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.”

political leaders, will have taken note of the unusually honest explanation of Israeli strategy that appeared in its pages on July 26.

Dani Dayan stated, with no diplomatic ambiguities, that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are an "irreversible fact" and claimed they are "not going anywhere." Mr. Dayan is a leading figure in the settler movement that is comprised of a half a million Israelis who have built cities, towns and villages on Palestinian land stolen and in some cases illegally annexed by Israel. He is at least candid.

This is in stark contrast to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose occasional statements are apparently in favor of two states, but which on close inspection are so heavy with pre-conditions as to make the Palestinian state impossible.

And that is the whole idea behind the illegal settlements -- to put so many concrete facts on the ground that if there ever were an agreement of two independent states, the settlers in their fortress tower blocks and militarily-defensible hilltops would make it impossible in practice. At that point, Israel would become -- not by negotiations, nor by international agreement, but by force -- a single state governing a population in which a large Palestinian population could be held in subjugation only by denying them any democratic freedom.

Mr. Dayan has stripped away any pretense about the expansion of settlements, which are deliberately making a Palestinian state nearly impossible. The consequence of this must be that Israel ceases to be a democracy, since the permanent settlement of Palestinian land can happen only by one people subjugating another by force.

Is this the outcome that the United States, of all countries, wishes to support? Or will it at last wake up to the reality that the Israeli government is a willing hostage of the settlers, among whom are violent extremists who vandalize mosques, destroy olive groves, and beat up Palestinians with apparent impunity?

Surely successive U.S. presidents have been right all along to believe that the better way of ending this deadlock is to have two free countries living side by side in lasting peace. This outcome has many virtues, including that it is democratic, that it is moral, and that it guarantees everyone the political freedoms which much of the world has taken for granted.

The settlers' alternative can be supported only by abandoning the belief in political freedom. It must be stressed that one cannot believe in freedom without accepting that it applies to all. Freedom that applies only to oneself fits with something else: oppression and occupation.

This is not a theoretical argument about political philosophy. Palestinians are confronted by reoccurring brutal acts that would cause moral outrage if carried out anywhere else.

Take, for example, the recent decision by the Israeli army to extend its military firing range in the South Hebron Hills. There are eight Palestinian communities in the area --villages going back to the 19th century -- all of which are to be removed. There is no democratic right of appeal and no representation in parliament by which those communities can contest the decision. Home, community, family, and tradition count for nothing. This is the deeply undemocratic, anti-freedom nature of the Israeli occupation of which -- it has to be said -- Americans know too little.

It is rare to see anyone openly admitting to a belief that Israel must permanently hold Palestinians under occupation, showing contempt for other people's freedom, history, and culture. Where Mr. Dayan is not honest is in failing to admit that brick by brick the settlements are burying our freedom. He never explains how the settler strategy can be reconciled with democracy because it cannot. Surely, the United States must see that this is not a strategy it can support while proclaiming its belief in freedom.

Freedom must be for all, not just for the militarily strong.

Hanan Ashrawi is a PLO Executive Committee member and Palestinian lawmaker.

PLO Executive Committee member and member of the PLC, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi today expressed her support for the Libyan people in their demands for freedom, democracy and human dignity, saying: “Throughout the Arab world, ordinary people are confronting outdated and intransigent regimes that refuse to relinquish their grip on power, and demanding democracy, accountability and the rule of law in their place.”

“For far too long, such regimes have stood as a barrier to democracy in the Middle East. They have quelled the rights and freedoms of their own people, and exacerbated the myriad political, economic and social problems facing their people. This is as true in Libya as it was in Tunisia and Egypt.”

Dr. Ashrawi said that she was both alarmed and appalled by the way Libya’s ruler, Muammar Gaddafi, continued to taunt and threaten his own people, promising to wreak havoc, death and destruction in response to ongoing protests.

“In both word and deed, Gaddafi continues to show utter disregard for the welfare, rights and safety of his own people. He is threatening a civil war that will undoubtedly drag the country further into chaos and lead to more bloodshed. Libyans are well within their rights to demand reform and to protest peacefully. I call in the strongest possible terms on the Libyan government to cease all aggression against its own civilians.”

“Engaged in our own struggle for freedom and independence against Israel’s occupation and the daily violation of our rights, the Palestinian people stand firm in their support for our Libyan brothers and sisters in their quest for freedom, democracy and an end to tyranny,” Dr Ashrawi concluded.

Even as indirect peace talks start this week between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, Israel's Foreign Ministry has begun waging a negative campaign against President Abbas and other Palestinian leaders, accusing them of “incitement”. Rather than demonstrating his seriousness of intent by engaging Palestinian leaders positively, it appears that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government would prefer to attack them by pursuing red herrings like incitement.

At a press conference last week, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon appeared alongside Itamar Marcus, a right-wing settler and director of an Israeli NGO called Palestinian Media Watch, to receive a report produced by PMW. Later in the week, Marcus appeared on Capitol Hill to present his report to Congress. In the U.S., PMW has been running ads on major television networks of late echoing the accusations of incitement against President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad.



What Ayalon and Marcus failed to mention is that PMW is closely connected to the New York-based Central Fund of Israel, which gives money to some of the most extreme elements in Israel’s settler movement, including a yeshiva in a West Bank settlement that is home to Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, who published a book last year justifying the killing of gentile babies on the grounds they might grow up to pose a threat to the state.



Ironically, if PMW’s television ads were produced by Palestinians and aimed at Israelis, they would no doubt constitute incitement according Israel’s definition. Indeed, that definition seems to include any action or statement critical of Israeli policy. Thus, the encouragement of non-violent protest against Israel’s 43-year-old military occupation, the banning of goods produced in settlements by the PA, and attempts to make Israel respect Palestinian rights at international forums like the United Nations all qualify.



While Israeli officials spend their time sifting through the Palestinian media looking for objectionable content, the perpetrators of a string of arson attacks against mosques in the West Bank remain at large. In the villages of Yasuf, Hawara, and most recently, Luban, mosques have been desecrated and torched by settlers who have also set fire to cars and olive groves. In the Yasuf attack, the aforementioned Rabbi Shapira was arrested and questioned by Israeli authorities before being released.



According to the Fourth Geneva Conventions, Israel is legally responsible for the security and wellbeing of Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), yet little has been done to reign in violent, extremist settlers who pose a threat not only to Palestinian life and property, but to the peace process itself.



Attacks such as these – carried out by armed settlers deliberately implanted in Palestinian areas by successive Israeli governments in contravention of international law – do more to incite Palestinian anger and frustration than any speech or television program ever could. They also increasingly threaten to turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a religious rather than a political one.



Likewise, each new settlement announcement, like the one that derailed the Obama administration’s attempts to start proximity talks during Vice-President Biden’s visit to the region in March, also incites Palestinian anger, as we witness ever more of our land being by colonized by Israel. Just this past Sunday, Israel’s Peace Now revealed that construction has begun on new settlement units in the Ras al Amoud neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

During Benjamin Netanyahu’s first term as Prime Minister in the 1990s, he made much of the issue of incitement while simultaneously dragging his feet when it came to honoring Israel’s obligations under previously signed agreements. The 1998 Wye Agreement called for a three way US-Palestinian-Israeli committee to limit incitement on both sides, but it fell into disuse after doing little work and the Israelis have refused our requests to reactivate it.



Despite the propaganda emanating from Israel’s Foreign Ministry and groups like PMW, President Abbas and the Palestinian leadership are committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The Netanyahu government’s focus on incitement is a digression and an attempt to avoid discussing substantive issues and the implementation of previous agreements, such as the first phase of 2003’s Road Map. If Prime Minister Netanyahu prefers to play semantic games rather than engage in serious negotiations, talks will not succeed.

Final status issues like borders must be dealt with up front, and there must be clear terms of reference. We do not want to talk for the sake of talking, or engage in a process that leads nowhere. Instead of wasting time and energy attempting to discredit Palestinian leaders who are committed to peaceful coexistence, the Israeli government should be thinking seriously about the consequences of another round of failed peace talks.

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi is an elected member of both the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee and the Palestinian Legislative Council.

On March 13th at 7am, Ali Qa'dan was getting ready for another day in his eventful and demanding work as a senior producer for ABC.

At 44, he was at the height of his distinguished career as the first Palestinian to achieve such standards of professionalism and recognition.

At 44, Ali suffered a massive heart-attack that left him lifeless while engaging in the mundane task of a morning shave.

At 44, Ali is no longer with us, and his son Nadeem (13) and daughter Lina (11) are left fatherless.

At 44, Ali left a vacuum in the lives of all those who have known him, worked with him and loved him.

The night before, Ali had spent a whole night in a hotel in Ramallah besieged by Israeli tanks and troops, dodging bullets and fighting a fate of violent death.

Professional to the end, Ali among his many colleagues covering the massive Israeli incursion into Ramallah, insisted on continuing the coverage despite the Israeli shells and bullets that were raining down on them.

The next night, Ali had hoped to get some sleep in order to face yet another day of Israeli brutality and violence. He found eternal rest instead.

Rest in peace, Ali.

We will miss you, your boundless energy, your engaging smile, your contagious laughter, your warm friendship and your love of life.

We will miss your sense of irony and humor, your total immersion in your profession and yet the time you made for us as friends and members of the larger Palestinian family.

Your departure was sudden, unexpected and tragic. You left before your time, but you have made a difference in our lives and time.

Rest in peace, Ali, the peace you could never enjoy in your life as a son of the tormented land of Palestine.