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.”

In response to demands by Interior Minister Eli Yishai and right-wing members of the Jerusalem city council, the capital's planners are proposing to limit new housing construction in the undeveloped areas of the Arab sector in a way that does not apply to the undeveloped areas in the Jewish sector, critics of the plan claim.

They say the new restriction on Arab housing is included in the latest version of the Jerusalem Outline Plan, which the municipality hopes will be deposited for public scrutiny in the near future.

According to the proposal, the undeveloped land reservoirs in east Jerusalem such as Suahra (east of Jebl Mukaber and the Kidron Valley) and Tel Adasa (south of the Atarot industrial area) will not be designated for housing alone, but for housing, industry, commerce and green (open) spaces.

On the other hand, the parallel undeveloped land reserves in west Jerusalem will be designated for housing alone.

"The definition of the land use for the Arab development areas will be too broad and I fear a situation in which a right-wing city administration will exploit it to deny Arab building rights," Meretz city councilor Meir Margalit told The Jerusalem Post. "It will enable such an administration to seriously discriminate against the Arab sector."

Urban planner Efrat Cohen-Bar, from the Bimkom NGO, warned that the change in the status of the undeveloped lands in east Jerusalem "will give the local planning committee [which is made up of Jerusalem city council members] more latitude in determining how much of the area will be allocated for housing and how much for the other land uses included in the definition."

In other words, city planners and the local planning council could approve a plan in the Arab sector calling for only 30 percent residential use and still remain within the guidelines of the Jerusalem Outline Plan.

In the Jewish sector, the land designated for residential development will be used entirely for housing and the basic services required by the families living in the designated area.

Work on the outline plan, which is a statutory plan establishing the broad principles of the city's future development such as population densities, building heights and overall land uses, began in 2000. It is the first outline plan to cover both the Arab and Jewish parts of the city since east Jerusalem was annexed to Israel in 1967.

According to the Planning and Building Law, town planning schemes must be approved in two stages by the local planning committee and the district planning commission, which is composed of representatives of government ministries, environmental organizations and architects.

At the end of the first stage, the plan is deposited for public scrutiny and the public is given the opportunity to submit objections to the plan.

The local and district committees then consider the objections and either make changes accordingly or overrule them.

In the case of the Jerusalem Outline Plan, the city approved the plan for deposit in April 2007. The district commission debated the plan for a year and approved it, after demanding many changes, in May 2008.

However, when the new government was formed after the February 2009 national election, Yishai, who had been appointed interior minister, requested a freeze so that he could study the plan, allegedly after being warned by local right-wing leaders that it provided too much housing for the Arab population.

The new change in the plan appears to be the city's attempt to satisfy Yishai, the critics say.

The Jerusalem Municipality said, in response: "The master plan is still in ongoing discussions between the municipality and the Interior Ministry. Once the plan is finalized, it will be released to the public."

Settlers in Ofra are using attack dogs to keep Palestinians from cultivating land they own near the settlement, the human rights organization Yesh Din charged in a petition filed in the High Court of Justice earlier this week.

Yesh Din attorneys Michael Sfard, Shlomi Zachary and Avisar Lev filed the petition on behalf of the head of the Silwad village council, Nael Hamad, and three village residents.

According to the petitioners, the entire settlement of Ofra is built illegally on land belonging to Silwad and the nearby Palestinian village of Ein Yabrud, but the petition applies only to land allegedly seized by the settlers outside the built-up area of the settlement.

According to the petition, "ring roads surrounding and fencing in hundreds of dunams of privately owned land were built around the settlement and the outposts surrounding it, and other physical obstacles, including earth embankments and fences" have also been erected.

Along parts of the fence, the settlers have posted assault dogs to help keep the legitimate landowners out, the petitioners charged.

Altogether, Ofra has closed off access to 3,100 dunams belonging to farmers in Silwad and Ein Yabrud, according to Yesh Din. In the past, the farmers had grown olives, figs and seasonal crops on the land.

"Now it has become fallow, abandoned land which, apparently, as past experience has shown, constitutes additional land reserves for the illegal expansion of the illegal settlement," the organization charged.

The Jerusalem Post sought a response from Ofra secretary Meir Nahliel, but he was not available to reply.

From a practical point of view, the question of whether or not the Palestinian Authority can declare "Palestine" an independent state is more political than legal.

It is clear from the provisions of the 1995 Oslo Interim Agreement that the Palestinian Authority would be perpetrating a material breach of the treaty by declaring an independent state.

According to Article 23 of the internationally recognized accord, "neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations."

Therefore, a unilateral declaration of independence by the PA would constitute a clear and serious violation of the agreement.

According to attorney Allen Baker, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, on the basis of that breach, Israel could declare the entire agreement void.

Baker added that the 1995 accord not only determined the administrative and security arrangements in all of the West Bank according to areas A, B and C, but is also the source of authority for the PA itself.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayad's program not only declares that a Palestinian state will be established in 2011, but also says its borders will be those of June 4, 1967, in other words, it will include all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

In the plan, entitled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State," Fayyad wrote, "This [proposal] is the path to the creation of the independent state of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital."

Hebrew University Professor Emeritus Ruth Lapidot told The Jerusalem Post that according to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, no state can abrogate a bilateral treaty unless it declares that the other partner is guilty of a "material breach" of the agreement.

Although the PA is not a state, the same principle should apply to it.

So far, the PA has not accused Israel of any material breach. Nevertheless, when he introduced his proposal to building up the Palestinian institutions for the establishment of an independent state, Fayad reportedly added that Oslo had been signed 16 years earlier, yet there was still no end to the Israeli "occupation."

And pointing to the more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, which he said were built in violation of international law, Fayad added, "Look who's talking about unilateralism."

Lapidot explained that there was no international body or institution that recognized states. Individual countries did so according to their own national considerations.

There are, indeed, four conditions that an entity should fulfill in order to be regarded as a state. It must have a population, a territory, an effective government and it must be able to conduct relations with other countries.

But each country determines for itself whether the criteria have been met. Lapidot estimated that the PA would have no trouble finding countries to recognize Palestine as a state, despite the constraints of the Oslo Accord.

The experts with whom the Post spoke on Sunday agreed, however, that the most important question for Israel is whether the US would do so.

Dan Diker, a foreign policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said he was worried that the American administration is heading in that direction and is ready to abandon the peace negotiations which have been stalled since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu came to power.

But Baker said he was not overly concerned that this would happen because the US, along with Russia, Norway, Egypt and the European Union, co-signed the Oslo Accord. Baker said he found it difficult to believe that any of them would be prepared to support a material breach of the treaty by the PA and recognize a Palestinian state.

The High Court of Justice on Thursday accepted a petition filed by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel and ordered the state to cancel an order prohibiting Palestinians from driving on a road linking small villages near Hebron to the larger towns that provide them with vital services.

It gave the state three months to make the necessary preparations before the ban was lifted.

ACRI attorney Limor Yehuda, who filed the petition on behalf of officials of three towns and villages affected by the military order and the head of an extended family living beside the road, welcomed the decision but said that the court had "missed an opportunity" to overrule the order on the grounds that it discriminated against Palestinians according to ethnic-national criteria.

"The decision is problematic because of what it did not address: the lack of a categorical interdiction on the system of segregation and discrimination that is becoming more entrenched in the West Bank," said Yehuda. "The ruling did not address the legality of such an immoral and extreme practice." Yehuda told The Jerusalem Post that the policy of segregation and discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank does not only apply to the road system, although ACRI has filed another petition against an army order prohibiting Palestinians from using a 15-kilometer section of Highway 443, which passes through the West Bank.

ACRI has also petitioned the High Court against the system of entry permits that Palestinians must obtain to access their lands that are situated in the West Bank, but on the "Israeli side" of the security barrier. Israelis may enter these areas freely.

She also said that Israel discriminates in its administration of the West Bank by maintaining separate legal systems for Palestinians, who live under military and Jordanian law, and Jewish settlers, who live under Israeli law.

"It is regrettable that the court did not say something substantial and clear about this practice," Yehuda said.

Instead, the court reached its decision on the basis of the principle of proportionality.

The army banned Palestinian traffic on a small east-west road linking the Palestinian town of Beit Awa and neighboring villages to Dura and Hebron. Originally, it also prohibited Palestinian pedestrians and motorists from crossing the intersection where the road meets a north-south main artery, Highway 354.

The ban was imposed to protect 150 residents of the Jewish settlement of Neguhot and a nearby illegal outpost, both located some four kilometers from the Beit Awa intersection.

The petition was filed in 2006. In between then and the ruling handed down on Thursday, the army lifted the ban on the intersection, thus allowing most of the Palestinians to travel freely. Nevertheless, an estimated 4,000 villagers continued to suffer because they could not travel on the road. The army defended its decision to ban Palestinian travel on security grounds.

But the court ruled that the army had not seriously considered other ways, less damaging to the Palestinians' rights, to protect the settlers. Furthermore, it said the security benefits stemming from the ban were outweighed by the harm caused to the Palestinians.

Although the petitioners presented many arguments against the travel prohibition, the one that was most important to them was expressed in the statement, "We are confronted with military orders based on a policy of separation and discrimination on national-ethnic grounds constituting unjustified and shameful discrimination which violate the fundamental principles of administrative and constitutional law in Israel and international law." Since the court refused to address this argument, it is difficult to know how it will rule in the other cases where the petitioners have made similar charges.

This is true, for example, in the case of Highway 443, which the court is expected to rule on soon. Unlike the small road in the case of Beit Awa, Highway 443 is a main highway linking Jerusalem with the coast.

Tens of thousands of Israelis use the road daily. The army imposed the travel ban against Palestinians on Highway 443 for security reasons, the same argument it used in Beit Awa.

Whatever decision the court comes to, and it appears to leaning towards upholding the travel prohibition in this case, it is almost certain to use the same reasoning, based on the principle of proportionality that it used in the Beit Awa case, and again refuse to address the charges of discrimination and segregation.

Shlomo Vaknin, in charge of security for the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, said opening the road "endangered lives" because it could lead to terror attacks against Israeli drivers.

Created in 1998 and located in the South Hebron Hills 2.5 kilometers away from the pre-1967 border, the Negahot settlement is home to 170 people. In 2003, a Palestinian infiltrated the settlement and killed a seven-month old baby and a 30-year old man.

South Hebron Hills Council head Tzvika Bar-Hai said it was sad that the court felt the settlers' right to life carried less weight than the Palestinians' quality of life.

"Opening the road is a mistake. It would be irresponsible for the army to do so," he said.