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.”

Israel yesterday published tenders for more than 1,200 new homes in settlement neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem, drawing fire from Palestinians who said it made them more determined to seek greater UN status.

The Israeli watchdog group Peace Now, citing documents published by the Israeli housing ministry, said tenders were offered for 607 units in Pisgat Zeev and 606 units in Ramot, both in east Jerusalem.

It added that 72 units were re-offered in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

Peace Now, which opposes Israeli settlement in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, slammed the new tenders, noting that they come after the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his commitment to peace negotiations in an interview with Israeli television.

"Abbas declared again his strong commitment to the two state solution, and [the Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu replied with thousands of new units in settlements," the group said.

It accused the Israeli government of timing the announcement as Americans go to the polls in a closely-watched presidential election.

"It seems that Netanyahu is afraid of the new administration that is being elected today in the US, and he has chosen the day of election to publish the tenders so that there will be the least public attention to his action."

The Palestinians also condemned the announcement, saying it illustrated why they plan to approach the United Nations to seek non-member status at the General Assembly this month.

"We condemn these new settlement decisions and the continuing settlement policy of the Israeli occupation government is what is motivating us to claim our full rights by going to the UN to achieve non-member status," Mr Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

Israel will reopen the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, where thousands of Palestinians have been stranded for nearly a month, on Friday, an army spokesman said.

"The terminal will be reopened Friday morning," the spokesman said.

"It has been closed since July 18 following warnings of terrorist attacks, and we have taken the necessary actions to ensure the security of the people who cross as well as the people who operate" the terminal, he said Thursday.

The Israeli army also issued a statement saying it had informed Egypt and the Palestinian Authority of the decision.

A Palestinian security source had earlier confirmed that "the Israelis have informed us that they will reopen it tomorrow".

On the Egyptian side, a border official said the Israelis had pledged to open the crossing to traffic from both sides at 8:30 am (0530 GMT) Friday.

"The terminal will operate for a period of eight hours every day to resolve the crisis of people stuck at the border," he said.

He added that only ordinary travellers would be allowed to pass and not commercial traffic.

Egyptian officials say that some 3,400 Palestinians are now stuck on the border. It was sealed off over security fears that Palestinian militants may be burrowing a tunnel underneath it.

The Palestinians, foreign governments and rights groups have all raised concerns about the worsening conditions on the border where three pregnant women have suffered miscarriages in the last few days.

Reacting to the criticism, the Israeli army said in its statement that it had been "in permanent contact with international humanitarian organizations" during the closure of the border crossing.

It added that the army had offered an alternative crossing point for Palestinians returning to the Gaza Strip from Egypt at Nitzana, but that the offer was rejected.

US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said earlier this week that the United States was pressing Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Authority to resolve the crisis.

"We are aware (of) the situation and we are deeply concerned about it," he said. "It is a humanitarian problem that disturbs us."

The border was first sealed off on July 10 and has only briefly opened on two occasions since then.

Almost a quarter of the central committee of Israel's ruling right-wing Likud party favours dismantling Netzarim, a hardline Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, said a poll released Tuesday.

The survey released by the Israeli daily Maariv said although 65.8 percent of the powerful body remained opposed to a withdrawal from the fortified enclave on the Gaza coast, 22.9 percent were in favour while 11.3 percent did not have an opinion.

An entire army battalion is believed to guard Netzarim's 60 families, and a Palestinian attack on the enclave in which three soldiers were killed last month sparked doubts in Israel over the human and financial cost of clinging to isolated settlements.

The Labour party has already said that Netzarim should be evacuated, and former Labour leader Amram Mitzna had campaigned for last January's legislative elections on a pledge to completely pull back from Gaza.

Maariv ascribed the results of the poll to a slide to the left by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's party, which has historically taken uncompromising stances on territorial issues.

The poll also comes as the Israeli left is emerging from three years of dormancy and the so-called Geneva peace plan launched by some of its prominent members is gaining momentum in the face of Sharon's inability to find military solutions to the three-year-old Palestinian uprising.

The poll was carried out on a sample of 411 Likud members representing 10 percent of the central committee. No margin of error was given.

The European Commission is "very concerned" about Israel's construction of a security barrier across the West Bank, and plans to raise the matter at an EU-Israel meeting next week, a spokesman said Monday.

The EU executive will also broach the issue of Israel's treatment of the EU envoy to the Middle East Marc Otte, who has been boycotted by Israeli leaders since meeting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in early October.

"We are very concerned about the present routing and proposed routing" of the barrier, "because the current routing is not just on Israeli territory," said Emma Udwin, spokesman for EU external relations commissioner Chris Patten.

Israel claims the barrier is vital to prevent infiltrations by West Bank militants, but the Palestinians argue that the fence, which cuts deep into the territory, is aimed at predetermining the borders of their future state and driving them out of fertile areas.

The commission spokesman meanwhile added that Brussels "is following with some concern" the EU envoy's position, adding that he "is finding it difficult to carry out all of (his) duties in the current cicrumstances."

The EU plans to raise the two issues -- the wall and Otte -- at an EU-Israel meeting scheduled for November 18, she said, declining to forecast what exactly the EU will say.

"Being a whole week away from a meeting is quite a long way from a meeting, " she said, adding: "We'll try and sort things out. As things stand we're not thinking in terms of reprisals."