Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

The family of an 18-year-old Palestinian civilian, who died after being shot by Israeli security guards a few weeks ago, have donated his organs to save the lives of six Israelis.

Patient "A" was clinically dead when he was transferred to the intensive care unit in Sheba medical centre in Tel Hashomer, and doctors were unable to resuscitate him.

The Hebrew daily newspaper Ma'ariv reported that his family decided to donate his organs to those who needed them, regardless of their race, religion or identity.

The National Centre for Organ Transplants promised to keep information concerning his identity confidential for the safety of his family who live in an area under the Palestinian Authority. The families of the recipients were told about the identity of the donor but have also agreed to keep the information confidential, according to the newspaper.

On Wednesday evening, Patient "A"'s father had an emotional meeting with the patient who received his son's heart.

Patient "A"'s father described his son as "a great person who was loved by everyone. He was big-hearted and I didn’t hesitate to donate his organs to needy patients, even though he was killed by Israeli security guards."

"At first it was hard for me, but God inspired me to take the right decision to help the patients by donating my son's organs. I'm happy with this decision and I don't differentiate between Jews and Arabs. All I care about is saving people's lives. That's why I didn't ask about the patients' identities," he added.

Daniel Kurtzer

With the resumption of the Middle East peace process after Annapolis, the focus has turned to the substantive divide between the parties regarding the core issues of territory and boundaries, security, Jerusalem and refugees. Different ways have been suggested to approach these issues: for example, trying to reach agreement on a declaration of principles; trying to reach a full agreement and then putting it on the shelf until the time is ripe for implementation; or trying for a full agreement and implementation in phases, to begin immediately.

Less attention has been devoted to questions related to the negotiation process—for example, how to structure the negotiations, and what should be the role of the United States and other outside parties. If the past teaches us anything, however, it is that negotiation issues can often be as important as substantive issues in determining the success or failure of the peace process. A study of past negotiations, as we have learned, can be quite revealing and instructive.

Over the past 18 months, I directed a study group of the United States Institute of Peace that assessed US negotiating behaviour in the peace process since the end of the Cold War. Our study group—composed of professors William Quandt, Steven Spiegel and Shibley Telhami—interviewed more than 100 current and former officials and analysts from the United States and the region. The results will be published in mid-February in a book I have co-authored with Scott Lasensky entitled Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East.

During the period of active negotiations, 1993 to 2000, the US administration failed to exercise its role effectively in several important respects. American officials failed to understand and deal with key asymmetries in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. While the United States paid attention to Israeli security requirements, less attention was devoted to Palestinian political requirements. The United States did not find a way to compensate for Palestinian political weakness. This was the first time in history a people under occupation was expected to negotiate its own way out of occupation while at the same time creating a viable, democratic and independent state.

The United States also failed to set up a monitoring system to hold the parties accountable for fulfilling their commitments and implementing agreements. American officials dedicated significant attention to keeping the process alive, even though the behaviour of the two sides – settlement activity, limitations on mobility, violence and terrorism and governance weakness – weighted the process down and destroyed mutual confidence and trust.

Since 2000, the United States has been almost absent from peacemaking altogether. Rhetoric has replaced diplomacy and little has been done to create or exploit opportunities for progress.

If the United States is to be more successful in supporting the peace process after Annapolis, several policy initiatives and changes need to be implemented.

First, the American president must make clear that an Arab-Israel peace settlement is a vital US national interest, not a favour Washington is doing for the parties. We must avoid the false dichotomy embodied in the statement that "we cannot want peace more than the parties." The parties need peace, and the United States needs there to be peace.

Second, there is a critical need for effective monitoring and for holding the parties accountable with regard to whatever they have committed to do. There must be consequences for bad behaviour lest the parties accustom themselves to not carrying out their obligations.

Third, the United States can and must carry out diplomacy more effectively and make better use of its "diplomatic toolbox." The United States must have an experienced peace team with a deep understanding of the region. We must rely more on our representatives in the field. A special envoy might be necessary, but our study found that, with the right policy, the question of an envoy will sort itself out—better a policy without an envoy than an envoy without a policy.

Fourth, the United States needs to do homework, to lock in the gains of previous negotiations and to be ready to do what is necessary – and what has proved beneficial in the past – to assist the parties on substance with creative ideas to bridge differences. The United States also has an array of economic tools and other incentives, which, if deployed wisely, can make a difference in the negotiating process.

Just as we have done with respect to the US role – that is, analyze weaknesses and failures in an effort to learn lessons from the past – Israelis and Palestinians should consider doing the same. The substantive issues are challenging and require deft and agile diplomacy that benefits from a proper evaluation of what has succeeded or failed in the past.

The first episode of The Shape of the Future, a four-part Common Ground Productions documentary series, will be broadcasted in Arabic on Palestinian and Arab satellite television and in Hebrew on Israeli television beginning Saturday, July 2. The following two articles are reviews of the first part, entitled "Settlements."

Common Ground Television Series Premiere: Listening To One's Heart
By Helen Schary Motro

Tel-Aviv - For the first time ever this coming Saturday evening and for three consecutive July Saturdays thereafter, Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, and citizens of other Middle Eastern countries can simultaneously turn on their local stations and watch a program addressing the future of their region in a fresh and novel way. Written and produced by Search for Common Ground president John Marks, The Shape of the Future speaks not in the voice of Marks or other commentators - it features Israelis and Palestinians passionately and candidly revealing their personal views on issues which hit raw nerves.

"Is peace possible?" the minimalist narration asks - then without fanfare methodically sets out to find out. In the background plays a poignant melody jointly composed and performed by popular Israeli and Palestinian musicians David Broza and Wisam Murad.

Each program deals with the painful subjects of any eventual solution, the same problems that have stumped generations of diplomatic negotiators and politicians: how to draw borders and dismantle the occupation of the territories, the half-century-old refugee issue, and finally, Jerusalem, the emotional heart and most difficult nut of the Israeli/Palestinian tragedy.

“Settlements,” the first segment of the series to be aired on July 2, concentrates on the internal Israeli debate. Although some Palestinian commentators and politicians voice their opinions, the focus is on the Israelis who must fashion and come to terms with how, where, when - and if - to leave the West Bank and Gaza in which some of its citizens have established communities on land the country conquered in 1967.

The Palestinian voices on this particular subject are less central to this first segment, since Palestinians by necessity focus on what they would find acceptable in terms of Israeli withdrawal, whereas for the Israelis the question is what they themselves must do. Thus, “Settlement’s” dramatic and substantive interest stems from what it shows so powerfully - how various streams of Israeli society view the issue. It juxtaposes the Israeli positions among the left and the right, civilian and military, secular and religious, and contrasts those who themselves live in the settlements with those who make their homes within the “Green Line" (within pre-67 Israel). Its nuanced conclusion is that most, although not all, can come to some kind of consensus.

The viewer hears the humanist realpolitik of senior commentator Ze'ev Schiff calling the occupation a "cancer." And retired Brigadier General Dov Sedaka, former head of Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria, recognizing that denying Palestinians basic medical and education services can engender "hatred."

Otniel Schneller, former head of the Judea and Samaria settlers' organization, feels Israelis like himself should be permitted to remain living in the Occupied Territories, but then surprisingly turns around and says that if the Israeli government decides that his own settlement must be evacuated, "I will mourn - but I will leave." Schneller quotes the precept of Jewish canonic law that "the law of the land is the law" and thus concludes that "the integrity of the people is more important than the integrity of the land.” And in a sentiment that echoes the Palestinian commentators Nabil Khatib and politician Salah Tamari, he admits that territorial integrity will be a crucial element of any solution. Thus, Schneller states, settlements in the midst of the Palestinian population should probably be dismantled. "It will be terrible," he declares, "but it may be necessary." These words from the mouth of a person generally considered to be among the hard-line Israeli right wing offers a truly hopeful perspective.

Indeed, it is the idea of "land swapping" which is the conciliatory kernel of this conflict resolution film. If the Israeli settlers leave land in heavily populated Palestinian areas such as Hebron, they can in return move to places like Gush Etzion which too are within the lands captured by Israel in 1967. This would also give territorial integrity to Palestinians, and be acceptable to Israelis who would feel they are still living in Biblically promised lands within those territories.

Can settlers from Israeli settlements begin again after their lives are disrupted by leaving homes and communities they may have lived in for decades? The film's answer is a resounding yes. Two endearing Israelis who had settled in Sinai only to be evacuated in 1982 pursuant to the Israeli/Egyptian peace treaty struggled to start anew. Despite hardships and heartbreak, they managed to build a successful new life. They look back and say with conviction, "The evacuation was good for Israel."

The most intriguing and original part of the film is how it showcases two Israelis brothers whose views are poles apart. Eloquent and committed, Benny and Ari belong to the prestigious Elon family. Sons of a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice and coming from an observant Jewish background, Benny and Ari could not be farther apart on the political spectrum. Benny, a hard line right winger who continues to be strictly religious, has lived for two decades in the West Bank. And as a politician and sometime cabinet minister, he is the forceful mouthpiece for Israeli intransigence on the settlement issue. The land upon which the settlements are built are mandated by scripture, he feels, and are as integral and legitimate a part of Israel as Tel-Aviv and Haifa.

Responding to the experience of a family of Palestinian farmers who have had trees cut down, Benny Elon forcefully declares: "If I had to raze hundreds of olive trees for security - I would do this without any mercy."

Enter Benny's professor brother Ari, who epitomizes the sober committed voice of left-wing Israeli intelligentsia, calling upon ethical and pragmatic grounds for an Israeli withdrawal.

Ari offers conciliation and compromise to Benny's intransigence and dogmatism. The polarization of the Elon family personifies the polarity of Israeli society on the settlement issue.

But then the film adroitly steps in and without oblique commentary offers a compromise to preserve both principles and property. It features Benny's grown son Shibi, a young man who too has chosen the pioneering religious Zionist path of his father - except that Shibi has become a pioneer to settle the Negev desert, which has been part of Israel since its inception in 1948. And both Benny and Ari, despite their categorical ideological opposition, insist that they continue to feel a deep brotherly love for one another. "Theirs is a disagreement in the name of heaven," says Shibi of the rift between his uncle and his father.

“Settlements” leaves the viewer with the feeling that if the Elon family symbolizes the Israeli nation on the settlement issue, then a solution is possible. Ari, speaking of his brother, insists that one day Benny will realize that it is right, just, and inevitable that Israel leave the settlements. "In his heart of hearts," Ari says, Benny knows this is the only answer. And The Shape of the Future is a project which believes that in the end, people will listen to their hearts.

Helen Schary Motro, who teaches at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, is the author of Manoeuvring between the Headlines: An American Lives through the Intifada.

Settlement Withdrawal Highlights Israelis Negotiating Among Themselves
By Daoud Kuttab

Ramallah - The repeated claim by Palestinians that Israelis negotiate amongst themselves is perhaps best proven when it comes to the debate over Jewish settlements in Palestinian lands. The settlement movement, which for many Israelis is the core of Zionism, has become today the reflection of what is wrong with this ideology. How else can one explain the passionate debate in Israel over plans to reverse settlement expansion in Gaza and some of the northern parts of the West Bank?

This largely Israeli debate is the focus of the "Settlements" program, which is the first episode in a four-part television documentary series entitled “Shape of the Future,” which will air simultaneously this Saturday night, July 2, at 8:30 PM in Arabic on the Ma’an Network and the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), on Abu Dhabi satellite TV at 7:30 PM (Jerusalem time), and in Hebrew on Israel’s Channel 8 at 8:30 PM.

The most powerful discussion in the program takes place between two brothers. One is the ultra-right former minister Benny Elon, who states clearly that if Palestinians want an independent state then they need to go to Jordan, which he calls the Palestinian state. The bearded Elon talks about Palestine in religious terms, turning the Almighty into a real estate agent who, according to Elon, has given Palestine to the Jews. As in debates with religious persons, the debate is over with his interpretations of the Bible. No other point of view is tolerated. On the other hand his brother, Ari Elon, a religion professor, is in favour of withdrawal from settlements and talks about the eventuality of Israelis realizing that there is no choice but to find an accommodating settlement with Palestinians.

While Israelis argue among themselves, Palestinians do make a number of strong points in the documentary. Aisha Farah and her family from the village of Durat al Kara, near Ramallah, talk about how she has not been able to see her married daughters during recent years because of the fact that Jewish settlers surround her home. She laments over her olive and pear trees, which were uprooted to make room for settlers and their security. Then, Benny Elon says he has no regrets for uprooting trees. He cloaks his defence in terms of security. “If – for reasons of security,” states Elon, “I need to destroy even hundreds of olive trees, then I will do so – and not only olive trees – without any pity.”

Salah Tamari, former Fatah fighter and now member of the Palestinian parliament, also makes his position clear. “We don’t want checkpoints. We don’t want Israeli soldiers to control us and our dignity…We don’t want to live in cantons. We don’t want to live in concentration camps.”

A former Israeli administrator of the occupied territories, Dov Sedaka, shows surprisingly similar views to those of some of the Palestinians in the program. He explains how settlements and the accompanying checkpoints sow the seeds of hatred that will be very hard to get rid of. Similar anti-settler statements were echoed by Ha’aretz military affairs correspondent Ze'ev Schiff who uses the word "cancer" to describe the settlements.

The newly built separation wall receives similar attacks from many of the Israelis and Palestinians interviewed for the documentary. The 590 km wall succeeds in uniting the former Israeli general, Dov Sedaka, and former Palestinian fighter, Salah Tamari, in stating their opposition to the wall, as it’s currently being constructed. Had the wall been built along the Green Line, Palestinians, including Salah Tamari, say that they wouldn't be so opposed to it.

Unlike most films on the conflict, the documentary "The Shape of the Future" does not stop at analyzing the problem. It tries to give suggestions as to what the solution could look like. To illustrate what life after breaking up Jewish settlement will be like, the producer, John Marks of Search for Common Ground Productions, decided to go back to visit some of the Jewish settlers who were evacuated from Sinai after the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement.

Former Sinai settlers begin by explaining the trauma they had largely because they were losing their homes and no one told them what was happening. But then they go on to say and to show how much better life has become since then. Zohar Sadeh and Nachum Schefer, both former Sinai settlers, give convincing testimony as to how one can survive. The latter is shown in a big farm doing very well and saying he is better off now than before. Much is said in the post-settlement advice by Israelis on the need to provide land for settlers similar to that they have been evacuated from. Money-wise the sum of $500,000 per settler was stated as the cost of compensation.

As for the West Bank settlements, the discussion is centred on some and not all settlements. Ze’ev Schiff talks about the need for the Israeli government to remove some settlements, while suggesting an exchange of land for others. Palestinians seem to agree to the land exchange on condition that it is done on symmetry in size and quality. The example of Gush Etzion is made. Nabil Khatib, prominent Palestinian Journalist, suggests that in return for Palestinian agreement that Gush Etzion be annexed to Israel, that Israel agree to give Palestinians territory south of Hebron.

Overall the documentary provides a good idea about the problems of settlements and some ideas on how to spin any future solution. Palestinians, the weak party in this conflict, are seen as little more than observers in this intra-Israeli conflict where a number of Israelis argue that they would give up land so as to keep their own people united, while most settlers brandishing their orange colours are not even ready to give up even the few scattered settlements in the Gaza strip.

Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah. This review is the first of four reviews on the documentary The Shape of the Future.