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.”

“Our intention is to ensure that the trade agreement with Israel is not being used to smuggle settlement [colony] products,” said Denmark’s Foreign Minister, Villy Soevndal, last May. This is exactly what the controversy over the Agreement on Conformity and Acceptance of Industrial products (ACAA) between the European Union (EU) and Israel is all about.

And this is precisely why the European Parliament should not approve the EU-Israel ACCA: The European Commission is unable to provide a legal explanation for Israel’s inclusion of West Bank within its “territory” and even if they were to exclude the West Bank from their definition in the agreement, there would be no way of ascertaining if products actually came from the illegal Jewish colonies or not.

Yet, the European Parliament is moving quixotically ahead towards passing the EU-Israel ACCA. The Foreign Affairs Committee essentially approved the agreement with the pending legal clause of how to square the Jewish colony circle (which cannot be solved because the colonies are illegal by all international standards.)

European Commissioner for Trade, Karel de Gucht, clarified the legal question posed by Members of the European Parliament, Brok and Moreira, by reiterating the official European position in Brussels that recognition of the EU-Israel ACCA will be granted “only on the basis that the territory covered by the Responsible Authority does not include territories brought under Israeli administration in 1967”.

On Wednesday, the International Trade Committee in the European Parliament will vote on whether or not to approve the EU-Israel ACCA. The outcome will affect the parliament’s plenary vote on this trade agreement with Israel next September. Of course, this needs to be rejected at all costs.

The problem here is not at all with the democratic process of voting and making one’s opinion known. Rather, this highly political issue has been turned into a contorted legal fracas that has no correct answer except that it is illegal.

Everyone knows that the Jewish colonies in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal under international law. If the European Parliament approves the trade agreement with Israel, Brussels will be sending a political message that “it’s OK, great, go ahead with more colony growth”, with disastrous implications for the paralysed peace process and the nearly-obsolete two-state solution.

By supporting trade with Israel and implicitly allowing products from the illegal Jewish colonies to enter the European market would also be illegal by European standards. So advancing further with the EU-Israel ACCA is simply a lose-lose scenario for the Europeans at large.

A more constructive approach from the European Parliament would be to say: “No More Trade with Israel” just as the committees for civil liberties, industry, legal affairs and development did with success to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) this month.

The International Trade Committee should do the same with the EU-Israel ACCA: “No More Trade with Israel” until Israel complies with international law, until Israel ends the military occupation and Jewish colony growth, until Israel commits to the two-state solution once and for all.

The EU needs to place conditions on its trade relations with Israel if it wants to see any progress towards resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is what Denmark is moving to do by introducing a labelling system for all goods exported from Jewish colonies. (Who is going to make and monitor that labelling system is another story all together.)

In 2009, the UK moved to label products that were imported from Jewish colonies for those who wished to boycott their purchase to do so. That is a step in the right direction. This year, the British Co-operative Group became the first major European supermarket group to end trade with companies that export produce from illegal Israeli colonies. That is even better news.

If this EU-Israel ACCA is allowed to pass, then the Arab-Israeli conflict will most certainly persist with reverberations to be felt across the Arab region. Due to the positive changes currently under way across North Africa and West Asia, the timing is propitious to encourage ameliorating trade relations with other Mediterranean partners.

The economic benefits will far outweigh the potential gains from some more illegal Israeli products and Europe will be rewarding its neighbours for moving towards greater democracy, rather than rewarding Israel for its abuse of civil rights towards its Arab citizens for example, not to mention the OCCUPATION again.

Turn to Tunisia for better economic ties, or Morocco, or Egypt, or Lebanon, where democratic apertures are turning into popular practices — those are win-win ACCAs waiting to be exploited with positive gains for all parties and people involved.

The Israelis are anything but stupid. However their cleverness and innovation in perfecting the technological, logistical and financial dimensions of the military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land make the situation nearly impossible to reverse — but not impossible, if it weren’t for European endorsement.

While the United States continues with its carte blanche foreign policy of supporting Israel blindly in all forms of security and military material, Europe — that has much more to gain from changing its policies towards the Palestinians — is still essentially paying for the continuation of the Israeli occupation by covering costs to maintain the Palestinian National Authority.

Besides around €500 million (Dh2.37 billion) per year to sustain the Palestinian institutional apparatus in Ramallah and the West Bank. European countries also contribute over €500 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, which provides education and jobs to thousands of disenfranchised Palestinians in Gaza, as well as to refugee camps in the West Bank and in neighbouring camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. While Israel continues to colonise and annex occupied Jerusalem, the question must be asked: is Europe not encouraging the status quo?

The problem with the Palestinian disaster is that there is no closure. Prior to and during Second World War, the population of Silesia experienced deportations and transfers. After the war, most of Silesia went to Poland; a smaller part went to Czechoslovakia. There was no Silesia any longer. Prussia also disappeared, as have other states.

Humiliation

Whatever remains now of British mandate Palestine is evidence of more spoils of war. With the creation of modern Israel in 1947-49, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled by force or fled from marauding Jewish militias that blew up and razed over 400 villages. This is all well known, and yet the Palestinian disaster persists.

These formative years of the Palestinian national consciousness became known as the Nakba (catastrophe). This catastrophe continues to be present in the hearts and minds of Arabs because the same humiliation, the same intention to expel the Palestinians and to colonise Palestinian territory is still ongoing today. Nasserism, Baathism and other attempts to unify the Arabs and rectify Palestinian loss all flopped. The rise of Jamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s and his hero stature in the 1960s culminated in massive pre-emptive strikes by Israel in 1967 that decimated neighbouring Arab armies, expanding the territorial control of ‘Greater Israel’ to biblical dimensions.

With the 1967 Naksa (set-back), it’s been a series of defeats for the Arabs, until the stand-off between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 and between Hamas and Israel in 2008-09. Whether these were ‘divine’ victories is debatable, but one thing is for sure: neither Islamist groups lost as the national armies previously had — on the contrary they resisted.

Financial support

Now we have this face-off between Islamist groups and an increasingly strong far-right bloc in Israeli politics — not a particularly conducive scenario for negotiations to take hold. Caught in this vicious cycle now of accusing the other of having no partner with whom to negotiate, each side will resort to violence until the stronger wins or the weaker surrenders.

Since the Islamists are on the rise and have justice and truth on their side — everyone agrees that the Israeli occupation is illegal and morally repugnant (even Israelis) — then Hamas and their allies are not about to surrender.

But neither is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who has been dubbed ‘King of Israel’), and his newly consolidated control of Israeli politics — with the entry of the more centrist opposition of Kadima into his coalition — about to end the occupation and colonisation of Palestine. It’s simply too lucrative for Israel: there is a big business to the military occupation, which has become so fine-tuned that it has become normal.

Of course the argument in favour of European financial support is that without the euros coming in the PNA would crumble. The problem is not so much in European financial support but rather in the fact that there is no political strength to enforce that support. Israel is not held accountable for destroying EU-funded projects for example.

The European Commission announced that nearly ¤50 million worth of Palestinian projects were destroyed over the past 10 years by Israel. Meanwhile, Israel enjoys tremendous trade relations with the European Union. These economic ties are subject to next to no conditionality from Brussels. Conditionality and accountability need to be implemented to change the status quo.

This is a status quo ‘plus colonies’ that depicts Israeli intentions to keep colonising Palestine while only being slapped on the wrist by political denunciations made by Europe and Washington. Then there is the diversion of potential war with Iran that most of Netanyahu’s cabinet seems rather excited to promote to avoid nuclear parity in the region.

Above all there is no interest from any Israeli leader to change this status quo because they benefit in every way. And there is no Israeli leader with enough courage to see that the long-term benefits of reconciling with the Arab world outweigh by far the current gains. With no closure from Israel, the Palestinian disaster continues.

Sporadic violence in Gaza is a way for Israel to test its latest military gadgets. As depicted last week in a very real way, Gaza is a large petri dish for Israeli security experiments. The most recent is called ‘Iron Dome' — like something out of Star Wars.

Iron Dome is a mobile air defence system designed to intercept rockets. Or according to Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, ‘comets' — which by definition reveals an indifference to what they actually are: small home-made rockets (like firework comets) or large astronomical comets orbiting our solar system. In either case, the supposed threat is coming from ‘out there', beyond the gates.

Gaza is now so entirely disconnected and disregarded by Israel that rockets or comets might as well as be coming from outer space. To create an impermeable shell against these alien southern or northern threats, Iron Dome was conceived in the aftermath of the 2006 July War.

Throughout July 2006, Israel was not able to rout the Lebanese Hezbollah which sent thousands of Katyusha rockets into the Galilee, reaching the largest northern Israeli city of Haifa. Hezbollah claims to be developing rockets that would reach Tel Aviv — the commercial centre of Israel. The wanton destruction of neighbours, such as the bombs that Israel dropped on Lebanon in 2006 and on Gaza in 2008-2009, does not annul the possibility of rockets being launched, nor has it proven to eliminate the armed resistance of Islamists fighters.

So what to do for Israel? Despite apparent international immunity, even Israel could not get away with an apocalyptic bombardment (though for doomsday affiliates the potential for nuclear war is rising rapidly with Iran becoming increasingly provocative). Israel opted to build a shield.

Iron Dome operates day and night, under any weather conditions, and has three main mobile components: the embedded radars can detect incoming projectiles; the control centre relays the coordinates of the rockets/comets; and the missile firing unit shoots off volleys of Tamir interceptor missiles equipped with electro-optic sensors and several steering fins for high manoeuvrability.

The entire contraption was developed by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems with sub-contracts to Elta, an Israel defence company for the detection radars, and mPrest Systems, an Israeli software company, for the control centre of the Iron Dome.

Israel chose a national defence contractor over other contenders such as Lockheed Martin, for the obvious lucrative business of new security technology. Contracts towards Nato and the US Army are already underway for the wars in Central Asia.

And who funds these new toys? Israel in part, but also the US. In May 2010, President Barack Obama made known that his administration would help ensure the rapid completion and deployment of Iron Dome batteries with $205 million (Dh752 million) from Congress.

On May 20, 2010, the US House of Representatives approved the funding with a resounding 410-4 vote for the US-Israel Missile Defence Cooperation and Support Act (HR 5327). Israel aims to have between 10-15 Iron Dome batteries totalling around $1 billion.

This is big business, and for a country like Israel — that is more military than state — this is a means to perpetuating a state of recurrent war. The tit-for-tat over past week was nothing more than a way for Israel to fine-tune its machines for larger confrontations with Hezbollah and Iran.

Military mindset

Everything in this scenario serves Israel's military-security industry. Targeting the head of the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), Zuhair Al Qaisi, was a way of eliminating a leading Palestinian fighter and a sure way of soliciting a rocket response. It's a win-win situation for Israel. Close to 100 Qassam missiles did get through the Iron Dome, some landed in Beersheba and Ashdod, (hoorah for the Palestinian resistance…) but 37 Palestinian rockets, supposedly heading for populated Jewish areas, were intercepted by the Iron Dome (hoorah for Israeli technology…).

But this means there's still some fine-tuning and testing to be done. Expect some more spats with the Palestinians of Gaza this spring and some serious Israeli strikes against Iran this summer. Waves of war usually come with the seasons for Israel. In the meantime, the Quartet issued its shortest statement ever calling for an end to hostilities; US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU High Representative Catherine Ashton also piped in to voice their concern about the further escalation of violence. Too late — the machine is in motion. Besides the avant-garde technological gadgets, what this reveals above all is the very essence of the military Zionist mindset. Born of war, made for war, the Zionists see a hostile world around them that consists of barbarians, who are very much the solution to Israel's survival.

Stuart Reigeluth is editor of Revolve Magazine and works at the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR).in Brussels.

Despite the eruption of turmoil in the centre of Cairo, the Palestinian factions met in the Egyptian capital on November 24, to advance an agreement of national reconciliation. This accord is long overdue for the Palestinian people but it comes now more out of necessity for Hamas and Fatah — both of which seem to be drifting now towards a new paradigm.

With changes underway in Syria, the headquarters of Hamas’s politburo may no longer be as secure as it has been when hosted for the past decades by the Assad regime in Damascus.

For Fatah, the continual failure of peace negotiations with Israel has left PLO Chairman and Palestinian National Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, with little legitimacy and no leverage.

Coupled with the cuts in funding from the United States to Unesco (as US punishment for accepting Palestine as a member) as well as cuts to core funding from Congress, Abbas has no ambition left to keeping dancing for Washington — particularly after Obama turned his coat.

This is not to say that Abbas endorses violence or that Hamas is returning to the use of violence as a means to end the Israeli occupation, but that has been the only means that has worked so far.

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was a result of the Palestinian armed resistance making life unbearable for the Jewish colonists along the southern coast of the Strip; just as it was the means by which Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon in May 2000 after 18 years of Israeli occupation.

These military victories gave both Islamist groups massive popular support in their respective countries and strong if not overwhelming representation in national elections.

The Palestinian reconciliation process is all about the western endorsement of Israel’s rejection of Hamas’s resounding election in 2006. How to bring Hamas into mainstream politics?

The problem is that Hamas will not be ‘brought in’ and go into ‘mainstream politics’ as the US, Europe and Israel would have it, so a gradual new paradigm is coming together.

In Cairo, as Tahrir witnesses more deaths for popular representation, the Palestinian factions were posturing: Hamas has all the time in the world on its side; Fatah desperately needs to save face.

What emerged from Cairo was nothing new: Fatah and Hamas had already decided last month to have elections in May or June 2012. The novelty of the Cairo meeting was the announcement that a power-sharing formula has been reached — even though names were not divulged.

But here’s the catch. What’s the point of advancing technocrat candidates to fill top positions when each faction has its own agenda they’re trying to advance anyhow? What’s the point of this PR exercise of presenting a facade when that facade was already rejected? It was after Hamas was elected in 2006 and realised that it was not prepared to govern Gaza or any other Palestinian entity that they reached the Makkah Accord under Saudi tutelage with Fatah. The delicate ‘security’ file of the Ministry of Interior was handed to the technocrat Hani Qawasmi.

He was an independent respected candidate who was kindly swept aside and denied by Israel and the US when they trained and deployed Fatah troops to Gaza to overthrow the de facto Hamas government there — the rest is history, but we’ve been at the technocrat crossroads before.

Why go through the motions of creating a ‘caretaker’ government in the next months when those candidates will be rejected by either the western powers or by Hamas and when both factions will compete against each other again in national elections next year anyhow?

Hamas does not seem to mind either way. Gaza’s Prime Minister Esmail Haniya is once again calling for a return of all occupied Palestinian land, a return of all Palestinian refugees, and a release of all Palestinian prisoners, with a Palestinian capital in occupied Jerusalem.

Whether you agree or not, Haniya is absolutely correct in saying that Israel has overstepped by far the 1967 borders with the Jewish colonisation of occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank. He’s also correct in seeing a shift in regional balance of power.

The Palestinian paradigm shift is such that the political opinion of the US and financial encouragement from the European Union will not count as much as they did before. Neither Washington nor Brussels has been able to ameliorate the likelihood of a Palestinian state, so the Palestinians might as well be united in getting it all back rather than settle for the segregated and secluded pieces of territory that they’ve been promised time and again.

Hamas is offering the impossible — for now — and it’s by all means a dogmatic and repetitious discourse, but it provides hope for a better future.

Stuart Reigeluth is managing editor of Revolve Magazine and works at the Council for European Palestinian Relations.