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.”

Benjamin Netanyahu marches from victory to victory. After beating the U.S. president, he returned and bested the Palestinian prime minister, who Tuesday skipped a scheduled visit in East Jerusalem.

Salam Fayyad is public enemy number one in Israel these days. We proscribe him, because the world finds him praiseworthy. Fayyad is not corrupt, and that's a problem. He's not even a hedonist, apparently. He is pleasant, his cheeks stubble-free - altogether nicer and less threatening than Yasser, say.

He studied and worked in the United States, and his English is fluent; yet another strategic loss for Israel. There's a rumor that on a recent visit, senior members of the New York Times editorial staff were more impressed by him than by his Israeli counterpart, and gave expression to this in an editorial calling on Netanyahu to stop his dangerous games.

With wise counsel shall Fayyad wage his war against us: He is building the Palestinian state from its foundations, stone by stone. His security forces are imposing law and order, suppressing terror, weakening Hamas. Monies sent to the Palestinian Authority no longer get lost on their way to their destination. Donors trust him because they see the results of their contributions.

Fayyad is gradually undermining and invalidating Israel's traditional arguments: He has brought security, but there is still no peace. He meets PA President Mahmoud Abbas' extremism with moderation. Dangerous he is: He will kill us with moderation.

And now he is casting an eye at Jerusalem, too; his scheming knows no bounds or fences. After mapping Israeli neglect precisely, he leaped into no man's land. If Israel will not build and renovate the schools in East Jerusalem, then he will step in to fill the vacuum. If Israel neglects the roads and sidewalks despite repeated complaints, he orders them repaired and paved.

And as if that provocative and scandalous interference were not enough, he has the chutzpah to openly celebrate the completion of these works. That won't do. Netanyahu and Mayor Nir Barkat and Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch will head him off. Fayyad may spend money in our stead, but quietly. The right to noisy celebration is reserved for the Jewish settlers of Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah.

Our right to the entire city of Jerusalem has expired, and not only because half of it is Arab and has remained so despite all the cleansing and Judaization efforts. Our right expired because we never genuinely joined it together. Just the reverse: We divided and governed, stole and inherited, and even the new wall we stuck in its heart in order to divide it, Hallelujah.

One can argue about our historic right, but it is difficult to dispute our natural duty, which comes from above. Through our own stinginess and hardheartedness toward the eastern part of the city, which was never joined to the rest and became an open wound. Unified Jerusalem, a godless city.

Salam Fayyad can still be kept away from the center of the city, but Jerusalem itself can no longer be kept off the center of the agenda.

This time, it was all foreseeable. Even this newspaper warned in advance about the possibility of defeat in victory. As preparations for the big sea confrontation proceeded, it became increasingly clear that it would end badly.

After all, the troops were being prepared by seven idiots and their subordinates - people who cannot see beyond the ends of their noses.

We are periodically told that Israel has never had a forum of leading ministers so businesslike and thorough; even Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman displays insight and responsibility at meetings, says Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

And who will attest to Barak's own talents and judgment? Perhaps those soldiers who never returned from battle? Seven ministers versus seven ships - not aircraft carriers, or even destroyers, but small boats, laden with hundreds of people. Not all are righteous, but neither are they terrorists. But suddenly, without warning, this barely seaworthy flotilla became a threatening armada.

Before the battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Nelson, like the Allied commanders before D-Day, understood that their country's fates hung in the balance. It's enough to make you despair when thinking about our leaders: For them, every day is D-Day. So what will happen when total war actually breaks out here?

And it's disturbing to think about our army, which trips every time it is ordered to march. And don't believe their promises that next time will be different. There are always plenty of excuses, but judged by the results, it's always the same old disaster.

Elite units are supposed to know how to take over a ship without sinking the state, how to overcome passengers wielding clubs and knives without sowing death, how to keep two pistols and a rifle from being wrested from them.

But a physical confrontation should never have been allowed to develop to begin with. If this was indeed a "political/media provocation," we should never have let ourselves become entangled in it.

Had we simply let the flotilla reach Gaza - an option that was proposed - a cry of victory would indeed have erupted from the other side, but it would have died out in a day or two. But the Israel of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak, of ministers Moshe Ya'alon and Benny Begin, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Eli Yishai and even Dan Meridor, is vying with Hamas and Hezbollah over who can produce the most resounding demonstrations of strength - which amount to nothing but humiliating evidence of weakness.

How did we so become so devoid of confidence in our ends that we instead put our trust in ways and means that dead-end on every passing ship? Had only we at least not dropped the soldiers one by one straight into the angry mob.

What ought to come next is a demand for a probe, but it seems pointless. Stupidity knows no bounds, and it is a ministerial prerogative. And what is boundless is also unfathomable.

So the septet will persist in its evil ways, endangering us more than any ship could, for madness will rule us. That gang in Jerusalem will insist on drowning us again and again, for there is no courage to change even after all the disasters.

And we will continue to fear our leaders - as if we didn't have enough to fear in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, both wear luxury watches. But their watches lack hands. For them, nothing is burning until everything goes up in flames.

Sunday will see the conclusion of another pointless visit by the U.S. special envoy. There will be a second meeting with the prime minister, and that will be enough. We still won't grasp the purpose of George Mitchell's frequent trips here, nor will we understand why the emissary would make a mockery of himself and the people who dispatch him.

Mitchell could have sat on the banks of the Potomac River and lamented the bad memories from the Middle East while taking comfort in the good memories from Northern Ireland.

Here he is, once again landing in Lod. Soon he will be whisked away for a meeting with the president. It's always good to start a trip with him. Shimon Peres infuses a spirit of optimism. The future is here, you just need to reach out and touch it.

Peres will wax poetic to his guest about the good people he will encounter on the way, and about the prime minister who pursues an agreement that just keeps running away. Israel is willing to give away half the kingdom, but there just aren't any Palestinians ready to rule it.

As Peres waxes eloquently, the defense minister waits in the wings. Indeed, it's hard for Mitchell to understand exactly what Barak is saying, but it's impossible not to be impressed with the depth of his analysis. There's no need to use this occasion to reach an agreement; after all, Barak is taking off for America tonight. How pleasant it is to meet in Washington. We'll see you next week and continue to chat.

The key meeting, of course, is with the prime minister. That, too, can be done virtually and without getting angry along the way. And the timing, oh what awful timing, just a few days before the Likud Central Committee meeting. And with senior ministers Eli Yishai, Avigdor Lieberman, Benny Begin and Moshe Ya'alon peeking in, this is all Bibi can offer at the moment. And later on: a few more imperial gestures, a few more roadblocks that will be and won't be removed, and no more Bidenesque welcomes. That's a promise.

Mitchell, for his part, is now singing Israel's praises, as if he were following the talking points the White House updates every now and then. This week, in the wake of Independence Day and the International Bible Contest, the strings are being plucked with finesse and there are no wind instruments in the background. This week, Netanyahu is being handled, for a change, with a soft stick instead of an officer's staff. Maybe he will come to his senses.

What did Mitchell think would happen on his next visit? What did he think would come of the latest of his who-knows-how-many trips? One in which he arrives with empty hands and a diplomatic mask that conceals the revulsion all over his face. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a black hole that swallows up goodwill ambassadors throughout the ages, none of whom has returned alive. Tony Blair is just the latest example of the lost and the despaired. Where is he today?

That's why Mitchell should not bother making his next visit without carrying a detailed American plan with him, one marked by boldness and determination. The United States should leave this plan on the table in Jerusalem and Ramallah and then leave. Either take it or shoot yourselves in the head. If there is no such plan, Mitchell might as well stay home and play with his grandchildren.

It is precisely now that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas must not give up hope, and not because of the sweet nothings that Shimon Peres uttered at the rally in the square last Saturday night about people giving up hope in Ramallah. As if at the President's Residence every day is Carnaval, and not only when he's packing his bags for his trip to Brazil.

Abbas was right when he decided to announce he would soon resign: It is impossible to hold negotiations "without prior conditions" while settlement is going on. For 42 years Israel has been scattering prior conditions and faits accomplis all over, marking them with red tile roofs and making the peace process into nothing more than a never-ending process.

But before Abu Mazen quits, he has just one more job to do: He must declare, unilaterally, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Palestine now.

Both sides have a right to act unilaterally. Abbas owes it to his people, to himself, and to us. This week, there were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds this possibility very scary, and he expects the Americans to nip it in the bud. But his nightmare is our only chance for an end to the occupation in our time.

When he declares independence, Abbas should call upon the Jews living in the state of Palestine to preserve the peace and to do their part in building up the new country as full and equal citizens, enjoying fair representation in all of its institutions. David Ben-Gurion would not have been upset by such a pretty act of plagiarism from his Declaration of Independence.

And thus, Abbas will become the Palestinian Ben-Gurion. Conditions were no less foggy and circumstances were no more certain when Ben-Gurion declared independence in 1948. But our founding father took the risk, and we are fortunate that he did.

The risk Abbas would be taking is much smaller. Of the 192 member states of the United Nations, over 150 would recognize a free Palestine, and it would soon become the 193rd. Although the American position is an unknown, it is hard to believe that Barack Obama would agree to drag America back into isolation now that it has begun to be part of the world again.

And what would Netanyahu do? Invade and re-conquer the West Bank? Restore the military government in the Muqata in Ramallah?

And what orders will Ehud Barak give his army? Serbia didn't dare invade Kosovo after it declared independence, and even Russia the great didn't allow itself to remain inside the sovereign territory of Georgia after their war.

Immediately after the declaration, celebrations will begin in the capital, East Jerusalem, and people from all over the world will join in, including Israelis. The masses of the House of Ishmael will carouse joyously through the city's neighborhoods, and especially those neighborhoods from which they have been evicted by people with priestly pretensions. This will have to be joy without any manifestations of violence, not even one stone thrown.

This week, I phoned Abbas, after not having spoken to him for at least four years. I told him everything that I am writing now. I also told him something else: What happened to the wall in Berlin 20 years ago, and to apartheid a few months later, would also happen to the occupation: It will collapse, even if attempts are made to reinforce it with nails.