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 City - Abu Heni and his friends have seen it all before.

Perhaps that is why, as they sit playing cards, they do not appear overly-concerned with the Israeli incursion that is happening less than three miles from where we are sitting.

Four men, sitting round a small white table, at the Al Karawan cafe in downtown Gaza. Of course, as Muslims, they do not play for money, just points.

That does not mean the game is not important. Abu Heni gets agitated and shouts at his playing partner when he puts down the wrong card. As far as I can make out what they are playing is a kind of "trumps".

Playing trumps in Gaza City as the death toll rises in fighting on the edge of town.

Abu Heni and his friends say they are concerned. It is just that there is nothing they can do to stop the Israelis attacking Palestinian territory.

"It's happened before" says the 61-year-old retired health official, "and it will happen again".

The first day of the Israeli incursion, on Thursday, when tanks rolled into northern Gaza, was the worst day of violence seen here in a couple of years.

More than 20 Palestinians, militant fighters and civilians, were killed. More than 80, including several children, were wounded.

One Israeli soldier also died in the fighting.

Friday has been quieter, in comparison, but the helicopters have kept firing on militant positions and the heavy sound of artillery fire fills the air.

Several people have also died today, many in the tight dusty streets of Beit Layiha where militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades clash with Israeli tanks and troops.

I turn to one of the other card players and suggest to him that the Israeli action would stop if Palestinian militants released the 19-year-old army corporal, Gilad Shalit, whom they abducted almost two weeks ago.

"This has nothing to do with the soldier," says Ehab. "It's a conflict situation. They won't leave us alone, they want to crush what little we have."

A 39-year-old designer, Ehab is younger than his fellow-card players.

Unlike Abu Heni, who is dressed in a traditional Jelabiya [a long white shirt], Ehab prefers a Western-style striped T-shirt and jeans.

His outlook and attitude, though, are the same as his friends.

"The Israelis say they've gone into northern Gaza to stop the Qassam [rockets] being fired at Israeli towns. All that's happened is that the brigades [the militants] are sending even more rockets at the enemy. This will only encourage them."

Now I am usually a committed non-smoker but in this noisy, crowded cafe full of agitated card players I sit back and enjoy a Shisha [or hubbly-bubbly as it is known in English].

The double-apple flavour is particularly good and goes down really well with a glass of sweet mint tea.

Above the noise of over-exuberant middle-aged card-sharks it is almost possible to block out the sound of heavy artillery lobbing shells into northern and gunfire from Israeli helicopters.

"Over the years we have seen good days" says Abu Heni, as he thinks for a few seconds before placing a card on the table.

"It's just that at the moment, these are the most difficult days yet."

Palestinians doubt that Sharon's plan will mean greater freedom It is not without some justification they call Gaza the "world's biggest prison" - 1.3 million people crammed into an area only 360 km square. Since the beginning of the second Intifada, or popular uprising, in September 2000, it has been virtually impossible for many Gazans to travel outside the occupied territory because of strict Israeli frontier controls.

Even moving within Gaza, from north to south, is a nightmare because of military checkpoints around Israeli settlements like Netzarim and the Gush Katif bloc.

But will all this change under Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "disengagement plan" for Gaza? It appears not.

While virtually all Palestinians welcome Mr Sharon's plan to withdraw troops and some 7,000 settlers from Gaza, they remain deeply suspicious of his motives and doubt if there will be any greater freedoms arising from the initiative.

Hindering development

Once the settlers have gone it will of course be easier for students to travel from Khan Younis and Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip to universities and colleges in Gaza City, and for families within the territory to visit each other.

But many fear that is as far is it will go.

Mohammad al-Qord does not anticipate that travelling outside Gaza for work or pleasure will be any easier.

"It will become even more of a prison where Sharon will be able to dump Palestinians," says the 20-year-old student.

Indeed, Israel is threatening to tighten its stranglehold around the Gaza Strip.

Mr Sharon says he will also keep control over Gaza's southern border with Egypt and will deny the Gazans the right to rebuild their airport and develop a commercial port.

Palestinian leaders have already warned that such moves will seriously inhibit the ability for social and economic development in Gaza, where male unemployment runs at about 60% and the United Nations says 70% of people live in poverty.

Frustrated dreams

As for the wider prospects for peace, few Palestinians in Gaza believe that Mr Sharon's plan will have any short- or long-term benefits.

The Israeli prime minister says it is based purely on security concerns, to lessen Israel's exposure to militant attacks and improve life in the Palestinian territories.

But Palestinian leaders have criticised him for not involving them in the discussions over Gaza and the West Bank.

Ahmed Hejazzi: The plan is only good for Israel They say that Israel should adhere to the internationally-sponsored "roadmap" - a staged process to peace and the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories - leading to a negotiated two-state settlement.

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Mr Sharon was closing the door on the peace process. The intention to keep thousands of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank was a recipe for disaster, he said.

Ahmed Hejazzi, another Gaza student, said the "disengagement plan" was, "...only good news for Israel".

"Although there may be more freedom for us inside the Gaza Strip, by keeping so many illegal settlements in the West Bank, Sharon is still denying us Palestinians basic rights."

Palestinians have urged President Bush to push the Israeli prime minister back to the roadmap.

But many here are worried that a tight Israeli grip around Gaza and the continued presence of large settlements in the heart of the West Bank will continue to frustrate their dreams of freedom and a viable Palestinian state.