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.”

Ever since Hamas overwhelmingly won parliamentary elections in 2006, the international community has been trying to reverse a result that neither it nor Hamas expected.

At first the international community, led by the US, tried to include Hamas in its designs for the region by offering it three conditions to enter the regional order. Once those were rejected, Washington instead opted to isolate Hamas and ignore the elections.

Israel, happy to play along with this strategy, was given a free hand to escalate at will and tighten its closure on Gaza to undermine the already fragile economy there in an effort to bring Gazans into the streets against Hamas.

The strategy had some initial success. Many voted for Hamas in the first place in order to punish Fateh for the corruption of preceding years. Once sanctions hit, people were heard to lament, "better to be led by the corrupt if they put bread on the table". But the fundamental perception remained the same: Hamas were clean and Fateh corrupt, and it is this fundamental perception that has lingered.

After Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip in June of last year, the international community adopted a modified version of its original strategy. With the Palestinian people having divided themselves into two, the international community decided it would try to strengthen the West Bank under President Mahmoud Abbas by shoveling money at the Palestinian Authority there, while continuing to isolate the Hamas-led Gaza Strip.

But after two years, the attempt to undermine Hamas' popularity has failed. Opinion polls, on the contrary, show an increase in support for the movement. There are several factors at play here.

First, while economic sanctions have hit hard, Palestinians have never had much to lose. Indeed, an argument can easily be made that Palestinians hold their dignity much dearer than their limited wealth. Hamas thus has become the symbol of the struggle for Palestinian pride.

Second, the Israeli escalation against Gaza, which was countered by the Palestinian resistance in general and Hamas' Izzedin al-Qassam brigades in particular, left the public with the clear perception that it is Hamas that is willing to fight and die for the Palestinian people. This perception is only strengthened when the sons of Hamas leaders are killed on the frontlines.

Third, the choice by Abbas to pursue negotiations as the only option to regain Palestinian rights, after 15 fruitless years of the PLO doing exactly that, has only presented Israel with more time to create more "facts on the ground". By refusing to grant Abbas even the smallest achievement to show for his efforts, the Israelis have convinced Palestinians that Abbas is weak and that Hamas is right when it says that Israel is not serious about peace and negotiations are thus a waste of time.

Fourth, with international funding to the Palestinian Authority at an all-time high, people are looking to increased transparency to see where that money goes. In Gaza, people are asking why none of that money is coming to them, since the PA is supposed to be for all its people. Furthermore, the international community does not seem to understand what should be obvious to any public relations analyst: that anyone vocally supported by Israel and the US is treated with the utmost suspicion by Palestinians. The reverse is also true, thus offering Hamas another source of support.

Finally, the internal split in Fateh is further bolstering Hamas. For as long as Fateh, or anyone else for that matter, does not present a clear and viable alternative to Hamas, its perceived fiscal probity and organizational unity, Hamas will continue to flourish in opinion polls. Fateh did not seize on its defeat in parliamentary elections to re-evaluate and restructure itself, while Hamas has only grown more united in the face of adversity.

The US-inspired strategy to undermine Hamas has thus failed. The international community would do well to reconsider its underlying assumption that economic sanctions will do anything to move the Palestinian people from its fundamentally principled support for Hamas.-Published 31/3/2008 © bitterlemons.org

Safwat Kahlout is a Gaza-based journalist.

August 2005 was supposed to have been one of the biggest celebrations in the history of the Palestinian people, especially Gazans. Israel was, for the first time ever, withdrawing its soldiers and settlers from Palestinian areas, allowing Gazans to reclaim almost a third of their land.

When Israel announced its plan to evacuate settlements in the Gaza Strip there was much local, regional and international hype about creating a new Gaza. In addition, promises came in from many countries to develop the impoverished and overpopulated strip of land and Gazans were filled with hope. Never mind that Israel destroyed the houses in their previous settlements and that only greenhouses were left intact after the Israelis were was paid to do so. Palestinians stood ready to construct a future.

But two years later, dreams of freedom and prosperity have turned to dust. First, Palestinians learned that in actual fact the Israeli "withdrawal" could more accurately be understood as no more than a redeployment of troops. The occupation of Gaza did not end. Rather, if before the pullout Israeli jailers lived in Gaza's midst, now the prison guards have left but not before locking the door and throwing away the key.

In the first flush of excitement, a special company was established to take charge of the abandoned Israeli greenhouses. Agricultural projects flourished. Thousands of farmers were employed to plant high-quality strawberries, beans, sweet peppers and other fruits and vegetables for export to European markets. But the door was closed. United States-brokered agreements on movement and access were broken by Israel with not even the tiniest shame. The luckiest Gazans turned out to be our animals, who have dined on some of the highest quality produce ever grown in Gaza. Animal rights organizations would do well to take notice.

There have been some tangible improvements to our lives here. In the central area of Gaza, specifically the area between Deir al-Balah and Khan Younes, there was once a notorious checkpoint - the so-called Abu Holi checkpoint - which divided the Gaza Strip into two parts and where Gazans used to wait for hours and sometimes days to cross from one side to the other. Many people lost their lives senselessly here, with twitchy Israeli soldiers opening fire randomly at people on both sides. Many houses were destroyed, because they were either near settlements there or because they obstructed the line of vision of the watching Israeli soldiers.

In the south, the people of Rafah and Khan Younes can now again freely enjoy their beaches, something they were prohibited from doing when the settlements were in place. Thousands of people now stream to the sea at all times of day. Meanwhile, the people of Al-Muwasi, an area that was sandwiched between the sea and some settlements, are now free to move again. Before, they were neither allowed into the rest of Gaza nor into the sea. Their hell, at least, has passed.

At the sites of the evacuated settlements, the rubble is a reminder of those bad old days, but also a reminder of agreements breached and opportunities lost. Israel was supposed to have removed the rubble to Egypt to make room for new projects, but the rubble remains as an obstacle to such development. Nevertheless, amid the rubble of the former Neve Dekalim settlement, a couple of nice new buildings have sprung up. These belong to the Aqsa University and more than 1,000 students from southern Gaza are now attending. The buildings were built after special efforts by the head of Aqsa University ensured the necessary donations from Arab countries.

These few bright spots notwithstanding, Gaza today is in worse shape than ever. The siege of Gaza is complete. Israel only allows humanitarian goods such as food and medicine to enter this little strip of land. Businesses are closing, factories are shutting down, construction is grinding to a halt, and even the United Nations cannot properly fulfill its mission here. More than 75 percent of Gazans are unemployed and 80 percent are now dependent on international aid just in order to eat.

The closure of Gaza, always draconian, reached its current peak after Hamas and the security services of the Palestinian Authority affiliated to President Mahmoud Abbas engaged in bloody clashes that resulted in the complete takeover of Gaza by the Islamist movement. This in turn provided Israel with all the excuse it needed to seal Gaza from the world. It has done so with the open acceptance of the international community.

The international community allowed itself to be trapped by the same logic that led it to boycott Hamas after the Islamist movement won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and formed a government in line with its parliamentary majority. These elections were encouraged and monitored by the international community, yet the results were never respected.

Hamas has refused to bow to international conditions for it to be allowed back in from the cold, but it did enter into a unity government with Fatah, which enjoys general international acceptance. This was not enough for the international community and what can only be described as collective punishment was imposed on Palestinians generally and Gazans in particular.

Two years from what should have been a day marking the beginning of liberation, Palestinians find themselves ever more dramatically imprisoned. Over these two years, they have exercised democracy and they have exercised restraint. They have only been answered with greater isolation, opprobrium and sanction. More than ever before, they suffer under occupation.