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.”

Defiant West Bank settler leaders rejected a personal plea from the Prime Minister yesterday to respect a government-ordered residential construction freeze, vowing to keep confronting security forces sent to enforce the edict.

In the West Bank, Jewish settlers blocked inspectors from entering a settlement to search for unauthorised construction, the third straight day of such confrontations.

There has been no violence, but authorities have made at least four arrests. The Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, summoned settler leaders in a bid to defuse the tensions.

Settler leader Dani Dayan called the meeting in Tel Aviv "difficult" and "emotionally charged". He said the settlers would continue their struggle against the freeze, both through civil disobedience and legal challenges. The settlers have scheduled a mass demonstration next week in Jerusalem.

During the two-hour meeting, Mr Netanyahu told settlers: "You have the right to demonstrate. You have the right to protest. You have the right to express an opinion, but it's unacceptable not to respect a decision that was taken by law."

An Israeli official said Mr Netanyahu agreed to consider the requests but made no promises. "We need to get through this period together through co-operation, instead of creating an atmosphere of crisis," Mr Netanyahu said, repeating a pledge to resume construction at the end of the freeze.

Mr Netanyahu announced the 10-month freeze on building new homes last week in an attempt to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, who refuse to resume talks until Israel halts all construction in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem – territories they claim for a future independent state.

They say Mr Netanyahu's freeze order is insufficient because it does not include east Jerusalem or 3,000 homes already under construction in the West Bank.

Some 300,000 settlers live illegally in the West Bank, in addition to 180,000 Jewish Israelis living in east Jerusalem.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, uprooting all 8,000 settlers who were living there.

Israel's incoming ambassador to the United States said Tuesday he was confident that his government will soon reach an agreement with Washington to allow some construction in West Bank settlements.

President Barack Obama, seeking to restart Mideast peace talks, has called on Israel to halt all construction on captured lands claimed by the Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says existing settlements must be permitted to expand to accommodate natural growth in the populations.

Netanyahu's designated envoy to Washington, Michael Oren, said there is enough "wiggle room" to find "creative solutions" to work out a deal with Washington.

"I think there is flexibility on both sides and I'm confident that we can work this out. I think that both the Obama administration and Israel want to move forward on the peace process. We don't want to get caught up in this issue," Oren told the Associated Press.

"The goal here is to remove the settlement issue as an impediment to advancing the peace process, he said. "I think on the American side, there's an appreciation of that eagerness."

Oren gave no details on how Israel expects to bridge its differences with Washington. Netanyahu is expected to discuss the matter next week with the White House's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell.

The U.S. has long argued that settlements are obstacles to peace. Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, along with 180,000 Israelis in Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem. The Palestinian seek both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state.

In a major policy speech on Sunday, Netanyahu for the first time said he supported Palestinian independence, though he attached a series of conditions rejected by the Palestinians.

He said a future Palestine would have to be demilitarized and that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state — in effect rejecting Palestinian refugees' claims to properties lost at the time of Israel's establishment in 1948. Netanyahu also ruled out shared control of Jerusalem and defied the American call to halt settlement expansion.

Netanyahu's speech was roundly criticized by the Palestinians, Arab leaders and liberal commentators at home who were disappointed by its many caveats and vagueness. Obama gave it a cautious welcome, noting "there were a lot of conditions" but that it raised "at least the possibility that we can restart serious talks."

The Israeli public, on the other hand, has embraced Netanyahu's message, according to polls published Tuesday.

The Haaretz daily said 71 percent of Israelis surveyed in a poll agreed with the content of the speech, though 67 percent said they do not think it will bring peace any closer. It said Netanyahu's approval rating jumped to 44 percent after the speech, from 28 percent a month earlier. The poll was conducted by the Dialog company and surveyed 504 people with a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.

A second poll published in the daily Yisrael Hayom found 61 percent support for Netanyahu's position on a Palestinian state, with only 23 percent opposed. In the poll, 58 percent said they opposed the U.S. demands to freeze settlement construction. The poll surveyed 501 people and had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

"I think that if you ask Israelis, its overwhelming across the political spectrum. People want the Palestinians to have their own free, independent lives. We don't wanna govern them. But we wanna make sure they don't have the powers to threaten us," Netanyahu said in an interview with CBS News on Monday.

Menachem Hofnung, a professor of political science at Hebrew University, said Netanyahu's speech generated great support because he is perceived to have withstood American pressure and defended vital Israeli interests.

"He raised his periscope, found the middle ground and aimed at it," he said. "His speech pretty much reflects the center of the Israeli political map."

Israel's next leader sat face-to-face Thursday with a man whose vision of Israeli-Palestinian relations is radically different from his own: the Obama administration's new Middle East envoy.

Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu says negotiations on Palestinian statehood are pointless. But envoy George J. Mitchell wants Israel to resume negotiations to establish a Palestinian state.

This is Mitchell's second Middle East visit since President Obama took office last month. Next week, Hillary Rodham Clinton will make her first trip to the region as secretary of state.

The attention follows Obama's promise to make peace in the Middle East a priority.

Thursday's meeting was "positive and productive," Netanyahu said, and the two still "have a lot to talk about." Mitchell made no statement. He promised a vigorous push for Israeli-Palestinian peace on his first visit but offered no public glimpse into how the administration planned to do it. Mitchell was not expected to do so this time either, a U.S. official said.

Mitchell's visit comes amid ongoing talks on the region's future -- on a Gaza cease-fire, Gaza reconstruction and Palestinian reconciliation.

Egyptian officials have been trying to mediate a long-term truce between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip, to replace a fragile cease-fire that ended Israel's three-week offensive in the territory last month.

The two rival Palestinian groups, Hamas and the Western-backed Fatah movement that controls the West Bank, are meeting this week for Egyptian-mediated talks on reconciliation.

And dozens of countries will meet Monday in Egypt for a donors' conference to raise money for rebuilding Gaza after the Israeli offensive.

One of Mitchell's immediate goals is to shore up the Gaza cease-fire, which continues to be shaken by low-level violence.

On Thursday, Palestinian fighters fired two rockets at southern Israel, and Israel later sent aircraft to raid southern Gaza. Hamas said the aircraft targeted five smuggling tunnels. Palestinian medical officials said three people were wounded, one critically. No one was injured in the rocket attacks.

Mitchell is also expected to focus on the need to rebuild Gaza. The Palestinians hope to raise $2.8 billion at Monday's donor conference, where the United States is expected to pledge $900 million.

Mitchell and Netanyahu seem at odds on key underlying issues.

Mitchell wants to press ahead with peace talks that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu avoids any talk of Palestinian statehood and says peace efforts should focus on building up the Palestinian economy. Mitchell has urged a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while Netanyahu says existing settlements must be allowed to expand.

Israel proposed to annex 6.8 percent of the West Bank and to take in a few thousand refugees under a peace deal, but it has not revealed its position on the most contentious issue _ the future of Jerusalem, the chief Palestinian negotiators said Friday night.

Ahmed Qureia said the Palestinian side did not consider the ideas presented on annexation and the return of some Palestinians to be acceptable.

Speaking for the first time in detail about yearlong U.S.-backed talks that failed to produce an agreement, Qureia's comments appeared aimed, in part, at providing a record of the Israeli position ahead of leadership changes in Israel and the United States.

Barack Obama assumes the U.S. presidency Jan. 20. Israel holds elections Feb. 10, and polls suggest hard-line opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu could become the next prime minister.

Netanyahu opposes large-scale territorial concessions to the Palestinians and has said he would not continue the negotiations in their current format. He says he would try to focus on improving the Palestinian economy instead.

The office of outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declined to address Qureia's comments. However, aides noted recent speeches in which Olmert said Israel would have to withdraw from much of the land it captured in the 1967 Mideast War, including the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem.

Qureia told Palestinian reporters that Israel wants to keep four blocs of Jewish settlements in the West Bank _ Ariel, Maaleh Adumim, Givat Zeev and Efrat-Gush Etzion. He said Israel initially proposed to annex 7.3 percent of the territory, then reduced that to 6.8 percent.

Israel offered to give some of its own territory as compensation, but not an equal trade in size and quality, Qureia said. He added that some of the areas Israel wants to annex would be crucial to a viable Palestinian state envisioned as the goal of the peace negotiations.

Israeli officials have talked publicly about keeping some settlements in exchange for other land, but have not given any specifics. Qureia has said in the past the Palestinians are willing to consider a land swap, but on a much smaller scale than he outlined Friday.

Turning to Jerusalem, Qureia said the Palestinians repeatedly raised their demand for a division of the city but were never given Israel's view.

Olmert, who will step down after the elections, has said Israel will have to give up some Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. However, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, a member of Olmert's governing coalition, has threatened to quit if Jerusalem is discussed in the talks.

Qureia said Olmert's offer during talks to take in 5,000 Palestinian refugees over five years was rejected. But he added that the Palestinians do not seek the return of all refugees and their descendants, a group that numbers several million.

"To say that not a single refugee would be allowed back or that all the refugees should be allowed back is not a solution," he said. "We should reach a mutual position on this issue."

Israeli leaders have adamantly refused to accept large numbers of Palestinians, saying mass repatriation would destroy the Jewish character of Israel.

The negotiations were launched a year ago, at a U.S.-hosted Mideast conference in Annapolis, Md. Since then, Qureia and Livni have met repeatedly, in parallel to talks between Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Qureia said he hopes the new American president will make solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a priority. "We hope that we will not have to wait" for intensive U.S. involvement, he said.