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.”

Recently, the Israeli and international media has featured reports on progress in peace negotiations. Chief negotiators Ahmed Qurei and Tzippi Livni maintain silence about the details, but allow that the talks are ongoing, detailed and purposeful. Now of all times, when the core issues never before discussed appear to be on the agenda, the negotiating theater seems to be infinitely distant from the reality unfolding on the ground.

While the negotiating teams are discussing the ways and principles for partitioning the Land of Israel, the reality on the ground makes it increasingly difficult to establish a sovereign Palestinian state. From week to week, there are more voices on both sides arguing that it has become physically impossible to remove the West Bank settlements and that accordingly the two-state solution is history. The original goal of the settler leaders to prevent any future national leadership from dividing the land is closer than ever to fruition, as the settlements continue to spread.

Like its predecessors, the Olmert government is operating in two contradictory directions: on the one hand it issues declarations regarding the existential need to achieve a peace agreement with the Palestinians, but on the other, it approves more construction beyond the green line, particularly the expansion of existing settlements.

This pattern is repeated especially when Israeli governments decide to advance courageously toward a political settlement. It is then, perhaps stemming from a desire to placate right-wing protests, that the government decides to move ahead with construction plans and alter the lay of the land almost irreversibly.

The codename that legitimizes every act of expanding existing settlements and establishing new ones is the broad concept of "settlement blocs". As if in recognition of a fait accompli, government spokespersons justify every new initiative to build in the territories with the excuse that the areas involved are settlement blocs that in any event will come under future Israeli sovereignty.

During the first three months of 2008, at the height of the Annapolis process, construction took place in 101 West Bank settlements; about 500 structures, comprising thousands of housing units, are currently being built. New construction plans were approved by the government to build a new neighborhood at Agan Haayalot next to Givat Zeev, north of Jerusalem. Tenders were released for the construction of 750 units in East Jerusalem. The regional planning commission approved submission of construction plans for 3,600 additional units in East Jerusalem. Most of these new construction plans are intended for empty areas located adjacent to Palestinian villages and neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city.

In contrast to the pronouncements of official spokespersons, the ramifications of additional construction in the settlement blocs are often more destructive than expansion of isolated settlements in the West Bank heartland. While construction in the isolated settlements is usually limited in scope and in any case destined for eventual removal, the "settlement bloc" concept is a green light for building thousands of housing units near the borderline, in areas where the chances of reaching agreement to evacuate settlements are slim. Removal of settlements like Ofra, Bet El and Har Bracha, which are located deep inside Palestinian territory in the mountain heartland, will enjoy far broader public support than removal of communities inside the settlement blocs, like Maaleh Adumim, Betar Illit and the Etzion settlements.

Moreover, Palestinian agreement to leaving part of the settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty within the framework of a peace agreement is conditioned on territorial swaps, meaning transfer of Israeli sovereign territory to the Palestinian state. Every built-up acre in the settlement blocs constitutes an additional, complicated problem area when it comes to determining the future borders of the two states.

The settlement of Modiin Illit, which in early March was declared a full-fledged municipality, offers an excellent example of the way Israeli governments have obliterated the green line and de facto annexed territory while simultaneously proceeding with peace negotiations. In 1993 when the Oslo accord was signed, the land adjacent to the Palestinian village of Bil'in was empty. Yet within three years, even as a process unfolded whereby Israel recognized the right of the Palestinian people to a state in the West Bank, construction began on the Modiin Illit settlement to provide housing solutions for the ultra orthodox sector. Today, this settlement comprises 37,500 residents. Plans are advancing to expand it deeper into the West Bank; just this week two new enlargement plans were released.

The settlement construction dynamic, including in East Jerusalem and the blocs adjacent to the green line, should first and foremost concern the Israeli mainstream that aspires to separate from the Palestinians within the framework of a two-state solution. The consistent policy of expanding settlements renders the two-state vision that much more distant and is maneuvering Israel and the Palestinians into a situation where both will have to coexist in a single bi-national state.- Published 7/4/2008 © bitterlemons.org

Yariv Oppenheimer is general director of Peace Now.

The recent announcement by Labor Party Chairman and Defense Minister Ehud Barak regarding his support for “evacuation-compensation” legislation revived the public debate on the question of isolated settlements located beyond the separation fence.

The terror waves early in the decade and the construction of the fence in their wake led to a situation whereby roughly 65,000 settlers in about 74 settlements currently reside to the east of the fence, deep in the heart of the West Bank.

The basis of the “evacuation-compensation” bill is the Israeli government’s moral obligation to enable settlers residing to the east of the fence to move back to within the Green Line at this time.

It is no surprise that settler leaders and Judea and Samaria officials, whose job is to represent all residents living in their area, chose to overwhelmingly object to the initiative being formulated and turn their back on all those settlers who are willing to leave their homes immediately.

This is not the first time where settler leaders are abandoning their constituencies in order to score political points. On the eve of disengagement, Yesha Council heads and rightist Knesset members called on residents of Gush Katif and northern Samaria to refrain from entering negotiations on compensation and avoid any cooperation with authorities in charge of the evacuation.

The price of the boycott and lack of cooperation with government decisions was paid by Gush Katif evacuees, who found themselves facing economic and mental distress in the wake of the evacuation. Part of this distress could have been prevented.

Time to admit to historical mistakes

Now, rightist leaders are again crying out and objecting to the possibility of providing settlers east of the fence with the option of leaving voluntarily in exchange for compensation and moving back to within the Green Line.

It is no secret that settler leaders have a reason to worry. Thousands of settlers no longer believe in the Greater Israel vision and realize that the future of the settlements where they live has already been decided. Settler leaders are now forced to engage in a rearguard battle against the move being formulated only so that their ideological distress would not be exposed.

If Yesha Council leaders are indeed convinced that the settlers are determined to take over every hill in the territories, they should be the first ones to back the “evacuation-compensation” law and thus prove the determination of all settlers to hold on to all parts of the West Bank.

The proposed law is first and foremost a humane move aimed at resolving a serious problem for tens of thousands of settlers who live with uncertainty, a sense of isolation, and the knowledge that in the near future they will have to evacuate their homes in any case.

The Israeli government must not engage in diplomatic talks on the backs of the settlers and keep them as hostages outside the fence. This is the time to look in their eyes, admit to historical mistakes, and allow them to move back to within the Green Line now.