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.”

GAZA - Qatar has entered the mediation efforts between rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas in a new bid to achieve reconciliation between the two sides, Palestinian sources said on Saturday.

"Qatar, as a state of strategic weight in the region, seeks to sponsor the mediation between Hamas and Fatah to end the internal split and reunite the two wings of Palestine," the sources said.

The split was made last year when Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza and seized control of the coastal Strip. Fatah was driven out to the West Bank where it consolidated its rule while Hamas tightened its grip on Gaza.

Qatari officials are holding talks with leaders from Hamas and Fatah to convince them to return to dialogue, the sources added. The Qatari efforts focus on overcoming the consequences of Hamas' violent takeover of the Strip before Hamas starts dialogue with Fatah.

The new efforts come as Egypt, the long-dominant mediator, is also boosting its own efforts to achieve reconciliation between the Palestinian factions.

Israel will use non-military means to respond to ongoing rocket attacks against it from the Gaza Strip, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Tuesday, hinting at a plan for sanctions against civilian infrastructure in the salient such as limiting the flow of water and electricity.

‘We have means, means which are not only military,’ she told a joint news conference in Jerusalem with visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. ‘It is our duty to take these steps.’

She spoke hours after a locally-produced Qassam rocket injured at least 47 soldiers when it hit an Israeli army base close to the Strip.

The attack would however not affect the ongoing renewed talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

‘On the one hand we need to act against the terrorists in Gaza. ‘On the other hand we need to reach an understanding with the moderates n the West Bank,’ she said, referring to Abbas and his Acting Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Livni placed ultimate responsibility on the radical Islamic Hamas movement, in de facto control of the Gaza Strip, for the attack, which was claimed by two other militant groups, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Islamic Jihad.

‘It doesn’t really matter which organization took responsibility. Gaza is entirely controlled by Hamas. Hamas has the ability to stop it (the rocket fire) and has decided not to do that,’ she said, adding Israel’s policy was to make a ‘clear distinction’ between the moderate leadership led by Abbas in the West Bank and the extremist administration in Gaza.

Kouchner said the groups behind the rocket attack ‘do not want any dialogue’ and were seeking to ‘undermine the process of negotiations between Israel and Abu Mazen (Abbas).’

‘I understand that Israel has to defend its population,’ he said when asked about a possible Israeli reaction.

JERUSALEM - Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya is to visit Switzerland in May, the first official trip to Europe by the widely boycotted Islamist premier, a Palestinian source said on Friday.

“Prime minister Ismail Haniya will travel to Switzerland in May,” a foreign ministry source told AFP, adding that the exact date had yet to be decided.

“This visit follows an agreement between Palestinian foreign minister Ziad Abu Amr and the Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey,” the source said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, from Hamas’ secular rival Fatah, this week wound up a European tour aimed at convincing the European Union to lift its sanctions against the Hamas-led Palestinian government.

Hamas is classified as a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the United States. Switzerland is not a member of the EU.

The diplomatic moves come after Hamas and Fatah last month formed a unity government with the express aim of ending the Western boycott as well as lethal infighting.

Calmy-Rey’s predecessor Moritz Leuenberger said last year that the EU had been too hasty in deciding to suspend aid to the Palestinian government.

“It would have been wiser to give Hamas a trial period and judge it according to its acts,” Leuenberger told Al-Jazeera television in April 2006.

Israel has in the past prevented members of the Hamas-led government from leaving the occupied West Bank to travel abroad, but Haniya resides in the Gaza Strip which has a border with Egypt.

During his European tour, Abbas warned the EU that the lack of funds caused by the bloc’s year-long suspension of direct aid would encourage extremism.

“We call upon the European Union to lift the embargo imposed on our people, whose continuation will only succeed in encouraging extremism,” Abbas said in Athens. “The Palestinian people must be assisted to live a normal life.”

The European Union was the biggest aid donor to the Palestinian government until Hamas came to power in March 2006.

The Quartet of Middle East mediators -- the EU, the United States, the United Nations and Russia -- then suspended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas’ armed wing on Tuesday said it had ended a five-month truce with Israel in response to raids that killed nine Palestinians. However, Abbas described the end of the truce as a ”rupture that won’t last.”

A proposed visit to Israel by King Abdullah II has stirred a wide-ranging controversy both inside and outside Jordan.

At least 30 deputies of the Jordanian lower house of parliament have submitted a memorandum urging an ‘immediate halt to all negotiations and meetings’ with Israel, parliamentary sources said.

The signatories, who included both Islamists and pro-government lawmakers, cited Israel’s ‘failure to abide by any truce with the Palestinians as well as its failure to implement any UN Security Council resolutions pertaining to the Palestinian question.’

Less than 24 hours after Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported on Friday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had extended an invitation to Abdullah to visit Israel, Israeli troops killed nine Palestinians in new attacks on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, house members said.

The Jordanian royal court confirmed that the Israeli premier had extended the invitation to the monarch during a telephone conversation on Wednesday, but said the king ‘has neither accepted nor refused the invitation’.

‘The monarch is ready to exert any effort that may boost the Arab peace initiative’ that was readopted by Arab leaders in their summit meeting in Riyadh at the end of March, said Amjad Adayleh, head of the royal court’s media department.

The Arab peace plan offers to extend recognition to Israel by Arab states after it pulls out from all Arab areas it occupied in the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem, and finds a ‘just solution’ to the problem of Palestinian refugees.

Israel’s fatal attacks on Palestinians on Saturday also drew angry reactions from the Islamic Action Front (IAF), Jordan’s largest political party and the political arm of the influential Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Alluding to the king’s proposed visit to Israel, the chairman of the IAF Consultative Council Hamzeh Mansour said that the latest round of Israeli attacks should prompt the Arab world ‘to realize the nature of the enemy they are mulling to cooperate with.’

A meeting of 11 Arab foreign ministers in Cairo last week decided to send a delegation comprising the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt to Israel to relay the text of the Arab peace plan to Olmert.

The Jordanian royal court was also angered by what it called ‘misquotations’ of King Abdullah that were carried on Friday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

The Israeli paper quoted the monarch as telling the Israeli Knesset leader Dalia Itzik and other lawmakers during a meeting in Amman on Thursday that the problem of Palestinian refugees could be resolved through paying ‘compensations’ to refugees by rich Arab countries.

Adayleh denied as ‘completely baseless’ the Israeli report and said the Arab peace plan envisaged compensation as ‘one of the choices’ for addressing the issue.

A discussion by Doha-based Al Jazeera television on the king’s remarks as reported by Haaretz drew sharp reaction from Jordan’s pro-government press against the Qatari satellite channel and the government of Qatar over the past couple of days.