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 first conclusion one can draw from the tripartite summit which brought together Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas in New York, as well as from the US President’s speech before the United Nations General Assembly, is that US diplomacy, which promoted a climate of optimism during the past few months and expressed its desire to play an active and positive role in resuming peace negotiations on balanced bases, was quick to abandon such a role with the emergence of the first difficulties, and has retreated to a position of spectator of an imbalanced “arm wrestling match” which, if it were to begin, would only lead to consecrating a reality which negotiations should be aimed at changing.

Indeed, the pressures which the Palestinians and Arabs were hoping for the new US Administration to exert on Israel to resume talks on the basis of a minor correction in the tremendous imbalance of power between it and the Palestinian Authority, one based merely on a temporary freezing of settlement-building, completely disappeared when they were confronted with the real Israeli stance, different from the talk of wanting peace, and turned into mere pleas “to show flexibility, common sense and sense of compromise”.

In other words, the Israelis have succeeded in “neutralizing” US efforts, curbing their momentum and reducing the effects of the “new approach” to the crisis in the region, after they had first tried to confine them to demanding the price of normalization from the Arabs in exchange for obscure promises. The Arabs asserted that attempting to achieve peace based on confidence-building measures “has not succeeded over the past three decades and will not succeed today”, thus thwarting Israel’s desire to put the carriage before the horses. It later appeared that the Hebrew state was not willing to facilitate any discussion over final situation issues, and especially Jerusalem, before completing the changes on the ground, in terms of expanding existing settlements and preparing to appropriate more Palestinian lands, and such as to cancel out in advance the possibility of obtaining any “concessions” from its side.

The message addressed by Saudi Arabia to members of the US Congress over the peace process provides a clear summary of Israel’s method of procrastination and buying time: the number of settlers was five thousand when the Camp David Accords were ratified between Egypt and Israel in 1979; when the Madrid Peace Conference was held in 1991, the number of settlers had risen to one hundred thousand; and in 2007, when the Annapolis Conference was held in the United States, that number had increased to two hundred thousand settlers. Thus the number gradually rises with each step of the steps of “peace”, as each one cancels out what had previously been negotiated over.

Successive US Administrations have in the past exerted pressure on Tel Aviv to drive it to negotiate, and have used to do so the guarantees of loans to Israel from US banks (it obtained nine billion dollars from the Bush Administration at the height of the 2002 Palestinian intifada), which have been and continue to be allocated to supporting settlement-building and erecting the separation wall, and there is more than a billion dollars left of them until 2011.

Despite the fact that freezing guarantees and threatening with them has in effect led only to limited results which Israel quickly retracted, Washington is able, if it decides to abandon its “excessive kindness”, to make use of multiple means of pressure with which it can “convince” Netanyahu to pave the way to resuming negotiations, if one were to take into consideration the strategic bonds between the two countries.

Some in the Obama Administration might say that failure to impose a “simple” procedural matter like temporarily freezing settlement-building would become acceptable if starting direct negotiations over final situation issues was permitted, but they would thus be ignoring the vital link which the Israelis make between settlement-building and security, making it impossible to come to a decision over these issues without abandoning it.

Obama’s historical visit to the Middle East that he started in Saudi Arabia yesterday is of concern to all extremists, even those who are supposed to be staunch enemies – in theory at least. Israeli Minister of Transportation, Katz, who is close to Netanyahu, hastened to criticize the US endeavor to “win the hearts” of Iran and Al Qaeda and publicly criticize the Israeli settlement policy. Al Qaeda’s number one and number two, Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri, attacked “the criminal who came to obtain through deceit what he was unable to obtain on the ground.” Ahmadinejad blamed Washington for the Zahedan blast and promised to continue “resisting international pressures” if reelected president.

Such criticism and hostile stances do not only stem from temporary reservations towards the sudden change in Washington’s approach to the region, but also reflect the confusion of these parties whose policies were built and still revolve around America’s extreme hostility and biased stance. Hence, this US transformation leaves these parties in a state of imbalance, at a loss, concerned about their image and role.

Throughout the years of struggle in the Middle East, especially since the mid-1950s, the Americans have constituted the great target that is easy to attack and accuse of all predicaments. Some of the regional regimes have gotten accustomed to blame Washington for their political failure, military defeats, bloody coups, unjust treatment of citizens, disinterest in development, inability to peacefully deal with their environment, as well as scientific and technological backwardness. Hence, hostility to Americans has turned into a raison d'être for these regimes and their permanent slogans on every occasion. Even their “defiance” slogan was reflective of their rejection of the US policy rather than an expression of suggested alternatives. Moreover, Israel exploited this situation and pursued its settlement policy – taking advantage of the blame thrown on Americans for all its actions.

Today, the White House master is showing that America is changing, and could change more if it found sufficient response; that it is not hostile to Arabs and Muslims or in a blind alliance with Israel; that it seeks a solution that would give Palestinians their independent state because this would preserve its national security, serve its interests, and reduce the threats to American military and civil presence in the Middle East.

There isn’t a clear and easily targetable “enemy” anymore. The open hand policy embarrasses extremism. The elimination of the US “scapegoat” - through withdrawal from Iraq, determined stances against Israeli settlement and the two-state solution - pulls the rug from under those who find in ongoing tensions their raison d'être, as peace and stability in the Middle East does not suit them. Although it is still too early to issue a definitive positive or negative judgment on the performance of the Obama administration, it seems to have encouraging repercussions on the Arab public opinion, as a poll has shown an increase in the popularity of the US President among Arabs. This development is enough to worry “defiants” in the various camps.

Every time it finds itself cornered, Israel resorts to a balance-shattering violence that deflects attention away from the main problem at hand by depicting it as less important than reaching a ceasefire for example or ending the torture of civilians or the destruction of their economy - as has repeatedly happened with Lebanon and the Palestinians.

Today, there are a multitude of implicit and explicit indications of a conflict between the Hebrew State and its strategic broker, the United States, on the prioritization of the two main regional problems: the Palestinians and Iran. The Americans are adamant that finding a settlement to the Palestinian cause based on the two-state solution will help them deal with the Iranian issues - whether related to nuclear capacity or the regional role - with more ease and better cards. Israelis on the other hand consider that limiting the abilities of Iran and fending off its danger help in reaching a settlement with the Palestinians, one that the injured parties, including Tehran, cannot sabotage at a later stage. Yet they give no guarantees on what they will offer the Palestinians in case America commits to their agenda.

In addition to this conflict which the Obama administration insists on settling in its favor, there is another no less important conflict with the United Nations, which criticized harshly in a recent report the Israeli war on Gaza, accusing Israel of intentionally targeting civilians and striking its institutions. For the first time since Israel's creation, the United Nations demanded indemnities for the damages it caused. It is no secret that such a report would not have been released without an American - albeit implicit - green light.

Meanwhile, the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) condemned Israel's use of a secret detention and interrogation center in an unspecified location that cannot be accessed by any representatives of international or private human rights organizations, ICRC, or lawyers and relatives of the detainees. The officers in charge of this center are suspected of practicing unbridled and unmonitored violations.

The Spanish National Court ruled a few days ago that investigation would continue in a lawsuit brought by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) against former and current Israeli military leaders for committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The final straw was the invitation addressed by the US Secretary of State to Israel, urging it to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in the first US public acknowledgement of the Hebrew State's nuclear arsenal.

These conflicts and condemnations incensed Israel, which almost finds itself in a confrontation with the world. This confirms the idea its leaders have incessantly instilled in their citizens' heads ever since its establishment - that their state's existence is permanently threatened; they must always be on the defense; they can rely on no one else but themselves; and peace is nothing but an illusion through which enemies wish to destroy the Zionist state. This idea has constituted the backbone of the various wars waged by Israel over sixty years with its Arab neighbors, and still represents the essence of its political and military creed.

The question is: Where and when will Israel respond to these challenges? It is certainly searching for a pretext and is getting ready for all possibilities, as indicate the series of huge military maneuvers it had made and intends to make.

But what matters most to us is that the advocates of "Divine Victory" - boasted by Ahmedinejad two days ago in Damascus -would not present it with the adequate opportunity to exit its quagmires.

What awaits Lebanon and the Lebanese if the opposition wins the coming parliamentary elections? The answer came in the form of a "notification" distributed by the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc to participants in this week's national dialogue session. In it, the party warns of all-out military maneuvers that Israel will carry out at the end of next month, or a week before the elections, with the participation of all of its agencies, institutions and weapons. In addition, the Lebanese state is supposed to join up completely with the resistance in preparing for the outbreak of a "surprise" war with the Jewish state.

The "notification," which was mostly devoted to stressing the massive Israeli maneuvers as well as their meaning, threat, background and dimensions, was clear in its conclusions: dialogue is a mere waste of time and effort; the only defense strategy that the party accepts, and strives for, is one that it lays down, according to its own thinking, in coordination with its external allies Syria and Iran, and in line with its conception of the role of the country, its institutions, its army and its citizens. In even more clearer terms, it is a consecration of Lebanon as a sole, permanent arena of confrontation with Israel. Hezbollah affirms that it is being targeted by these maneuvers and calls for a comprehensive Lebanese response at the civil, military and political level, covering hospitals, blood banks, water, telephone, electricity, the army, the security apparatuses, the media, embassies, diplomats… because it believes it necessary to confront Israel "in a way suitable to the nature of the challenge" that it represents and "be ready for the worst."

In this sense, Hezbollah is portending an inevitable new war with Israel, one whose timing depends on factors connected to both it and the Jewish state. The Lebanese state can take no action except to prepare for this war, since anything else would have no point. In the event the party and its allies gain the parliamentary majority, then Parliament will be one of the means of imposing the change that Hezbollah wants in the structure of the state and its orientations. This is so that the state becomes a substitute for its institutions, and even an extension of them. They will perform what the party lays down in the form of missions and roles, because Hezbollah believes, based on a "slip of the tongue" by the same party official, that the Lebanese state "disappointed" it during the July War of 2006, and was a part of the "hostile" plan targeting it, and that it should "go away, just like Bush and Olmert." The party tried to bring down the state twice, when it occupied downtown Beirut, and then the entire capital.

If the party, based on its paper presented to the national dialogue session, is completely aware of Israel's intentions and huge preparations for the war, why does it offer it justifications as it stockpiles rockets, boasts of its arsenal, and tries to open new fronts with the enemy, by sending its men to Egypt and acknowledging, in turn, the transfer of weapons to Gaza? Why bring Lebanon into a struggle that it usually wages by itself? It is because Damascus and Tehran, which the party's working paper say are also targeted by the Israeli maneuvers, are not about to expose themselves to an undesired war with unpredictable consequences. On the sidelines of his recent visit to Austria, the Syrian president implicitly recognized, while expressing pessimism about the possibilities for peace with the current Israeli leadership, that the Syrian front will remain calm, when he said that Hamas and Hezbollah will not attack Israel from Syrian territory.

Hezbollah's working paper quotes an Israeli general who says the goal of the maneuvers is to "bring people into the 'culture of emergency,' as if the war is about to begin tomorrow morning." Our question is this: is there a difference between this goal and what "Hezbollah's generals" are promoting?