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.”

On one hand, one can't blame the Israeli government for wanting to do what it can to prevent the world from seeing the effects of its devastating Gaza airstrikes that have killed hundreds of Palestinians.

In 48-hours, Israel has decimated the Gaza Strip, killed more than 300 Palestinians and injured 1,400 others in a "shock and awe" air campaign.

Israeli airstrikes have targeted a mosque, universities, and private homes as part of the military campaign aimed at destabilizing Hamas rulers and preventing Gaza militants from continuing to fire endless rounds of rockets into southern Israel.

But, as the BBC's Jo Floto noted last month after Israel first barred journalists from entering Gaza, Israel has joined a notorious and small list of countries preventing reporters from doing their job.

Israel, which prides itself on being the healthiest democracy in the Middle East, joins North Korea, Zimbabwe and Burma in denying media access to a major story.

In essence, Israel has transformed the entire Gaza Strip into a closed military zone.

Reporters from every major news organization, from the BBC and CNN to The New York Times and The Washington Post to NPR and McClatchy to AP and Fox News, are being barred by Israel from going into Gaza to cover the deadliest military campaign there since Israel seized the area from Egypt in the 1967 war.

The Foreign Press Association, of which McClatchy Newspapers is a part, has called the Israeli closure "insufferable" and asked the Israeli Supreme Court to take immediate action to lift the ban.

So far, Israel's high court has been slow to act and shows no sign that it is overly concerned. Appeals for a swift decision have been repeatedly rejected and the case won't be heard until Wednesday.

On Monday, the Israeli military went one step farther and declared the Gaza border, where tanks, artillery and troops are massing for a possible ground offensive, a closed military zone.

That drew another protest from the FPA, which denounced the closure, ostensibly being done for our own protection, "patently ridiculous."

Israel first imposed the ban on reporters going to Gaza on Nov. 4 when its military broke the cease-fire with Hamas by sending forces in to destroy a tunnel. Since then, Israel has opened the border for reporters for only a few days.

Israeli officials argue that the closure is meant to protect its staff at the border crossing from being exposed to unnecessary risks of rocket fire. But that argument holds little weight because the Israeli workers have been routinely staffing the border crossing to allow UN officials and Palestinians in need of emergency care in-and-out of Israel.

Monday, the Israeli staff allowed two United Nations workers to enter Gaza. Israeli officials ignored appeals from journalists that we be allowed to enter at the same time.

Today, the FPA issued a a new statement of protest, calling the Israeli ban "unprecedented."

"Never before have journalists been prevented from doing their work in this way," the FPA said in the statement. "We believe that it is vital that journalists be allowed to find out for themselves what is going on in Gaza."

Considering that Gaza is controlled by Hamas and that Israeli officials have cautioned reporters to be skeptical of the information coming out of Gaza at this time, you would think that Israel would want to allow reporters in to provide an independent view of the conflict.

If the mosque and university buildings were being used to house weapons, as Israel claims, why not let international reporters in to see?

But, in probably the most candid assessment of the situation from an Israeli official, Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said last month that they don't particularly like the coverage that comes out of Gaza.

"Where Gaza is concerned, our image will always be bad," Dror said. "When journalists go in it works against us, and when they don't go in it works against us."

The only other possible land route into Gaza is through Egypt, but the Egyptians have given no indication that they are prepared to let reporters into cover the conflict either. Egypt isn't a bastion of press freedom, though one suspects Israel wouldn't want to set its own benchmark for a free press by Egyptian standards.

In the meantime, the volatile conflict continues and the burden of telling the story is falling most heavily on Gaza journalists who are doing an amazing job of sending out video, photos and reports on what is happening - despite Israeli attempts to prevent reporters from covering the airstrikes.

For the moment, some of the best reporting is coming from Al Jazeera English and its Gaza-based reporter, Ayman Mohyeldin.

Like a Gettysburg battlefield tour guide, Ali Kafarna pointed out the scars of war as he walked through the fields between his home and the Israeli border.

"Here’s where the tanks used to stop," said Ali, 14, as he passed a dirt berm dug into dry grass littered with shrapnel and animal bones. "Here’s where they used to fire rockets," Ali said of the charred square of earth that Palestinians used as a launching pad to attack Israel.

Until last month, this area was a no-go zone for Ali and his family. Two weeks into a shaky cease-fire, Palestinian families are using the relative calm to visit bullet-scarred homes a few hundred yards from the Israeli border and to replant orchards uprooted by the Israeli military.

But the Egyptian-brokered peace is slowly unraveling as Hamas leaders in Gaza struggle to keep militants — especially their Fatah rivals — from firing the occasional rocket at Israel.

It’s an awkward situation for Hamas: After years of derailing Palestinian peace talks with Israel by staging suicide bombings, Hamas is now the one asking rivals to halt their attacks on Israel.

Hamas is using a mix of coercion and shame to try and keep militants from breaking the deal. In the past week, Hamas has arrested two Fatah members and given them stern warnings to fall in line.

Hamas also has directed all militants to get permission before firing rockets at Israel. If that happens without approval, a Hamas-led crisis-management team steps in.

And the Islamist group has publicly accused Gaza rocket launchers of betraying the Palestinian people and playing into Israeli hands by staging their attacks.

So far, it hasn’t been enough.

Since the cease-fire took hold June 19, Gaza militants have fired 11 rockets and mortars at southern Israel. They have caused little damage, but Israel has used them to justify temporarily blocking the flow of supplies into Gaza.

In response, Hamas leaders have accused Israel of reneging on its part of the deal by closing the borders. They’ve also warned that the shutdown could jeopardize the possible release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants more than two years ago.

"We are trying to do our best here to make sure no one is violating or abusing the agreement," Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef said Thursday. Nonetheless, a small militant group fired a rocket into a southern Israeli field a few hours later, harming nothing but the fragile cease-fire.

For Fatah fighters routed by Hamas forces during the Gaza takeover last summer, there is little incentive to comply: If the cease-fire holds, it’ll make Hamas look even better.

Last week, Fatah militants took credit for one of the volleys that hit Israel, a move that prompted Hamas to threaten arrests.

Hamas has already detained several Fatah members, including a spokesman for the group’s militant wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

Yousef suggested that Fatah fighters were helping the Israelis by undercutting the deal.

"There are people who have their own agendas to discredit the government," Yousef said. "They might be collaborators."

Mohammed Abu Irmana, the detained Al Aqsa spokesman, said in a telephone interview with McClatchy Newspapers that Al Aqsa would continue to fire rockets if Israel keeps staging deadly raids in the West Bank.

"This is not a good agreement if it stops the resistance," Irmana said. "We have to respond."

Blue and yellow signs advertising new homes pepper the narrow West Bank roads that wind up to gated hilltop Jewish settlements.

"A new stage is on its way," boasts one billboard promoting a dozen homes being built in this small Israeli settlement not far from Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital.

As construction workers press ahead with work on these modest townhouses, telephone salesmen dismiss any concerns that Israel's pledge to restrict settlement construction in the West Bank could halt the building.

"We have all the permits we need," said Alon, a salesman for the new homes who fielded a call from McClatchy but didn't give his last name. "All of our projects can continue."

In the six months since President Bush launched his late-term diplomatic initiative at Annapolis, Md., Israel has dramatically accelerated the construction of homes on land that's central to any peace deal with the Palestinians.

In the 11 months before the Annapolis summit, Israel sought bids to build fewer than 100 homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel took from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, according to Israeli government figures. Since Annapolis, Israel has asked companies to start building more than 1,700 homes, a 1,600 percent increase.

In the first three months of this year, after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that he'd rule on all building projects, construction companies started work on nearly 500 new homes in existing West Bank settlements, a 90 percent jump from the first three months of last year.

Since Olmert took direct oversight of West Bank settlement construction nearly six months ago, he's approved every project that's reached his desk from the Housing Ministry, whose responsibility includes construction around Jerusalem. The Defense Ministry, which is responsible for overseeing construction in the West Bank, didn't provide the numbers of housing units it's asked the prime minister to approve. But the prime minister's office could cite no project that he's rejected this year.

Olmert has imposed a limited ban on new settlement activity, but his order hasn't affected the expansion of major settlement blocks or the area around central Jerusalem, which he wants to retain in any deal with the Palestinians.

"They're building quickly," said Walid Natshei, an Arab construction worker from East Jerusalem who's helping to erect apartment buildings in Modiin Illit, a major settlement that recently was declared the fourth official Jewish city in the West Bank.

Olmert expects that major Jewish population centers, including Pisgat Zeev, Modiin Illit and Maale Adumim, will become part of Israel. But Palestinian negotiators haven't agreed to that, and are fighting to retain as much West Bank land as they can.

"When you get into serious negotiations, does anyone really think that areas like Pisgat Zeev or Modiin Illit or Maale Adumim are not going to remain under Israeli control? It's almost an international consensus," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said. "If Israel was creating aggressive new facts on the ground it would be one thing, but we are building either in Jerusalem or in the large settlement blocks that are in that consensus."

Construction also continues, however, in smaller settlements on remote West Bank hilltops that Palestinians expect to become part of a new state.

The Bush administration has rebuked Olmert for pushing ahead with new building plans without considering the impact on peace talks with the Palestinians.

Earlier this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned Israel's parliament that "there cannot be peace without an immediate and complete halt to settlement" building.

Olmert aides argue that he has a record of reining in unregulated settlement expansion. In the last year, he's eliminated government incentives for Israelis to move to settlements and has taken direct control over approving new construction.

"The Israeli government has gone farther than any previous Israeli government to bring under control unchecked growth in the settlements," Regev said.

"There's no political decision here," Regev added. "I've heard the prime minister say that anyone who promises to stop growth can't deliver because of the population growth and the needs of the city."

The ongoing construction, however, also reflects the nature of Israel's political system. Instead of building confidence for peace negotiations, Israeli leaders build settlements to shore up their domestic support, said Gershom Gorenberg, the author of "The Accidental Empire," a recent book on the birth of the settlement movement.

"What we're seeing is a classic example where a diplomatic initiative has the effect of accelerating settlement construction," Gorenberg said. "When there is a fear or suspicion that a diplomatic process might actually take place, however unlikely that seems to outside observers, there is a tendency among settlement supporters within the government to try to speed things up."

One of the places that are experiencing major pushes is Modiin Illit, where workers are building a new neighborhood and more than 1,000 units on West Bank land that's been the focal point of legal challenges and protests.

"There is no freeze here," said Yaakov Guterman, the mayor of Modiin Illit, who said the ban didn't apply to his settlement because it was built on undisputed land.

Expansion isn't uniform, though, even in the biggest settlements.

The number of people moving to the West Bank settlement of Ariel has leveled off in recent years because Israeli leaders have refused to approve expansion projects, Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman said.

"I have a stock of 3,000 apartment buildings to build and I don't have a permit," complained Nachman, who's received permission from Olmert to build only 50 housing units so far this year.

Modest construction also is quietly proceeding in some smaller settlements deeper in the West Bank on land that ostensibly would become part of a new Palestinian state.

In Talmon, for example, a settlement with about 800 residents on a hilltop between Modiin Illit and Ramallah, construction workers have gotten approval from Olmert's office to continue building a dozen homes being advertised by Amana, a settlement construction company.

Asked whether there was any possibility that construction could be blocked, Amana salesman Alon was adamant.

"No, no, no, of course not," said Alon. "We can build them; we have all the papers."

His friends call him "The Bride."

This night, he was standing behind a storefront art-gallery window in a bloodied wedding dress. His face was ghostly, and he was clutching a large rock in his right hand.

A small crowd had gathered on a south Tel Aviv street as The Bride opened his mouth and began to sing — in Arabic. To be more accurate, The Bride was lip-synching the words of a political anthem by one of Lebanon's best-known divas.

"Let the jails' door be destroyed," he sang as bewildered Israelis on dates wandered by. "Let this madness be defeated, and let anyone who betrays us become stones."

The show was a public coming out for "The Bride of Palestine," a 26-year-old performance artist who's one of a new generation of gay Arab-Israelis struggling to define themselves, their sexuality and their political identity.

For most like The Bride, being gay makes them pariahs in their conservative Arab communities. Being proud Palestinians puts them at odds with the dominant Jewish-Israeli society. So they try to take a stand against bigotry in both societies without being firmly rooted in either one.

"My fight," said The Bride, who lives at home with his willfully ignorant Muslim parents, "is through my art."

In an effort to carve out a space for themselves, Palestinian drag queens gather every few months at a club in the heart of Tel Aviv to take part in underground shows. These parties offer a rare forum for them to explore complicated and convoluted ideas about sexuality, politics, nationalism, militancy and religion.

They're forging their identities at the center of what some consider an occupying power. The Palestinian nationalists among them recognize the irony in the fact that Israel has become their sanctuary.

"I didn't choose this place; it's the place that I found I could be myself in," said M. a 24-year-old Arab-Israeli woman with short black hair who's performed at the club. "That's my only refuge."

In some ways, gays and lesbians such as M. are lucky: While homosexuality isn't illegal in the Palestinian Authority, as it is in most surrounding Arab nations, gays and lesbians have virtually no place to express their sexuality in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Several gay Palestinians have been arrested, beaten by Palestinian Authority intelligence and forced to flee, The Bride and other gay activists said.

For most, though, there's no refuge. While West Bank Palestinians once could sneak into Tel Aviv easily, Israel's construction of a separation barrier between Israelis and Palestinians and tighter restrictions on travel have made that all but impossible.

The Tel Aviv shows, which draw a few hundred people each night, blend enticing belly-dancing numbers with overtly political performances. Most of the shows have taken place in a central Tel Aviv basement club not far from Israeli military headquarters.

Organizers don't advertise the shows, in an attempt to keep them under the radar. Security guards at the door screen club-goers. Most of the drag queens discourage photos of their performances out of fear of being unmasked. For the same reason, those interviewed asked not to be identified by their full names.

At one show last fall, M. starred as a butch militant in fatigues preparing to leave her lover for a suicide mission. The lover, dressed in a traditional robe, implored M. to stay. By the end of the song, M. had tossed aside her machine gun, abandoned the mission and run into her lover's arms.

The piece grew out of the pair's attempts to wrestle with being patriotic Palestinians growing up around Arab-phobic Israelis, and lesbians in a largely homophobic Arab community.

"It's not enough that I'm oppressed as an Arab in Jewish society, I'm oppressed as a queer in Arab society," M said. "The thing from both sides is difficult, but what is most difficult is to be oppressed by your own community."

One of the best-known young performers at the underground shows is "R," a.k.a. "The Bride of Palestine." With long, curly brown hair, hazel eyes and a lanky frame, The Bride hasn't opted for cosmetic surgery as others have to make their performances more authentic. But because of his political focus, "R" is one of the most popular.

Growing up gay in the mixed Arab-Jewish coastal town of Jaffa just south of Tel Aviv, "R" said, he was "not here, not there."

Though his parents have seen him perform in drag and have fought with him about getting married, for the sake of family harmony they never directly confront him about his sexuality.

In January, "R" took his internal conflict to the storefront art gallery.

His performance was a complicated exploration of identity. It challenged attempts to transform the quest for a Palestinian state into a conservative religious war. It questioned attempts to gentrify what "R" calls "occupied" Jaffa, a transformation that he considers a modern-day campaign to expel Palestinians from their land. And it sought to explore the world of gay Arab-Israelis.

With the audience watching from the sidewalk, "R" appeared in his bloody wedding dress as a wounded bride returning from a devastating war to her demolished home.

While lip-synching to the Lebanese diva's political song, The Bride handed a stone to a lackadaisical, defeated man (The Bride's alter-ego) in black slacks and a white button-down shirt.

The man took the stone and threw it at a picture of the Dome of the Rock, one of the most revered religious icons in Islam. The glass shattered, and the man soon began to rip The Bride's wedding gown to shreds, including a sash with the black, green, white and red colors of the Palestinian flag.

The Bride was left standing nearly naked before the curbside audience. The man helped The Bride into identical black slacks and white shirt. As their affection slowly grew, the speakers played a tune by an Israeli singer that's popular in the gay community.

"This is the way nature created you," the artist sang in Hebrew. "With a little imagination and free thought, so please let this grow from the start.

"Don't try to fight it. Don't try to change. Because it will always suddenly start again."