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.”

In the last six months, civic groups and churches in the United States have independently launched campaigns to divest financially from companies profiting from the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands. These groups have targeted town governments, university boards and religious bodies in an effort to publicly spotlight the low standards that human rights have been accorded in the U.S.-dominated "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians. The American Presbyterian Church, a body of some 2.5 million followers, last summer decided to selectively divest its pension funds from companies profiting from the Israeli military occupation. The church has paid a price for daring to criticize Israel's human rights record. In November, church leaders were threatened with violence, called anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli for their stance. One hate message the church received said: "I promise violence against Presbyterian churches, they will go up in flames - that's a terrorist threat." Beside these words was a hand-drawn swastika. In addition to these attacks, the church has been publicly rebuked by such ardent pro-Israel supporters as high-profile law professor Alan Dershowitz.

In addition to the Presbyterian churches' activities, the first municipality in the U.S. to publicly be asked to divest its funds from Israel was Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston. In November, a local group, with over 1,000 citizen signatures in hand, asked the town council to divest their pension funds from companies benefiting from the Israeli occupation. Passage of the resolution, which is non-binding, should have been easy: Somerville has a tradition of using its pension funds to uphold human rights, for example when it banned investment in Burma due to its human rights abuses.

However, with the perception among much of the public in the U.S. that Israel is always right, it was no surprise what happened when the resolution was presented to the town council. It was bashed by anti-divestment supporters as anti-Semitic, bad for business and bigoted. The town mayor, the pension-fund manager and even elected state representatives were all recruited by pro-Israel groups to urge the council to vote "no." Ironically, the message put across by many anti-divestment supporters was that the resolution, if passed, would hurt the chances for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In the logic of many people in America and the country's relationship with Israel it seems that an act against Israel's military occupation is also a step away from peace. The reactions to both the Presbyterian Church's and the city of Somerville's requests for divestment from Israel highlights a growing problem for Israel's image. Until now, those who believe that "Israel is always right" have enjoyed a near monopoly over U.S. attitudes. Yet calls for divestment have the potential to become the Achilles heel for pro-Israel perceptions in the U.S. So far, Israel is not worried about moves in the U.S. to divest from its economy. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom seemed to know little about such actions when a reporter asked him about divestment campaigns at a recent news conference. Given the paltry sums involved, and the unconcerned attitude of the Israeli government, Israel is clearly unworried about whether or not its bonds will sell in international financial markets anytime soon. However, divestment campaigns against Israel's human rights abuses cannot be seen as failures because they do not cripple Israel's ability to occupy Palestinians. Instead, divestment achievement should be judged by the growth they foster in the number of Americans who are committed to speaking out against the abuses of the occupation. Consider this: At the Somerville town council meeting where the divestment resolution was presented, an hour of anti-divestment speakers took the stage followed by a stronger one-hour parade of speakers in support of divestment. Many of those from the town who spoke for divestment were people who said they did not want their funds to sustain neglect of human rights. Others - Palestinians, Israelis, American Jews, Muslims and Christians - used personal and faith-based arguments, including the fact that divestment was consistent with Jewish beliefs on human rights and justice. This confluence of interests of diverse groups and actors, united by a common desire to end Israel's occupation, was a sign of hope.

While debate on the issue of Israel and its human rights violations against Palestinians is still confined in the U.S., questions are being raised publicly about the "benevolence" of Israel's military occupation of the Palestinians. This is producing real causes for hope. This hope, built on the universal ethic of human rights for all, will hopefully be strong enough to withstand the fury of status quo supporters of the occupation.

Success like that enjoyed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in mid-September, when the Israeli government authorized his removal, does not come often. After surviving nearly two years confined in his bombed-out Muqataa in Ramallah, he is now seemingly back on top of the Palestinian pile.

Again Arafat has confounded and defeated Israeli and tacit US attempts to isolate and remove him. After the Israeli expulsion decision, he rallied the support of thousands of Palestinians, forced Israel to publicly step back from its resolution, and showed that he can still end and create political careers for Palestinian Authority (PA) prime ministers. By so doing, he has proven that he is the indispensable player in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet this success begs a paradoxical question: Should the PA dissolve itself?

The idea of dissolving the PA has already been broached. Noted Gazan commentator Eyad al-Sarraj said as much on Aug. 24 when he maintained that the PA should abdicate power and acknowledge that it is no longer a useful entity for achieving Palestinian national rights. Dissolution indeed makes sense when framed in this way.

Dissolving the PA means that the prime minister and his Cabinet resign and relinquish their authority to the PLO and to the Palestinian people, admitting the PA was unsuccessful in achieving significant gains on Palestinians rights. This would not be an admission of defeat, but a forward progression. In taking this action, the PA would formally hand Israel back its occupation, with its checkpoints, illegal settlements, land thefts, home demolitions and killings. This is crucial, as it would publicize the true nature of Israeli control, which negotiations between the PA and Israel have tended to hide from the eyes of the international community.

By dissolving itself, the PA would effectively remove itself as a “partner” in Israel’s continued usurping of Palestinian rights, carried out under the pretext that negotiations are leading to a resolution of the conflict. In doing so, the Palestinians would likely reinvigorate their strongest political cards, namely UN involvement, relevant UN resolutions and greater international support.

The idea of the PA dissolving itself needs to be seen in light of its failures. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords, the PA has achieved limited gains for Palestinians. Admitting this does not mean letting Israel, the US and the international community off the hook for allowing the occupation and dispossession of Palestinians to continue. During the 10 years since the implementation of Oslo began, Palestinians have suffered an increasing number of fatalities, had more prisoners taken by Israel, faced a declining GDP and seen greater restrictions on movement, including entry into Jerusalem.

The two positive things the PA had provided are themselves waning. The achievement of liberated Palestinian areas is now largely gone. And the PA’s much-needed employment of thousands of Palestinian civil servants, though it continues, is being undermined by declining economic conditions. An assessment from on the ground adds to the credibility of the dissolution idea.

With the PA in its present form, Palestinians can logically expect only more of the same treatment they have received in the last decade. After eight months of the “road map,” it is clear in what direction it or any other US-sponsored “peace” plan is going. The bottom line for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and presumably any other Israeli government that would enjoy near unbridled US support, is to brutalize the Palestinians to such an extent that they would acquiesce to a state in 42 percent of the West Bank and Gaza.

Admittedly, at first glance self-dissolution of the PA may seem drastic. Indeed it is a bad idea if success in solving the conflict is measured by fulfilling the US and Israeli goal of initially achieving a Palestinian state without specified borders. If, however, resolving the conflict means satisfying Palestinian rights, then it is imperative that the whole system of negotiations, in which the PA role is central, be changed. Based on recent developments, it is fairly clear that the US and Israel have never seen a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as primarily equivalent to achieving Palestinian rights. If the PA dissolved itself, it could change the method of dealing with Israel by playing to Palestinian strengths, the unity of Palestinian society and its political pluralism.

For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to end, Israel must not be allowed to create a rump Palestinian state. This would neither enhance Palestinian rights nor secure lasting peace for the Israelis. The PA, with its present powerlessness, seems well suited to becoming caretaker of an unviable state. Maintaining the PA in its present form presents the real possibility that Palestinian rights will continue to deteriorate.

Ironically, Arafat’s recent successes speak to the importance of dissolving the PA. During the crisis with Israel over his expulsion, he was saved not by the influence of the PA, but by the strength of the PLO and the solidity of the Palestinian people. This society, despite 55 years of dispossession and 36 years of military occupation, has survived and been strengthened. It is likely to continue on this path with or without the presence of the PA.

Paul Beran is a PhD candidate in political science at Northeastern University. From 1997-2001 he worked in the Occupied Territories and Israel with relief and development agencies.