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.”

I suspect that Barack Obama is gritting his teeth ahead of his upcoming first visit to Israel as US President. There is certainly no love lost between the American president and the Israeli leader, which may go a long way to explain why Israel has been absent from his travel itinerary until now. Nevertheless, if he wants the support of the pro-Israel lobby and Congress, he will just have to hold his nose and get on with what is little more than a prolonged photo-op.

Ari Shavit writing in Ha’aretz admits that “over the past four years, Israel has done its best to become the object of Obama’s loathing”. That is true, but no American president can afford to respond in kind at least in public when as a new Gallup poll has revealed that 64 per cent of Americans sympathise with Israelis as opposed to just 12 per cent who side with Palestinians. There is anecdotal evidence indicating that had Obama been a mere private citizen, he would be among the 12 per cent.

For instance, in May 1998, Obama was pictured with the late Edward Said and his wife at an Arab community event held in Chicago. Moreover, Ali Abu Nimah of the Electronic Intifada says that prior to becoming president, Obama attended various Palestinian and Arab community events. He recalls meeting with him at one.

“As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly and volunteered: “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down, I can be more up front.” He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the Chicago Tribune, critical of Israel and US policy: “Keep up the good work!” If that was, indeed, Obama’s hope, it has not manifested through no fault of his own when immutable US foreign policy keeps him hidebound from speaking his mind. However, even his consummate diplomatic approach cannot hide his antipathy for the bumptious hard line Israeli leader.

A conversation between Obama and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, caught on an open microphone in 2011, suggested Obama found the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, irritating. When Sarkozy blasted Netanyahu as “a liar”, Obama responded saying: “You’re tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day.” Then, according to Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, on another occasion, Obama was heard saying: “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are”, while characterising Netanyahu as “a political coward”.

Obama is also bound to be the tiniest bit miffed that Netanyahu backed the wrong candidate by lavishing praise on his former rival Mitt Romney, who received the red carpet treatment when he visited Israel with one of Netanyahu’s staunchest friends — the billionaire Sheldon Adelson last year.

Then again, Obama has done his fair share of snubbing his Israeli counterpart. In 2010, the American president left Netanyahu in a White House meeting room for more than an hour while he took off for supper with his family, allegedly after they had quarrelled over the expansion of Jewish colonies. When his Israeli guest made it clear that he was not amenable to halting construction, Obama got up from his chair and announced: “I’m going to the residential wing to have dinner with Michelle and the girls,” adding, “I’m still around. Let me know if there is anything new.”

Last year, Netanyahu wore his intransigence as a badge of honour during a visit to a military base. “In the past four years, we have contended with tremendous pressures,” he said alluding to Obama’s tenure. “They demanded we curb our pressure on Iran; that we withdraw to the ‘67 lines, that we divide [occupied] Jerusalem and refrain from building settlements [colonies] in [occupied] Jerusalem. We rebuffed the pressure.” His continual rebuffs met with another from Obama in the run-up to his reelection. An Israeli official disclosed that the White House had refused Netanyahu’s request to meet one-to-one with Obama during the latter’s visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly on the grounds that “the President’s schedule will not permit that”.

Now it appears that Obama has dropped the Palestinian case. Those who were hoping that he would become more forthright in his second term, unhampered by the need to people-please for votes, are likely to be disappointed.

Israel will not only continue to join-up the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem with Jewish colonies under construction on land in the hitherto undeveloped E1 zone, spelling the death of a two-state solution, but the new Netanyahu-led coalition government also plans to pass a bill that will put Israel’s democratic credentials second to its Jewish character. The nitty-gritty of this bill is that the state will continue constructing Jewish colony homes, but will not be obliged to invest in constructions slated for non-Jews.

The White House has confirmed that Obama is going to Israel without any new initiative. This meaningless tourist trip, this dutiful facade, this exercise in hypocrisy, begins tomorrow. And, naturally, the president will do his best to show AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and Capitol Hill that he is enjoying the ride.

Israelis are set to choose a new Knesset today and if polls prove credible, the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu coalition is some 32 seats ahead of competition. This translates into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding on to his post subsequent to horse-trading with coalition partners that may include a centrist party as a sop to White House. However, it is more likely that Netanyahu will gravitate towards far-right nationalist and religious parties, ideologically in tune with his hard line approach to Palestinian ambitions and expansionist plans to isolate occupied Jerusalem from the West Bank with new Jewish colonies. If the tealeaves prove correct, Palestinians will be obliged to say R.I.P. to a two-state solution. Despite condemnation from the US, Britain and the European Union (EU) that have hinted at punitive measures, Netanyahu remains defiant about retaining more than 100 West Bank colonies and is committed to building thousands of new homes on the “E1 area”, linking occupied East Jerusalem with the largest Jewish colony, Maale Adumim. That alone represents a fatal blow to a Palestinian state on 22 per cent of historic Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Last Saturday, Netanyahu talked about falling out with the US on Israel’s Channel 2 TV. “When they tell me to return to 1967 lines, I stand against it. When they tell me not to build in [occupied] Jerusalem, I stand against it,” he said. “It would be terribly easy to capitulate. I could return to indefensible borders and divide [occupied] Jerusalem and let Hamas get 400 metres from my home. But I have to stand firm on our vital interests …”

Netanyahu’s nationalist rhetoric, coupled with his fear-mongering over Iran’s nuclear programme and endless evocation of the Holocaust, resonate with conservative sectors of the Israeli public while liberals have become de-energised and apathetic. The prime minister’s supporters perceive him to be a pair of safe hands, someone who will not compromise the Jewish state’s security to win friends on Pennsylvania Avenue. And why should he when AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and, by extension, the Congress are in his pocket? He forgets, though, that nothing stays the same forever.

His relationship with US President Barack Obama is rocky. American columnist and White House insider, Jeffrey Goldberg, recently quoted Obama as saying: “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” adding that the US president views Netanyahu as a “political coward”. Goldberg warns that Israel is in danger of becoming an international pariah that could risk losing unconditional US backing.

Increasing embarrassment

Obama was not amused by Netanyahu’s red-carpet treatment of his former presidential rival, Mitt Romney, and is now being accused of seeking to influence Israeli elections via his friends in the media. His nomination of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, hardly a reflexive kowtower to Israel, as Secretary of Defence is not going down well in Tel Aviv. Israel’s President Shimon Peres is clearly concerned. “We must not lose the support of the United States,” he told the New York Times. “Without US support, it would be very difficult for us. We would be like a lone tree in the desert.” He is right as evidenced by the Palestinian’s successful bid for non-member observer status in the UN General Assembly.

If Netanyahu continues to arrogantly bite the hand that feeds Israel there will be repercussions. American Jews are increasingly embarrassed by Israel’s brutality, according to Yehuda Kurzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, who told Ynet that he “and his friends must deal with the same — the prevalent feeling among average American Jews when the word ‘Israel’ or ‘Israelis’ is raised along with ‘occupation’”. Add to that the fact that more than 50 per cent of American Jews marry outside the religion and the majority historically leans to the left, the pro-Israel lobby’s sway over US foreign policy is likely to erode over time.

Netanyahu is a dinosaur who obstinately holds on to short-sighted opinions. Unfortunately for Israel and the region, generations of Israelis are similarly myopic, preferring military aggression to a peace process based on the 1967 borders.

Palestinian National Authority (PNA) President, Mahmoud Abbas, has warned that Israel is on route to becoming “an apartheid-style state”. His spokesman says there are Palestinians calling for a one-state solution because two states may no longer be viable. “We Palestinians will be in the majority and will struggle for equality,” he added.

Almost a quarter of Israel’s population numbering 7.5 million is non-Jewish, a percentage that includes 1.6 million Arab citizens of Israel. That figure added to the 2.6 million Palestinians on the West Bank translates to Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians fast catching-up to Israel’s Jewish majority of 6.5 million. And that is without taking into account the 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza. It is worth remembering, too, that the birth rates of Palestinians, Arab citizens of Israel and Bedouins are three times as high as that of Jewish-Israelis. The question is will an Arab majority quash Israel’s status as a Jewish state? Israel’s former foreign minister Tzipi Livni gets it. “Netanyahu is leading us towards the end of the Jewish state ... Israel is in great danger and everyone must wake up now,” she says. As the results of the ballot will surely show, Israeli sleepwalkers vastly outnumber the wise.

The first ever visit of Khalid Mesha’al, Chairman of Hamas’ Political Bureau, to Gaza was a historic moment eliciting high emotion not only for the man himself, but also for the hundreds of thousands who flooded into Gaza City’s Katiba Square to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hamas. This was their chance to see up-close-and-personal a person of stature who represents their interests on the world stage — his latest coup being the brokering of a ceasefire with Israel that was poised to launch a ground invasion. He is also celebrated among Palestinians for being instrumental in negotiating a prisoner swap that saw 1,000 Palestinians being permitted to return home in exchange for Gilad Shalit.

Mesha’al is arguably the Palestinians’ most charismatic figure with the possible exception of Fatah’s Marwan Barghouti, currently serving three life sentences in an Israeli prison. Mesha’al is someone with substantial influence with a towering personality that makes Palestinian National Authority (PNA) President Mahmoud Abbas appear bland by comparison. It goes without saying that there is no love lost between Mesha’al and the Israeli leadership, following Mossad’s unsuccessful attempt on his life in September, 1997, on the orders of Benjamin Netanyahu. He was poisoned by Israeli agents who had entered Jordan on fake Canadian passports and if it were not for the intervention of Jordan’s King Hussain, who insisted Israel must hand over the antidote, Mesha’al would not be around today. Nevertheless, in recent times, he has eschewed extreme hard line positions for pragmatism.

During a recent interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Mesha’al was asked whether he was still committed to Palestine from Jordan to the sea. “Palestine, from the river to the sea, from the north to the south, it is my land. And the land of my fathers and grandfathers, inhabited by the Palestinians from a long time ago ...” he answered. “But because of the circumstances of the region, because of the keenness to stop the bloodshed, the Palestinians today, and in the past, and Hamas, have agreed about a programme that accepts the 1967 borders. However, the Israelis do not accept that. So it is all about — up to the Israelis. And the international community is failing to do us justice.” He concluded the interview with fine sentiments, summing up his ultimate ambition. “Peace, the kind of peace that precludes occupation and bloodshed. Our Islam, all religions, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, true Judaism, given this is revealed by God, does not allow the killing of any innocents in the world.”

Mesha’al’s reasoned response fitted seamlessly into the current international climate that has witnessed a shift of global sympathy towards the Palestinians, evidenced by an overwhelming UN General Assembly vote to upgrade Palestine’s UN status to that of non-member observer state. It has come at a time when Israel is generally perceived as a land-grabbing belligerent, fatally hobbling a two-state solution with plans to link occupied East Jerusalem, slated as Palestine’s capital, to the mega Jewish colony of Ma’ale Adumim, with the construction of thousands of new Jewish homes. He confirmed what the international community has come to understand: It’s not the Palestinians who are obstructing the peace process, it is Netanyahu’s obstinacy. Further, it came when the Arab world has warmed to Hamas, opening doors to its leadership. It is significant that representatives from a number of Arab states and Turkey travelled to Gaza to participate in anniversary celebrations.

Mesha’al’s positions during the CNN interview appeared to bring Hamas closer to the stance of the PNA from which it is estranged. Mesha’al makes no secret of the fact that he would like the rift between Hamas and Fatah to be breached enabling the Palestinians to have one, unified authority, which had temporarily put him at odds with Hamas leader Esmail Haniyah. Mesha’al had debunked claims by Israel’s propaganda machine that Hamas was out to throw Jews into the sea and so long as Palestinians were divided, Israel did not have a partner for peace.

And then, no doubt overcome with emotion while in Gaza, he goes and spoils it all.

His speech to rapturous crowds attending the anniversary rally recently was nothing short of incendiary. “We will never recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take,” adding “No Palestinian leader has the authority to relinquish one inch of Gaza or the West Bank. We will press ahead with reconciliation [with Fatah] to end divisions and to stand united against the Zionist occupation,” he pledged. “Today is Gaza. Tomorrow will be Ramallah and after that [occupied] Jerusalem then Haifa and Jaffa.”

That defiant message may have played well with some Palestinians, but it has reaffirmed Israel’s assertion that Hamas wants nothing less than the Jewish state’s destruction. Moreover, his promotion of a course of action that is not doable, given Israel’s military superiority, keeps an unrealistic dream alive. His stance is in sharp contrast to that of President Abbas, who believes violence is not the answer. If Mesha’al believed his speech would terrorise his enemies, he was mistaken. Its salient points will have been received like milk and honey in the Netanyahu camp and will be quoted again and again by Israeli spokespersons on western TV channels to emphasize that, like the leopard, Hamas “a terrorist organisation” will never change its spots.

The US and its allies have once again given Israel a green light to do its worst. Never mind the 1.5 million Gazans who have been imprisoned for years like ducks in a shooting range. Never mind that they have been cut off from their brethren on the West Bank whose hopes of a state erode each time Israel expropriates their homes or land and uproots their olive trees. So much for the ‘new Obama’, the post-reelection Obama, who, some commentators believed, would now be free to take a harder line with Benjamin Netanyahu — given his earlier pledge to give priority to a Palestinian state.

“The United States wants the same thing as the Israelis want,” declared a White House spokesman. So that’s that. Israel is America’s satellite in the Middle East and can act with absolute impunity. Israel robbed the lives of 1,300 Lebanese in 2006 and 1,400 Gazans in 2008, mostly women and children. It stooped to using banned white phosphorus munitions that incinerate skin without getting a rap on the knuckles, let alone war crimes charges.

And as Israel mobilises 75,000 reservists, masses troops on the border in preparation for Operation Cast Lead Mark II, attempts to assassinate Hamas officials and indiscriminately bombs residential neighbourhoods, Barack Obama pats Netanyahu on the shoulder, saying Israel has every right to defend itself. Think about what he is saying. Israel, the mighty nuclear-armed Israel, supposedly protected by its Iron Dome, has the right to defend itself while the Palestinians clearly have no such rights. Why should they, when they do not have rights over their borders and airspace or the right to import materials to rebuild homes, schools and hospitals? Palestinians have no rights at all even when international law and UN Security Council Resolutions are on their side.

Last week, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron told the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that Hamas “bears the principal responsibility” for the crisis. Yet, in 2010, Cameron launched a blistering attack on Israel for turning Gaza into a prison camp. Is he now saying that people who have been illegally imprisoned by the Middle East’s most powerful military have no right to defend themselves? Worse, whenever they retaliate, they are branded by the international community as “terrorists”.

The European Union’s (EU) Foreign Policy Chief, Catherine Ashton, has justified Israel’s disproportionate response with a statement that read: “The rocket attacks by Hamas and other factions in Gaza, which began this current crisis, are totally unacceptable for any government and must stop.” In 2010, Ashton referred to her visit to Gaza where she witnessed deprivation, squalid living conditions and fear of Israeli strikes, first hand, as a life-changing experience. Not life-changing enough!

Unlike Cameron and Ashton, France’s President Francois Hollande seems to have grown a genuine conscience. Rather than discuss the escalation with Netanyahu, he has been talking to Egypt’s President, Mohammad Mursi. France’s Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, took a balanced approach saying, “The Palestinians are entitled to as state, we must repeat it, Israel is entitled to its security, but violence won’t solve the problems.”

The conflict is posing a real dilemma for President Mursi who wants to differentiate himself from his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, perceived as a US lackey and Israel collaborator. Mursi’s Islamist base recalls his earlier anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rhetoric and awaits strong action. However, cash-strapped and socially volatile post-revolution Egypt is in no position to militarily take on Israel and Mursi knows it, which is why he is pulling out all stops to broker a ceasefire. He did send his prime minister on a brief visit to Gaza as a fig leaf and a delegation of Egyptian ministers is set to follow. If Israel proceeds with a ground invasion of Gaza, Mursi will be sorely tested.

The Arab League is similarly impotent. An emergency meeting of foreign ministers held in Cairo resulted only in calls to support the Palestinians with humanitarian aid, which is no help to the dead and dying. They did resolve to send an Arab League delegation to Gaza and to revitalise the peace process, as if such a process was not already dead and buried. The Qatari Foreign Minister, Shaikh Hamad Bin Jasem Al Thani, summed it all up in a nutshell. “Our meetings have become a waste of money and a waste of time,” he said.

As always, pontificating pundits are busy apportioning blame. Those in the Palestinian camp believe Netanyahu is putting on a show to impress voters before upcoming elections and wishes to present Palestinians in a poor light prior to their bid for upgraded UN status. The Israeli bandwagon says Hamas is dancing to Iran’s tune, using Iran-made rockets capable of hitting Tel Aviv — and wants to test just how far Mursi’s pledges of solidarity can be stretched.

Too much speculation and analysis blinds us from seeing the wood for the trees. Morally, people being treated worse than animals in a zoo cannot be held accountable for rattling their cage. Israelis and their mindless western coddlers may try to cover their bloodstained hands with propaganda, but they cannot be hidden from those who would see.