resistance is never easy. It takes tremendous dedication, discipline and sacrifice. And while no means are guaranteed effective, the nonviolent approach attempts to neutralize the power of the enemy and to target the collective consciousness of the populace rather than empowering enemy extremists by handing them the blind and unconditional support of a people fearful of annihilation.

The international community has declared that the death of the late President Yasser Arafat is an opportunity to revive the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The Palestinian community needs to see the death of their president as an opportunity to reinforce the commitment to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and to achieve these aspirations by engaging in effective nonviolent means of resistance and community building.