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.”

Just as the United States apparently is gearing up for phase two of its foray into Arab-Israeli peace-making diplomacy, some Europeans seem to be awakening from their long slumber on the issue.

Several symbolic or rhetorical gestures in recent weeks indicate that the European Union wants at least to raise its voice and profile on Arab-Israeli peace-making. Its approach is intriguing, given Europe’s potential to play a more activist role in promoting the rule of law as the basis for any negotiated agreement.

The most striking development was an unusually blunt statement last month by the European Union that called for an end to Israeli settlements, and for Jerusalem to be the capital of Israeli and Palestinian states. The initial draft statement by Sweden angered and probably frightened the Israeli government, which used its formidable powers of lobbying and threats to force the Europeans to tone it down.

The final text, nevertheless, criticised Israel’s settlements, the “separation barrier” and the demolition of Palestinian houses, saying they were “illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible”. It also reminded all concerned that the EU, “has never recognised the annexation of East Jerusalem”.

The European statement may be the most meaningful such gesture since the June 1980 Venice Declaration by the European Council. That statement caused a stir then by calling for the implementation of “the two principles universally accepted by the international community: the right to existence and to security of all states in the region, including Israel, and justice for all the peoples, which implies the recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people”, including the right to “self-determination”.

The Europeans did not follow up the Venice Declaration with any significant diplomatic muscle, and it will be much more difficult for them to do so now in view of the expansion of the EU from the nine then to today’s 27 members. Yet the European Council’s December statement could herald a new approach to a more constructive role in this arena, which would be to constantly remind all parties of the critical role of international law as the sole source of the legitimacy that is needed to frame, prod and perpetuate any lasting peace agreement.

When I asked several European diplomats and officials involved in Middle East issues how we should interpret the December statement, they repeatedly returned to the theme of the centrality of international law in driving diplomacy. Two key points emerged.

The first is that only international law can be the response for the solution of the status of Jerusalem and a shield against the extreme unilateral actions of any party that would claim Jerusalem for itself and exclude others. International law in this case comprises the several pertinent UN Security Council resolutions (242, 478, 1515, among others), international legal statutes related to the law of occupation and international humanitarian law (the Geneva Conventions) and previous commitments that should be applied to both sides with equal vigour.

The second theme sees Europe as being angered by years of Israeli deceptions when it comes to peace making, culminating in the brutal attack on Gaza a year ago. This viewpoint contends that Europeans are tired of being marginalised and taken for a ride, and feel they must regain their role as at least a beacon of legitimacy and morality on what is right and wrong, legal and illegal, in Israeli-Palestinian policies and behaviour.

It is interesting in this respect to note several small developments, such as an EU delegation of 50 parliamentarians from 12 European countries who are on their way to Gaza this week to assess conditions there a year after the Israeli attack and the imposition of a strict siege by Israel. At the same time, the British ambassador to Jordan, James Watt, wrote in his blog this week: ”We are all appalled by the suffering inflicted quite unjustifiably on the population of Gaza by the Israeli blockade. The British government has repeatedly called on Israel to lessen the restrictions on the Gaza crossings, and to allow the legitimate flow of humanitarian aid, and of reconstruction and trade goods, as well as the movement of people. We regularly remind the Israeli government of its obligations under international law…”

Watt also emphasised the importance of taking “full account of the exact provisions of international law” and upholding that rule of law.

The rejuvenated European focus on the central role of international law can only be a positive development, but to have impact, it must transcend verbal commitments or admonitions and venture into the realm of actions and sanctions.

Europe is well suited to play the role of champion of international law that is applied equitably to all parties.

The first anniversary of Barack Obama’s presidency is a good time to review his performance in the Middle East, and the Middle East’s performance vis-à-vis the United States. The exercise is depressing, but useful, especially when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict that remains the central destabilizing factor in the wider region. It is unfair only to measure Obama’s performance, and ignore the Israeli and Arab principal players in this prolonged drama of stalemate and stagnation.

Obama started his term with a flurry of profound gestures and a few, limited moves. He reached out to and sat at the table with Iran, resumed high-level contacts with Syria, appointed George Mitchell as his peacemaking envoy, called for an Israeli settlement freeze, sought Arab gestures of acceptance of Israel, asked Israel to allow humanitarian supplies to flow into Gaza, spoke out on US-Islamic ties in Ankara and Cairo, and, once a week between January and July, hugged every Muslim in site.

These gestures set the tone for a presidency that held out great promise for new activism, ideas and advances in Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Most of them have fizzled out. Clearly, Obama gave urgency to his Arab-Israeli moves, but did not make them a priority. He focused more on issues of greater immediate importance, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, the economy, health care reform and relations with Russia and China. His largely inexperienced team also made some amateurish moves, like equating an Israeli settlement freeze with calls on the Arabs to make gestures of acceptance toward Israel. Washington also appeared not to apply serious diplomatic muscle in the process, beyond public rhetoric.

We still have no idea of how Obama hopes to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in particular, because he has not articulated the US view on core issues like refugees, the ultimate status of the settlements, and Jerusalem. He has not indicated how far he is prepared to press the Israelis or Arabs. He may not do any of this in the coming year, when mid-term Congressional elections usually freeze any serious work on Israeli matters in the US, for fear that politicians may lose their seats if the pro-Israel lobby decides to oppose and unseat them.

Obama’s Arab-Israeli policy remains an unhurried work in progress, although this week’s Mideast trip by Mitchell, coming soon after that of the national security adviser, Jim Jones, may signal early steps in what might become Phase Two of Obama’s approach to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict through a re-launching of direct negotiations.

In the face of this erratic track record by Obama, what have the Arabs and Israelis done in the past year, other than oppose, delay, irritate and obstruct the US president? If Obama gets a B for effort and a D for achievement, Arabs and Israelis probably deserve an F for their collective failure to contribute meaningfully to resolving their own conflict.

The Israelis not only refused to comply with the American demand to freeze settlements, they also pursued several other destructive, predatory or illegal and provocative actions: they expanded some settlements, house demolitions, building permit approvals and land confiscations in the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights; they continued to steal Arab water above and below ground; they maintained a near-starvation siege on the Gaza Strip and kept killing or jailing Gaza and West Bank Palestinians at will; they continued their over-flights in Lebanon; and, they maintained Apartheid-like controls over Palestinians living in the lands occupied in 1967. All in all, a pretty normal Israeli year.

The Arabs, for their part, have been on diplomatic leave of absence this year, it seems, perhaps still celebrating the Obama victory and anticipating that the young president would save them. I cannot think of a single meaningful or constructive diplomatic move by the Arab world since the Obama election – not on Israel and Palestine, not on terrorism, not on Iran, not on weapons of mass destruction proliferation, not on Iraq, not on Sudan, not on Somalia, not on Yemen, not on Algeria, not on democratization and human rights, and not on Lebanon (well, perhaps we can celebrate that the Syrians and Saudis started talking again).

The total absence of serious Arab diplomacy or initiatives is one of the profound shortcomings of our contemporary Arab political system, in which regimes are largely immobilized on the international scene because of their near total preoccupation with maintaining power at home. It is profoundly sad to see the political passivity of the Arab region and its people – a people that once, long ago, displayed energy, fostered creativity, took initiatives, and engaged the world to make it a better place.

A year after the start of the era of Barack Obama, the Americans still come and go and speak of their dreams for the Middle East, the Israelis still act like criminals, and the Arabs insist on remaining invisible.

I am often asked why I maintain the slightly naive expectation that the United States will one day pursue policies in the Middle East that are fair to all in the region, and also comply with international law and core American values. My answer is, in part, Denise Horn’s Globalization and International Affairs class INTL 1101 at Northeastern University in Boston.

Every autumn I spend a few weeks at Northeastern University giving a few lectures, exchanging thoughts with students and faculty, and monitoring the ever-evolving range and quality of fruit smoothies on Huntington Avenue in central Boston. On all three counts, I am always enriched in mind, spirit and body. I inevitably come away from the experience energized by the common sense, basic decency, and fairness of ordinary Americans, who speak about the Middle East in an open, honest context, free from frenzied ideological manipulation.

Every year Denise Horn asks her students to submit questions for our class discussion. The range of questions about the United States and the Middle East is a striking affirmation of four elements that make the experience so satisfying for me: the inquisitiveness of youth; their sense of responsibility about how their government acts around the world; their quest to probe and understand the underlying reasons for the tensions that define many aspects of US-Middle Eastern relations; and, their desire to explore how their country can act most responsibly and constructively in the world.

I know that the several hundred students in the class are not fully representative of all US citizens, but they get pretty close, to judge by the many ethnicities, races, religions and ideological sentiments they represent. The substance and style of the questions this time around were striking and refreshing. They were striking because they almost always hit the central issues of any matter under discussion, without being diverted by ideological nonsense: What are the essential elements of an Arab-Israeli compromise agreement? Do tensions in Arab societies reflect local problems or stresses from globalization? Does American foreign policy aggravate or reduce autocratic governance in the Middle East? Is President Barack Obama’s approach to the region promoting or retarding Arab-Israeli peace? Does he deserve his Nobel Peace Prize? What can average citizens do to promote peace and stability in the Middle East? Should the US and the international community push for upholding international law and prosecuting leaders in the region who are accused of war crimes?

The tone of the questions was refreshing because they were just that, questions, rather than the ideological fire hose blasts that often emanate from Americans who speak about the Middle East. The students reflect the best of American intellectual and political traditions as I know them: They appreciate that a problem or conflict exists; they ask many questions to try and grasp the facts and nuances of the matter; and they use the knowledge gathered to explore possible resolutions, with their country and government playing a positive role aiming to resolve the conflicts and reduce tensions.

The students and I do not always end with agreement or consensus, but we discuss the issues in a way that allows all views to be heard, where everyone can grasp and address the legitimate concerns of all parties.

This dynamic is repeated every day in a thousand classrooms around the US, I am sure. It is an important reminder that the sentiments and values of ordinary Americans are strong, sensitive and fair-minded. That’s the good news; the downside is that these sentiments also seem largely divorced from foreign policy decision-making in Washington. The point is, democracies function best when they faithfully reflect the sentiments and values of their citizens. This is often the case with American foreign policy (as in the current American slow withdrawal from Iraq). However, US policy toward the Arabs and Israel is usually an exception that largely fails to take on the qualities of common decency and sense of fairness of the American people.

Rather, US policy in this realm is largely distorted by pro-Israel groups, Christian fundamentalist, and other extremist forces that broadly assume that Israel is good and that its needs must get priority treatment, while Arabs are suspect and they have to prove themselves and acquiesce to Israeli right-wing demands before being seriously engaged diplomatically. Public opinion polling by the respected Zogby firm and others in the US repeatedly shows that – unlike Washington’s skewed track record – the American public wants the government to take an evenhanded approach that affirms the simultaneous rights of Arabs and Israelis.

It is refreshing to confirm this now and then by engaging a cross-section of ordinary Americans who remind us why so many people around the world still admire the United States and look forward to the day when, like my jaunts along Huntington Avenue in Boston, its foreign policy also is fortified by the core strengths and decencies of its citizens.

A year after the Israeli attack on Gaza, a scorecard of “winners and losers” suggests that nobody won anything, but Israel has probably suffered political losses that it could not have envisioned when it decided to invade Gaza. I count seven main aims that Israel had in mind when it launched its war a year ago and tightened its siege of Gaza; one of them was achievable without a war, and the six others have either remained unachieved or have turned things to Hamas’ and the Palestinians’ favor. Here is my review of where things stand a year after the Gaza war.

Israel’s first aim was to stop the small projectile fire that was directed at southern Israel from Gaza. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups had twice stopped firing projectiles at Israel from Gaza in the two years before the war, according to the terms of truce accords that had been negotiated. The idea that a war was needed to stop the attacks is an example of Zionist lying and deception at their worst, given that the attacks had been stopped through nonviolent agreements that saw Israel also cease its much more vicious and destructive attacks against Gaza.

Israel’s second unaccomplished aim was to try and destroy much of Hamas’ military and political infrastructure, and weaken it as a movement to be reckoned with. Hamas remains firmly in control of governance in Gaza, and a major national and regional actor. The greatest irony is that Israel has intensified its negotiations with Hamas, through German intermediation, to release the Israeli prisoner of war Gilad Shalit.

The third Israeli aim was to force a weakened and chastened Hamas to release Shalit on terms advantageous to Israel, but the opposite is happening now. Israel’s stepped-up negotiations to release Shalit only strengthen Hamas’ credentials as a movement that resists Israel and thus generates more respect and credibility for itself. The imminent prisoner exchange will represent a tacit admission by Israel that its military tactics failed, and that it must engage Hamas politically instead.

Israel’s fourth aim was to weaken Hamas’ standing in Palestinian society and strengthen the standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The war had exactly the opposite effect: Abbas was grievously weakened by his Fatah movement’s behavior during and after the war, to the point that he had to admit that he would not run for re-election.

The fifth Israeli aim was to re-establish its deterrence power and political supremacy over the Palestinians and other Arabs, as it had tried to do in attacking Lebanon in 2006. Israel assumed that unleashing its massive military power to kill or maim thousands of civilians and destroy normal life would cause Palestinians and fellow Arabs to meekly comply with Israeli demands. This has not happened. The Arabs refused to offer even symbolic gestures of conciliation to Israel when US President Barack Obama asked for these in exchange for an Israeli settlement freeze.

Israel’s sixth aim was to reassert its self-confident political posture and sense of supremacy in the international community. The exact opposite has happened in the past year, as reflected in five dynamics: The international movement to boycott or divest from Israeli investments has gained steam; Israel is increasingly, ignominiously, compared to Apartheid South Africa; the Goldstone report by the UN Human Rights Council struck a severe blow against Israel’s sense of invincibility and exemption from complying with international law; Israeli officials are more hesitant to travel abroad for fear of being detained and indicted for war crimes; and, hardline pro-Israel groups in the United States and Europe are increasingly being challenged and subjected to public scrutiny.

Israel tightened its strangulation siege of Gaza, hoping to force the Palestinians to surrender. The opposite has happened. The most important new development during the last year has been the world’s repeated negative assessment of Israeli behavior, and calls for international political action to rein in Zionist military and colonial excesses. The latest example of this was the report three days ago by 16 British humanitarian and human rights organizations (including Amnesty International, Oxfam International, and Christian Aid) asking that the European Union commit itself to ending the blockade of Gaza and putting its relations with Israel on hold to achieve this.

Israel militarily attacked and laid siege to Gaza, but a year after the war it now finds itself under political siege by much of the world. Some Israeli political and military leaders should not only be investigated for war crimes; to judge by the balance sheet of Israel’s standing a year after it attacked Gaza, they should also be held accountable by the Israeli and Jewish people for massive political incompetence and outright stupidity.