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.”

More than a dozen people were injured when Israeli police confronted Palestinian protesters in a refugee camp at the edge of Jerusalem on Monday, violence stoked by rising tensions over a stalemate in peace talks.

The Palestinian cabinet "strongly condemned" what it called an Israeli incursion and its senior officials said negotiations with Israel could resume only if they focused on borders and other core conflict issues and set out a clear deadline.

Citing biblical roots to the city, Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its "indivisible and eternal capital", a claim that has not been recognised internationally.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel after the 1967 conflict, to be the capital of the state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli and Palestinian protesters have squared off on a weekly basis in the past few months during generally peaceful demonstrations staged against Israel's recent seizure of homes inhabited by Palestinians in parts of East Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who under U.S. pressure ordered a limited settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank, has refused to heed Palestinian demands to halt the construction of homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.

In a move that may exacerbate tensions further, Israel's state planning commission has scheduled a hearing to approve the expansion of a Jewish settlement in the mostly Palestinian section of Silwan, Israel's Channel One television reported.

The dispute over Jerusalem took a violent turn when Palestinian schoolchildren threw rocks at Israeli police vehicles heading into Shoafat Refugee Camp on Monday, injuring four officers, an Israeli police spokesman said.

Police had launched the raid to arrest what Israel said were municipal tax evaders. Palestinian officials said 10 Palestinians were injured in the confrontation, none seriously.

The Palestinian cabinet said in a statement it "strongly condemned the Israeli incursion and military operation" into three Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, in which it said dozens were also arrested.

In Tokyo, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said any renewed peace talks with Israel, which have been stalled since the launching of a three-week Gaza war in December 2008, must focus on border issues and set a deadline of four months.

"Proximity talks should focus on one issue only. That issue is borders," Malki said, responding to a U.S.-backed proposal to resume negotiations with Israel on an indirect basis.

Israel has agreed to the formula but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he will announce a decision after hearing answers to some questions he has put to Washington.

Abbas has made any resumption of peace talks conditional on Israel halting Jewish settlement building in occupied land, and rejected a temporary construction freeze ordered by Israel in as insufficient, particularly for excluding Jerusalem.

Separately, the Israeli military carried out arrests in the West Bank, and detained the wife of the mayor of the town of al-Bireh, charging involvement in the Islamist Hamas movement.

Israel's Supreme Court ordered two pro-Palestinian foreign activists freed on bail, saying immigration officers overstepped their authority by detaining Spaniard Ariadna Jove Marti and Australian Bridgette Chapell outside Israel, in the West Bank.

A television advert for an Israeli cellphone firm showing soldiers playing soccer over the West Bank barrier has sparked cries of bad taste and prompted Arab lawmakers on Sunday to demand it be taken off air.

The jaunty commercial for Israel's biggest mobile phone company Cellcom makes light of Palestinian suffering and shows how far Israelis fail to understand their neighbors, critics said. The company stood by the ad, however.

It shows a ball falling on an Israeli army jeep from the far side of a towering wall. A game ensues, back and forth with the unseen Palestinians after a soldier dials up "reinforcements," including two smiling women in uniform, to come and play.

The advertisement made by McCann Erickson, part of U.S. Interpublic Group, ends with the upbeat voiceover: "After all, what are we all after? Just a little fun."

Since the ad went out last week -- as Palestinians marked the fifth anniversary of a World Court ruling that Israel's walls and fences in the West Bank were illegal -- some Israelis have taken to blogs and social networking sites to voice dismay.

"Aside from being a great contender for the 'creepiest ads of all time', this one-minute ad says a lot about how mainstream Israel likes to see itself and the Palestinians," journalist Dimi Reider wrote in a blog which concluded most of his fellow Israelis did not understand Palestinians' rage at the barrier.

Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of Israel's parliament, said he had written to Cellcom demanding it pull the ad: "The barrier separates families and prevents children from reaching schools and clinics," he told Reuters. "Yet the advertisement presents the barrier as though it were just a garden fence in Tel Aviv."

"RACIST COMMERCIAL"

Few Palestinians watch the Israeli stations where the advert aired but there was outrage among liberal Israelis on the Web.

A Hebrew-language Facebook group called "I too got nauseous watching the new Cellcom ad" had signed up 218 members. They demanded "take this racist commercial off the air immediately."

Israeli blogger Ami Kaufman told Reuters: "We see Israeli soldiers playing with ... the people that they are incarcerating behind the wall. But the most grotesque, most disturbing part of this ad is the fact that the Palestinians basically aren't seen ... They're like monsters or aliens ... This is the alienation that Israeli society feels toward the Palestinian people."

Noam Sheizaf, another Israeli journalist and blogger, said it distorted reality: "In reality, if a Palestinian comes close to the fence to return a football ... he is likely to get shot."

Asked to comment, Cellcom said its "core value is communication between people" regardless of "religion, race or gender." It said the commercial illustrated the possibility for people of diverse opinions to engage in "mutual entertainment."

A spokeswoman said it was a coincidence the ad came out so close to last Thursday's anniversary of the 2004 decision by the World Court that Israel had no right to build hundreds of miles of walls and fences on Palestinian land it took in a 1967 war.

Israel built the barrier with the declared aim of stopping suicide bombers. For Palestinians, it has become one of the most hated symbols of Israeli occupation, a land grab whose course round Jewish settlements would cripple any state they establish.

Bridging gaps between Israel and the United States over settlement growth in the occupied West Bank will require hard work, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday, playing down prospects for a swift breakthrough.

U.S. President Barack Obama wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare a total settlement freeze. Netanyahu wants to build further within existing blocs to accommodate what he calls "natural growth" in settler families.

"A lot of hard work is needed to reach common ground," said a senior Israeli official travelling with Netanyahu to Paris, where he will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who lives in a West Bank settlement, appealed for greater U.S. flexibility.

Last week, in contrast, Netanyahu's newly-appointed ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, voiced confidence that a deal on settlements was within reach.

Western diplomats said the abrupt cancellation of Netanyahu's planned meeting on Thursday with Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, underscored the difficulty both sides faced bridging their differences.

Mitchell will meet instead with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak in Washington on Monday.

Israeli officials said Netanyahu decided to postpone talks with Mitchell to allow for more time for preparations.

They denied Israeli media reports that U.S. officials took the decision to delay the meeting because they were irritated by the Israeli government's refusal to stop settlement building.

RIFT

Barak, in remarks in Jerusalem on Wednesday, sought to play down the rift over settlements, citing Netanyahu's readiness to "enter willingly into a regional peace initiative", one of Obama's foreign policy objectives.

"In the context of broad regional dialogue, and talks without pre-conditions with the Palestinians with the aim of two states for two peoples, the issue of settlements will be dealt with in its fitting proportion and I believe that, in this context, it can be solved," Barak added.

In lieu of a full settlement freeze, Netanyahu has said he would not build additional enclaves in the territory, captured by Israel in a 1967 war, that Palestinians seek for a state.

"We are talking about (allowing) 'natural growth' within existing borders of existing settlements. And I think that the government's willingness to take complicated steps needs to be respected. We expect this flexibility will be appreciated by the other side," Lieberman said.

"It can't be expected from us to accept a situation where it's impossible to build synagogues or kindergartens or to add rooms for a family," he added.

Senior Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Netanyahu's goal was to reach "understandings" with the Obama administration that would allow construction already under way to go forward.

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ruled out a resumption of peace talks with Israel until Netanyahu commits to a full settlement freeze, including natural growth, as called for under a 2003, U.S.-backed peace "road map".

Israel has sought to ease tensions over settlements by committing to remove more West Bank roadblocks and unauthorised settler outposts.

Israelis on Friday played down expectations for next week's summit between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, despite Olmert's pledge on Thursday to forge a "new beginning".

Olmert is due to meet the Palestinian leader, whose secular Fatah forces lost control to the Islamist Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip a week ago, in Egypt on Monday.

Fatah continues to hold sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but some question whether Abbas remains strong enough to engage in peace talks with Israel. Hamas, which refuses to recognise the Jewish state, remains in charge in Gaza and says it, not Abbas's emergency cabinet, is the legitimate government.

"Forgive me for being honest, but I think Mahmoud Abbas has shown the strength h

does not have to lead his people," said Moishe Smith, president of powerful pro-Israel Bnai Brith International, a group based in North America.

Speaking to Reuters in Jerusalem after talks with Israeli leaders, Smith questioned whether Israel and Washington should "prop up" Abbas as a peace partner, since his popularity among Palestinians was uncertain. A poll published this week gave Abbas an approval rating of just 36 percent.

Smith, among a group of Jewish leaders consulted by U.S. President George W. Bush, said Israel and Washington should "leave it for the moment" rather than push for negotiations before the Fatah-Hamas leadership battle is finally decided. Hamas, which won a parliamentary election last year, has criticised the planned summit, saying it would not benefit the Palestinians and accusing Abbas of staging a "coup". Abbas has in turn ruled out any dialogue with the Islamists, and accused Hamas this week of seeking to kill him.

Some in Israel thought the summit could score a diplomatic breakthrough, but only if Olmert -- whose popularity has also plummeted since last year's much-criticised war in Lebanon -- offered serious steps to support Abbas, such as providing more weapons and a solid offer to negotiate for a Palestinian state.

"Israeli cabinet ministers err when they say time and again that Abbas isn't a partner for peace, and are stupid to call him weak," columnist Yoel Marcus wrote in the Haaretz newspaper.

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, infrastructures minister in Olmert's cabinet, said it was too soon to discuss a revival of peace negotiations for a Palestinian state last convened in 2001.

"I don't even dream of seeing a peace process very soon," Ben-Eliezer told Israel's Army Radio. "I only dream about seeing some quiet."

The cabinet minister seemed to support arming Abbas better. "The real nuclear bomb is there and not in Iran," he said, referring to the threat of continued Hamas control over Gaza.

Israeli rightists have lobbied strongly against providing more arms to Abbas's forces, maintaining that these guns could also be fired at Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Leftist lawmaker Ran Cohen said weapons alone would not ensure Abbas's political survival in the West Bank. "Unless (Abbas) comes up with a political solution for the Palestinian people, the extremists will defeat him in the end," Cohen said, alluding to Hamas.

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said in anticipation of the talks it was "most important we revive a meaningful peace process" that leads to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah)