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.”

Blue plastic bags and old bottles litter the hill leading to Al Afaq Boy’s School in East Jerusalem, but a step through the school’s tall metal gate reveals a completely different scene. There are solar panels, rainwater harvesting barrels, and no trash in sight.

The school grounds reflect the effort of a team of Israelis and Palestinians who are introducing environmental education into East Jerusalem schools. They have achieved a laudable level of cooperation in a region where even garbage is tinged with political controversy. But challenges, including vandalism, remain.

“In traditional Palestinian culture, no one used to throw out anything: They would reuse it. With new technology, plastics, nylon, etcetera, it became easier to throw away,” says Khaled Abu Khaff, a manager at Only Green, the first environmental education center in East Jerusalem and a volunteer at Al Afaq school.

Much of the environmental education effort in East Jerusalem started four years ago as a part of a plan to clean up Jerusalem’s Kidron Valley, which abuts the city’s most historic sites and separates East and West Jerusalem. It’s also full of trash and raw sewage: 15 to 20 million cubic meters are dumped each year – enough to fill six Olympic swimming pools. Political disagreement has stymied efforts to build a sewage treatment plant, but a team of Israelis and Palestinians is making a renewed push for the plant. They see environmental education as part of their task.

The Israeli lawyers leading the Kidron Valley project, Richard Laster and Dani Livney, partnered with grassroots organizations Only Green, Friends of the Earth Middle East, and Water Resources Action Project to identify and fund local residents interested in environmental education.

“We saw that there was so much that needed doing. A lot of garbage; not much planning, if there was any at all; sewage,” Mr. Livney says. “We felt like one of the main places to start would be in environmental education, to change the mindset of people because they had come to really accept the way the situation was.”

Members of the Kidron Valley team helped install environmental education initiatives at 10 East Jerusalem schools through which concepts such as recycling and rainwater harvesting are taught. At Al Afaq and the Sur Baher Girl’s School, which in 2009 became the first schools to participate, teachers have eagerly embraced environmentalism, but it’s hard to measure how much of an affect the lessons are having at home, where locals cite taxes and poor roads as bigger concerns than the environment.

So the teachers try to assign activities that involve parents. Al Afaq students ask their families to help them collect trash to bring to school, where it is reused for student projects like making flower planters out of plastic soda bottles cut open to fill with dirt and flowers.

“At the beginning of the course the parents say, ‘What, you want us to collect trash?’” says environmental education teacher Hazar Khatteb. “But now they understand why.”

Some analysts say resistance is due to poor infrastructure and environmental movements that lag a few years behind the United States and Europe. The left-leaning Association of Civil Rights in Israel reported in 2009 that the Jerusalem municipality provided only 104 trash bins for 15,000 people in Sur Baher and its neighbor, Umm Tuba. Idit Alhasid, the founder of an environmental education business who is writing her doctorate thesis at Tel Aviv University on the role garbage plays in different cultures in the Middle East, says "it's only the beginning" of recycling and waste efforts in the region so wariness is expected.

Students at Sur Baher Girl’s School run an organic garden and take monthly measurements of rainwater harvesting barrels, donated by US-based Water Resources Action Project. The barrels provide water for the restrooms and supplied nearly half of the school’s water needs in 2011 and 2012.

One teacher at Sur Baher Girl’s School shows her students how to make homemade products from items grown in the school’s garden. “Smell it. It smells like the ones at the market,” she beams as she holds out a beaker of bright blue mouthwash. The class also makes teeth whitener from sage and salt, massage oil from rosemary, and olive oil soap.

Ideally, the students would make the products at home as well, but when asked, only a few said they have.

Mohammed, a student at Al Afaq, helped build a mosaic sculpture of the Earth stationed by the school’s entrance from recycled materials. His family doesn’t recycle regularly, but he brings in cans and plastics when the school asks him to. He says the projects have taught him new ideas.

“I’ve learned to save and take care of the things of the school and the environment,” he says.

Al Afaq’s biggest plan, supported by a $15,000 donation from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and US Consulate in Jerusalem, is to turn its courtyard into an environmental demonstration site for students from other Arab schools to visit and learn about recycling, rainwater harvesting, and solar and wind energy. School leaders were hoping to start the program in April, but the vandalizing of a hydraulic pump and other equipment in December delayed its launch.

The motive and identity of the vandals remain unknown, but it could be a result of resentment among some community members who say inequity between East and West Jerusalem is a more important issue that these initiatives don't address. Mr. Abu Khaff says the most common complaints he receives are about poor roads, not trash.

“This type of [environmental] knowledge is not the top priority, but step by step we are changing that,” says Abu Khaff. “The top priorities are economic. We pay a lot of taxes and don’t get back from the municipality.”

The next Israeli government, which will be decided in elections on Jan. 22, faces pressing international challenges, including deciding what it will do if Iran crosses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's red line on nuclear production. It may also be the last with a realistic opportunity to secure a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since many analysts warn that the window for such a deal is fast-closing – in part due to the steady expansion of Israeli settlements in the West bank.

While Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud-Yisrael Beitenu bloc is expected to get the most votes, he’ll have to make deals with smaller parties to form a coalition with the necessary 120 seats in the Knesset.

Here are 5 players shaping the campaign conversation, some of whom may become ministers in Netanyahu's cabinet:

1. Benjamin Netanyahu, your man on Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu, the incumbent prime minister who also served from 1996-99, is widely expected to serve a third term as prime minister.

“Bibi,” who heads the center-right Likud party, is known for his hawkish security views and consistent warnings about the Iranian nuclear threat. He is running on a joint ticket with Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home), headed by his former foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

But Mr. Lieberman’s indictment for breach of trust and fraud in December, together with a rightward shift in Israeli public opinion, may have hurt Mr. Netanyahu. Polls indicate that the Likud-Beitenu ticket, originally expected to win as many as 45 Knesset seats, will instead garner only 34 to 35 seats. They also show the prime minister losing seats to right-wing rising star Naftali Bennett, who opposes a Palestinian state.

The loss of votes to more right-wing parties comes despite the fact that Likud itself has shifted to the right, with hardliners replacing moderates. Most notable may be Danny Danon, a vocal opponent of withdrawing from the West Bank, who jumped from No. 24 in the party to No. 5 in Likud’s November primaries. Mr. Danon, who recently published Israel: The Will to Prevail, argues for strong Israeli nationalism – even if it angers Israel’s top ally and key benefactor, the United States.

2. Shelly Yacimovich, champion of pocketbook issues

Shelly Yacimovich is Labor’s first female leader since Golda Meir in 1969 and is credited with reviving the struggling party, which, after decades as one of Israel's two dominant parties, captured only eight seats in the current parliament. But this time, Labor is expected to be second only to Likud.

Ms. Yacimovich, former host of the Israeli version of “Meet the Press,” was elected to the Knesset in 2006 and has made a name for herself by championing socioeconomic causes, including fair access to housing, education, and healthcare.

Yacimovich’s work has tapped into Israeli frustration with the widening income gap in the country – already one of the most pronounced in the world, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

While the socioeconomic protests that drew hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets in 2011 have since died down, 43 percent of likely voters say economic issues such as the cost of living and housing prices will be the most important issue facing the next government, according to a recent poll by the The Times of Israel.

In a distant second, 16 percent chose Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. Yacimovich has expressed support for a two-state solution but, perhaps because she is seen as lacking security credentials, she has remained largely silent on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iranian threat.

Despite speculation that she would join a Netanyahu government, Yacimovich has pledged to remain outside a Likud-led coalition. But she has not been able to unite other center-left parties into a bloc that could defeat Netanyahu.

3. Naftali Bennett, hi-tech entrepreneur and settler advocate

The surprise star of the elections, hi-tech entrepreneur and settler advocate Naftali Bennett, has rocketed from obscurity to the hottest politician in Israel since winning his party’s primary in November. His Jewish Home party, which holds three seats in the current parliament, is expected to quintuple its size, winning at least 14 seats.

A former chief-of-staff to Netanyahu, Bennett is now forcing his former boss to move further to the right to stop the siphoning off of votes to Jewish Home.

Bennett advocates a “Stability Plan” that calls for the annexation of approximately 60 percent of the West Bank, including all the Israeli settlements. The territory, known as Area C, is currently under Israeli military control, but is part of the area envisioned by Palestinians and the international community for a future Palestinian state.

Bennett told the The Times of Israel that the state can’t afford to bend to international pressure on controversial issues such as Area C, where the Israeli population has nearly tripled since the 1993 Oslo Accords outlined a two-state solution.

“What’s right for Israel is to apply Israeli sovereignty over Area C, the area where there’s 360,000 Israelis and only 48,000 Arabs,” he said. “The world will condemn. It will be a few bad days of condemnation, but if you have the will and the power to do it, you do it.”

4. Yair Lapid, the Obama-esque 'prom king'

Former TV news anchor Yair Lapid, dubbed the “prom king” of Israeli politics, left journalism for politics last year.

Known for his good looks and famous father, who is a former deputy prime minister, Mr. Lapid is running an Obama-esque campaign based on his slogan “We have come to change.” Yesh Atid, the name of the party he started in April, means “There is a future.”

After losing early momentum, Lapid’s party now looks likely to pick up between six and 10 seats in the new Knesset. Lapid has not ruled out joining Netanyahu as a coalition partner, with a possible minister position for himself.

Like Labor, Lapid’s party has stayed quiet on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and has focused mainly on socioeconomic issues. Lapid has particularly criticized the amount of government funding for ultra-Orthodox schools that train future rabbis in traditional religious texts.

5. Tzipi Livni, strong proponent of Israeli-Palestinian peace

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, is one of the most experienced candidates in the field. She is also one of the most outspoken of the top candidates about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Her center-left Hatnuah party (which translates to the Movement) aims to focus on the peace process while still appearing strong on security.

Livni, who was a part of the centrist Kadima party before forming Hatnuah, successfully wooed former defense minister Amir Peretz away from his top position in the Labor party. He defected with another top Labor politician and seven Kadima parliament members out of frustration that their parties no longer emphasize the peace process.

But despite being one of the most experienced and internationally recognized Israeli politicians, Livni has slipped in the polls. Most analysts expect her party to win five to nine seats, which could still earn her a ministerial post if she chooses to join a likely Netanyahu coalition.

Something of a political chameleon, Livni started politics in Likud before joining Kadima, a party started by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2005. Livni later became head of Kadima and had a chance to become prime minister in 2009 when her party won the most seats in the election. But she was unable to form a coalition government, forfeiting the post and paving the way for Netanyahu’s second term.

Livni told Israel Radio on Jan. 13 that she would consider joining a Netanyahu government if it engages in “a real peace process and not just give negotiations lip service.”