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.”

Residents of Bethlehem, where a key Fatah conference is taking place, are not optimistic that the outcome of the conference will bring them prosperity and improve their economic situation.

Many harbor resentment towards Fatah, accusing the movement of nepotism, corruption, and neglecting their fellow Palestinians.

In this West Bank town just south of Jerusalem whose economy relies largely on tourism by Christian pilgrims, locals complain of soaring unemployment and lack of prospects. They are pinning little hope on the Fatah conference.

“There’s no business and the economy here is destroyed,” says Saber A-Lahham, who sells chickens and rabbits at a makeshift stall in the center of town. Asked if the conference had boosted his business at all, he said there were a lot more people than usual in the city, “but nobody is buying.”

“We wish that peace will come here and we wish that business will be better,” he said.

“As a person living with the situation, I don’t think anything big will happen,” says John Shahin, owner of a souvenir shop. “This meeting will not free Palestine,” he says.

One taxi driver in the city said from his perspective, the only ones benefitting from the meeting were the Fatah members themselves who had come here to network.

The compound of the conference and the adjacent media center is heavily guarded and teeming with men in suits and journalists thumping away at their laptops.

But a mere 200 meters up the hill, in Bethlehem’s Old Market, the scene is very different.

Here, the streets are strewn with second-hand clothing laid out in a messy pile on the ground and hard-up salesmen aggressively hunt for potential customers.

Locals present their wares, a hodgepodge of electrical equipment, clothing, blankets, household goods and cheap plastic toys. One game, a red and green plastic tube, has an Israeli name scribbled on it in Hebrew with a black felt-tip pen. Another is a cracked plastic cup with a Jewish prayer inscribed on it in Hebrew.

A loudspeaker blares out the voice of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud ‘Abbas delivering his keynote address at the conference.

“This conference is a failure,” said an elderly man at the market, who asked not to be named.

“We won’t benefit from it. If anyone benefits it will be Israel. It will serve Israel’s interests, not the interests of the Arabs or of the Palestinian Authority. In politics, every one takes care of their own business,” he says.

A salesman at the market says Israel was the only one calling the shots.

“Israel is in charge of everything here. Talk of a peace conference, this is all nonsense. Israel doesn’t want peace.”

As to prospects of Arab states stepping in to help, the salesman does not believe it will happen.

“In the Arab states, no one there is interested in us. That’s nonsense. Each nation takes care of itself, its people, its children, its army and its state. But no one takes care of us, the Palestinians. We are workers but we’re sitting here without work, and some people don’t have food,” he says gloomily.

The Fatah gathering has inconvenienced the residents of Bethlehem, who say they are paying the price in hosting more than 2,000 participants and guests at the gathering.

On Tuesday, parts of the city were reportedly deprived of water because the neighborhoods share the water flow and it was all allotted to the area of the conference.

A local resident said the problem was resolved by Thursday.

The manager of a souvenir shop at the entrance to the Church of the Nativity compound was furious that the alleyway where his shop is located had been cordoned off.

“The tourists are being directed to the back of the church because of the conference, so I have no business,” he told The Media Line. He did not even bother putting his wares outside the shop, because there was no point, he said.

The conference in Bethlehem is Fatah’s first gathering in two decades and is putting to the test Fatah’s standing as the largest and most influential faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization.

JERUSALEM -- With time running out on the U.S. George W. Bush administration and without a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute having been reached, as was hoped, the idea of a Palestinian-Israeli confederation is gradually replacing that of a two-state solution.

The notion has been floating around for several years now, in various forms. Josef Avesar, an Israeli-born attorney now based in California, is the founder of the Israeli Palestinian Confederation committee (IPC).

With the failure of successive governments on both sides to reach a final-status agreement, the organization has outlined a plan to create an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, which would complement existing governments on both sides, but not marginalize them.

Avesar envisions a confederation where Israelis and Palestinians would each retain independent sovereign governments with the same authority they had in the past, while a third government will be made up of Israelis and Palestinians together.

The IPC proposes that 300 people represent the population of the entire area of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The delegates will be either Israeli or Palestinian according to their proportion of the population.

In order to pass legislation, 55 percent of the Palestinian delegates and 55 percent of the Israeli delegates must vote in favor of a bill. The separate Palestinian and Israeli governments would be given veto power. If neither side uses the veto, the bill would become a law.

The confederation will have a national director and a vice director, one of whom will be Palestinian and the other Israeli. They will serve their term by rotating their offices.

This idea of a confederation is to create a separate track to the current negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

But while the idea may look good in theory, it has plenty of critics.

Uri Dromi, a former Israeli government spokesman says this idea is not feasible.

"We always have to think out of the box because we're stuck at a dead end, but this idea is detached from reality," he says. "It will only create bureaucracy that will complicate things further.

"I'm for separating the Palestinians and the Israelis. I'm for helping the Palestinians create their viable Palestinian state, mainly economically and creating living conditions on the ground, but a confederation is unrealistic."

Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister in the Israeli government is not against a confederation, but he has his own views as to the structure of this framework.

First, Sneh says, a confederation should be the outcome of a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, not a precursor. Secondly, it should be expanded to include neighboring Jordan. Once formed, it will be a framework for dialogue on joint issues such as trade, environment, energy and water.

"Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians share the same defense interests," he says. "Where there is a joint interest there is a base for a framework and that can be a confederation."

The initial stage should include a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation and only later it should incorporate Israel, Sneh believes.

Hana Siniora, a member of the Palestinian National Council and co-CEO of the Israel-Palestinian Center for Research and Information organization, is also a proponent of the confederation idea.

But he says any warm working relationship between the parties depends on internal political developments on both sides.

"We have to watch the Israeli elections and we hope to see reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, because the [current] situation isn't conducive to a political settlement," he told The Media Line.

One factor that was not taken into account when the idea was first conceived is that Gaza is currently governed by Hamas, which does not recognize Israel's existence.

Avesar, however, believes this should not hamper the idea of a confederation.

"The Hamas government is a government of the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza. The Hamas government may be recognized by the confederation, and they will be given veto power so the confederation will become a mediator between the Israeli government and the Palestinian government, or the Hamas government."

Avesar is well aware that his audience views his ideas as nothing more than an intellectual exercise.

The fact that the standard definition of a confederation does not gel with his vision is a minor challenge in his view. A frequently heard criticism is that a confederation can only be formed between two sovereign states, and the Palestinians do not have a state.

"We'll make it between two governments and the dictionary will change the definition rather than us changing reality," he says. "You work based on reality and the reality is that the Palestinians and the Israelis have been at each other's throats for a long time. We have to deal with this."

Some suggest that energy and environment should be the initial points of cooperation, which could then lead to bilateral and possible trilateral relations.

Proponents of the confederation view the European Union as a model that proves the idea can succeed.

Contradictory reports in the Israeli and Palestinian media are placing question marks over the reliability of the Middle Eastern media.

Reports are abounding regarding the inclusion of two senior jailed Palestinians in a possible deal to release Israel soldier Gilad Shalit from captivity in Gaza.

One is Marwan Barghouthi, a senior Fatah member, who is serving five consecutive life terms in an Israeli jail for his involvement in terrorism.

The other is Ahmad Sa’dat, who heads the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and who is in jail in connection with the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001.

The London-based Al-Quds Al-‘Arabi quoted Palestinian sources as saying that a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, brokered by Egypt, would include both Barghouthi and Sa’dat.

The Emirates-based Al-Bayan said Sa’dat’s release was still being considered, and the London-based Al-Hayyat quoted a “reliable Egyptian source” as saying Israel had agreed to release Barghouthi, or Sa’dat, or both.

Israel is not confirming the reports.

A separate report in the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency said Palestinians had found a projectile south of Nablus and accused Israelis in post-1967 Jewish communities of firing rockets onto their communities.

Israel denied these rockets had been fired by Israelis.

But beyond the veracity of the reports themselves, the explosion of information and often-conflicting reports in the Middle East media sometimes confuse the media consumers more than informing them.

The Israeli media and the Palestinian media are very different and are by no way symmetrical, says Yizhar Be’er, executive director of the Keshev Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel.

The Palestinian media tend to be less independent and are often politically aligned, Be’er explains.

“The Israeli media are more professional, freer and more pluralistic and have no formal censorship except for specific security matters,” Be’er says.

“But there are gaps between the information that the reporters send and the end result after the editorial work.

We see the editors frame the reports in a way that highlights the responsibility of the Palestinians and downplays the Israeli responsibility.

The main narrative is that the other side is to blame for the situation we’re in.”

Be’er is of the opinion that there is no such thing as objective media. This is especially pertinent to the Middle East, where the Israeli-Arab conflict has too many emotional, nationalistic and religious elements for the media to maintain neutrality.

Ruham Nimri, coordinator of the media-monitoring unit at the Palestinian Miftah organization, says the Palestinian media are still taking baby steps and have not reached a decent level of professionalism.

“The problem with the Palestinian media is that they don’t have their own reporting,” Nimri says. “What you read in the Palestinian papers is news taken from Israeli sources and international agencies, so there’s nothing much new when you read a Palestinian newspaper.”

The pan-Arab papers, such as those based in London, tend to be more reliable and serious, Nimri says.

Regarding the conflicting reports on Barghouthi, Be’er says he does not think anyone really knows what is happening.

“There are a lot of media spins all the time. When you don’t really know the facts you write what you want.”

Because of the fierce competition in the media today, no media outlet can afford not to write anything and lag behind.

This is causing the quality of the media to deteriorate and is making them more sensational, more tabloid and more entertainment-oriented, Be’er believes.

The Arab media, and especially outlets that are national and not pan-Arab, have a propensity to quote unnamed sources, a fact that makes the reports more difficult to verify.

Nimri says this tendency is much more prevalent in country-based media, rather than pan-Arab outlets.

“It’s different being a media outlet in Syria and being in London,” he says.

Journalism in the Middle East in terms of its professionalism and independence stands somewhere between Western journalism and the mouthpiece journalism prevalent in the Communist era, he explains.

“There are signs of journalistic work, but there is still a big gap between free media in the West and the Arab media,” Be’er says.

On an average-size map of the world, there is no space to mark the locations of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

On one map, the former is outlined by a barely visible light blue line; Gaza is hidden behind the ‘m’ in the word Jerusalem. And that’s it. A speck on the globe.

With a population of fewer than four million people, Gaza and the West Bank combined fit into Connecticut twice, with room to spare. Here you will find no noteworthy reserves of oil or other economic interests, which can be easily tapped into.

What you will discover, though, is anxiety and a population steeped in years of factionalism and political conflict. Not exactly your ideal choice for a diplomatic partner.

Yet, the United States continues to mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is adamant about maintaining adequate, if not even good ties with the Palestinian leadership.

This became an increasingly difficult task after the January 2006 elections resulted in the victory of Hamas, a group designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.

At the price of falling out with Israel, U.S. officials have met with the new unity government’s Finance Minister Salam Faya’d, who does not belong to Hamas. This marked a break with Israel’s tough no-talk policy encompassing all Palestinian ministers, as long as Hamas remains in government and refuses to change its policies.

Some would argue the significance of U.S.-Palestinian relations does not warrant the amount of diplomatic effort the U.S. is putting into this relationship. But those interviewed say these ties are not only important but also imperative.

The American people have a national interest in establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, says Ziad Asali, president and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine.

The organization aims to promote awareness of ways in which Palestinian statehood would benefit the U.S.

The most compelling argument for this is the security element, Asali says from his Washington, DC office.

“There is a great deal of antagonism towards the U.S. in the Arab and Muslim world. Much of it revolves around U.S. policies in supporting Israel against the Palestinians,” Asali says.

Taking the Palestine-Israel conflict off the table would encourage the Arab world to start a different dialogue with the U.S., one that is less confrontational and based more on mutual interests, he argues.

This is also evident in the Sunni-Shi’ite divide, in which both sides are trying to “own” the Palestinians issue, Asali says. Both sides see the symbolic significance of defending the Palestinian cause, at least verbally, and are aware of the emotions this evokes in the hearts and minds of Muslims across the Middle East.

Maen Areikat, director general of the Negotiations Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) says solving the conflict would neutralize the one issue that extremists use as a pretext to attack the U.S. and other Western countries.

“I wouldn’t say that if we solve it, everything would disappear, but I think that if we solve it we can focus on the threat posed by extremists in the region and elsewhere.”

Not everyone agrees the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the main problem in the Middle East.

U.S. Congressman Ron Klein (D-FL), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says there is no doubt that solving the conflict, ensuring a stable Israel and giving the Palestinians an opportunity for statehood are important.

“There’s no question that those are crucial issues,” Klein says. “But I don’t see where that solves the problems in Iraq and I don’t see that necessarily solves the problems with Iran.”

Since 1948, players in various disputes in the region have had a tendency to shift the discussion onto the Palestinian issue, but recent events in Iraq indicate this thinking does not hold, Klein says.

“Shi’as and Sunnis are fighting each other in a very strategic way that has nothing to do with the Israel-Palestinian issue,” he says.

The Israeli-Palestinian issue is not as prominent on Capitol Hill as some Middle Easterners might assume, says Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council.

“From Washington, we are so focused on Iraq to the exclusion of everything else,” Berman says.

“The Palestinians have always been more of a backburner issue, because they don’t pose an immediate threat to U.S. security interests.”

Grassroots Resentment

The Palestinian Authority sees relations with the U.S. as a national interest. But observers note this does not always correspond with the grassroots attitude towards the U.S.

The Palestinian Authority would like the U.S to be more flexible in dealing with the Palestinian government, but still respects U.S. officials and welcomes them in Ramallah.

On the ground, Palestinian newspaper editorials reflect resentment towards the U.S. and its policies in the Middle East, accusing the U.S. of practicing double standards in its attitudes towards Hamas’ victory and towards Israel.

The Israel Connection

A vital element in reviewing the American-Palestinian axis is Israel. Some argue the U.S.-Palestinian track is merely an outcropping of U.S.-Israeli relations and would not exist otherwise.

Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., says there would be no relations between the U.S. and the Palestinians if they were not part of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

But Congressman Klein does not subscribe to this notion.

“I think the American people are very interested in making sure that part of the world is stable,” he says.

The U.S., Klein maintains, wants to see things move in a way that would allow for an Israel that is not at war with its neighbors. Washington is aware the Palestinians have a stake in this discussion to ensure a safe and secure Israel, and wants to see a free and independent Palestinian state, which can work with its neighbors and develop economic and political relationships.

The fact that this area has nothing to offer in terms of oil and energy is irrelevant, he adds, since it is not in the U.S.’s best interest to be dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

Areikat also believes there is more that binds Americans and Palestinians than the conflict resolution.

Besides the location of Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem, which is of tremendous significance to America’s Christian population, the Palestinians have a sizeable community in the U.S. Also, the low rate of illiteracy and high number of educated Palestinians are a “power to reckon with,” Areikat says.

“I think there is much more beyond the negotiations. I don’t believe that if we have a peace settlement, that the relationship would end between the U.S. and the Palestinians,” Areikat says.

A Fair Broker?

One of the sore points in U.S.-Palestinian relations is the perception that the U.S. cannot be an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because of Washington’s inclination to adopt the Israeli side.

“I think that’s true and I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Berman says. “Insofar as the Palestinians could become Western-looking, shorn of corruption and committed to development and human rights, that would equalize it a bit. But it’s natural for people to feel more affinity with people who are like them in governance and in political aspirations.

“I think that mostly the U.S. government has tried to be a fair and impartial arbiter,” Klein says. “Yes, it supports Israel and I think it would also support the Palestinians if they proved themselves.”

Many agreed it was precisely this alliance between Israel and the U.S. that made the Palestinians see Washington as the only party with sufficient clout to apply the necessary pressure on Israel.

“We would like to see the U.S. utilizing its special relationship with Israel in order to help reach a permanent settlement that will take into account the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians,” Areikat says.

While the American people absolutely want a strong, stable and secure Israel, they would also support a stable and secure Palestinian state, Klein believes.

“But it can’t be a Palestinian state that threatens Israel and is at war with Israel. That’s unacceptable,” he adds.

Can the Palestinians do without the U.S.?

It is hard to determine where relations between Americans and Palestinians currently stand.

“They’re in limbo,” says Prof. Mohammad Dajani, a political scientist from Al-Quds University in eastern Jerusalem.

The U.S. finds itself in a sticky situation with the new Palestinian government. It continues to support Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud ‘Abbas, while shunning Hamas cabinet ministers, who comprise half the new government.

The U.S. is not the only party trying to broker peace in the Middle East. But despite the Palestinian dissatisfaction with Washington’s policies and positions, there is general agreement that this is one party they cannot do without.

“It is true that there are many actors in the game,” Dajani says, “but the leading actor is the U.S.”

As the Bush administration enters its second term, the legacy watch begins, Berman says, “and the holy grail of the legacy watch is in Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

Whether the Americans were invited or not, they are in.

“Deep down the Palestinians rest their hopes on the U.S.,” Berman says. “They are a terrible broker, but they’re the best the Palestinians are going to get.”