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.”

Four years after a devastating stroke, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remains in a coma.

Sharon, 81, led Israel from 2001 until the January 2006 stroke that left him comatose.

Dov Weisglass, a close friend of Sharon and his former spokesman, said yesterday that Sharon's vital signs are good but it was not clear if he would ever regain consciousness. Medical experts have said that is most unlikely.

Sharon was a daring army officer who reached the rank of major general In the 1970s, sometimes disobeying orders from his superiors. After leaving the army, Sharon turned to politics, becoming a hawkish lawmaker in the Likud Party and an enthusiastic supporter of the movement to settle the West Bank with Israelis.

He served in several Cabinet posts, including defense minister. He was the architect of Israel's disastrous war in Lebanon, which began in 1982.

The next year he was forced to resign by an Israeli commission of inquiry that found him indirectly responsible for the massacre of around 800 Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps by Lebanese Christian militiamen.

Resurrecting his political career, he was elected Israel's prime minister in 2001.

Turning his back on his uncompromising ideology in 2005, Sharon unilaterally withdrew all Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip, ending Israel's 38-year occupation of the territory and daily clashes between settlers and soldiers with Palestinian militants. Outraged hawkish backers abandoned him, and Sharon created a new centrist party, Kadima, to run in March 2006 elections.

Riding a wave of popularity, Sharon appeared to be well on his way to re-election when he suffered a stroke on Jan. 4, 2006.

Doctors fought to keep him alive after severe hemorrhaging that caused significant brain damage, performing a number of desperate operations to stop the bleeding but leaving him in a vegetative state. Several months later, he was moved to a long-term care facility outside Tel Aviv.

Raanan Gissin, another close friend of Sharon and former spokesman, told the AP that Sharon is not connected to a respirator but sometimes needs an oxygen mask at night. "There is still no change physiologically. His body functions but he has still not regained consciousness," Gissin said. "Who knows if he can hear or not."

Gissin said he visits Sharon often, as does Sharon's family and former staff, including a driver. "Our hope is that he will regain consciousness one day," he said. But there are few cases of patients emerging from deep comas after such a long time.

An obscure Palestinian militant group is claiming responsibility for a West Bank attack that killed two Israeli police officers this week. But Israeli and Palestinian security officials are casting doubt on the claim.

Sunday's shooting was the first fatal attack in the West Bank in nearly a year.

The Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh says it was behind the shooting. The group is named after an assassinated Hezbollah mastermind.

It also has claimed responsibility for previous assaults, including a shooting at a Jewish seminary that killed eight students last year.

However, Israeli and Palestinian security officials said Tuesday there is no such group. They believe rogue militants have used the fake name as cover to evade Israeli reprisals.

Touring a war-battered town, Sen. John McCain said Wednesday he understands Israel's tough response to Palestinian rocket fire, adding that there is no point in negotiating with the Gaza Strip's Islamic Hamas regime.

The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also praised the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, saying he is committed to reaching a peace deal with Israel — though McCain is not meeting Palestinians this time.

McCain's visit to Israel is part of a weeklong trip through the Middle East and Europe. After a day of meetings with Israeli leaders, he visited Sderot, the southern Israeli border town that has been the target of thousands of crude Palestinian rockets in recent years.

"That is not a way for people to live," McCain said. "No nation in the world can be attacked incessantly and have its population killed and intimidated without responding. That's one of the first obligations of government, to provide security for its citizens." Israel has been widely criticized for military operations aimed at stopping the rocket attacks, as well as its blockade of Gaza.

While billed as routine congressional business, the visit appeared to be aimed at burnishing McCain's leadership credentials and courting Jewish voters for the November election. Jews make up large voting blocs in key swing states, including Florida and Michigan, and could help influence the outcome of the election.

Though McCain did not visit Palestinian areas, Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said the senator has always been accessible to the Palestinians and is "committed to peace." But he suggested McCain's visit was aimed more at attracting Jewish voters than promoting negotiations. "Maybe one day Palestinians will have money for your campaigns in the United States," he said.

McCain told reporters that because he was on a congressional fact-finding tour, it was not the time to discuss his campaign.

Still, in an interview published in the Jerusalem Post, McCain said he would "personally be engaged" in peace talks if elected and "give it my highest priority."

Later Wednesday, McCain arrived in London for a first meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The two were to meet Thursday for talks on Iraq, the world economy and climate change.

Speaking to reporters in Sderot, McCain gave strong indications that he would follow the policies of President Bush, who has promoted peace talks between Israel and the moderate Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, while working to isolate the Hamas government in Gaza.

Hamas seized Gaza from Abbas' forces last June, and Abbas now rules from the West Bank.

McCain did not meet with Abbas during his two-day visit, but said he spoke to the Palestinian leader by telephone. McCain said the Palestinian leader is committed to reaching a peace deal with Israel, though he questioned whether a target of an agreement this year is realistic.

"I hope that he can deliver. I think he is sincere," McCain said. "I think the Palestinian people desire peace. I believe they deserve peace, and I think President Abbas is capable of conducting those negotiations."

Discussing the U.S. role, McCain said there has to be "an environment of reconciliation between parties," but that "there also has to be an outside party that is willing to bring the parties to the table and facilitate that process." He said a peace agreement is a key U.S. interest.

Israel and the Palestinians launched peace talks at a U.S.-hosted conference in Annapolis, Md., last November. The sides have made little visible progress. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned that even if a deal is reached this year, it cannot be carried out until Abbas regains control of Gaza.

The Palestinians seek an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — territories that lie on opposite sides of Israel. Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction and opposes the peace talks.

Israel frequently conducts military operations in Gaza in response to rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups. A recent Israeli offensive killed more than 120 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, drawing heavy international criticism. Since ending the operation, there has been a relative lull, and Israeli defense officials have confirmed they are working through Egyptian mediators to reach a truce with Hamas.

McCain said he would respect any Israeli decision but questioned the wisdom of negotiating with the Islamic militants.

"The Palestinian authority in Gaza is committed to the extermination of the state of Israel. It is very difficult to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extermination," he said.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said McCain's comments shows "there isn't the faintest hope" for a change in American policies. He called on the Arab world to reconsider its ties with the U.S.