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.”

Despite indications that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is committing a substantial amount of time and effort to revive the long-stalled Israel-Palestinian “peace process”, a growing number of experts believe a two-state solution is no longer viable and the lack of a realistic discussion of the issue in the United States is leaving the country without an alternative policy.

In the two months since confirmation in his post, Kerry has made three trips to the region. On Monday, he hosted an Arab League delegation, including the League’s secretary general, the Qatari prime minister and representatives from the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and Lebanon.

The meeting was aimed at renewing the long-dormant Arab Peace Initiative (API), which promises full normalisation of relations between Israel and all Arab League member states in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the territories it occupied in 1967 and a “just resolution” of the Palestinian refugee issue.

Kerry hopes that the API can serve to get Israeli-Palestinian negotiations back on track.

But those efforts may yet be for naught, according to analysts, some of whom have long championed the two-state solution but who now believe that a combination of U.S. fecklessness and Israel’s establishment of “facts on the ground” in the predominantly Palestinian West Bank have made such a settlement impossible.

“The U.S. public has bought a narrative that is totally dishonest and misrepresents the obvious facts – and what can be more obvious that there can be no peace process if you simultaneously steal the land in question,” Henry Siegman, former national director of the now-defunct American Jewish Congress and current senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and president of the US/Middle East Project, said at a recent talk hosted by the Middle East Institute in the halls of the U.S. House of Representatives.

“But the reason the U.S. public is overwhelmingly supportive of the Israeli position is that it is uninformed on geography and world affairs… So it is not surprising that the public accepts a narrative that is totally unrelated to facts on the ground,” he said.

The effect of that distorted narrative is to cripple the United States’ ability to act as an honest broker in this conflict, Siegman said.

“It was always assumed that the United States’ great friendship and support for Israel meant at some point it would say ‘enough’ because if you cross this line, we can no longer invoke our common values – apartheid is not a common value. But the other reason for our failures is that presidents and Congress have never had the courage to act on that reality.”

Philip Weiss, editor of the anti-Zionist web site, Mondoweiss, clarified the reason for that inactivity, and contended that the key place to try and change things is within the U.S. Jewish community.

“The U.S. has allowed this to happen despite knowing Israeli ambitions (to control all of the West Bank) due to the Israel Lobby,” Weiss said. “The Lobby draws its strength from the U.S. Jewish community’s commitment to Zionism… Zionism was once a valid response to the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. But the need for Israel to be a Jewish state leads inevitably to the excesses of occupation.”

Professor Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and co-author of the controversial book, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”, identified the United States as a major reason for the current impasse.

“The failure of the two-state solution means we have to start considering alternatives,” Walt said. “For the past 15 years or so, the two-state solution was the consensus of the foreign policy community. The problem is that this goal is further away than ever.

“Many believe it is now impossible, due to settlements, the Israeli drift to right and the split [between Fatah and Hamas] among the Palestinians.

“[President Barack] Obama’s failure makes it clear that the U.S. will never be honest broker…That’s why we need alternatives. People will want to know what the U.S. is in favour of instead.”

The “failures” Walt spoke of are not limited to Obama’s first term. Despite a well-received speech during Obama’s first presidential visit to Jerusalem as well as two trips to Israel by Kerry, the divide between Israel and the Palestinians seems more entrenched than ever.

Reports from Israel after Kerry’s visit earlier this month indicated that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Kerry’s formula for dealing with borders and security first as a way to restart talks with the Palestinians.

This cannot be surprising, as Netanyahu’s own party, Likud, as well as two of his three major coalition partners, the Israel Beiteinu and The Jewish Home parties, are strong supporters of the settlement franchise.

Kerry’s strategy to encourage progress through Palestinian economic growth was deeply undermined by the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad just after that same visit.

While Kerry insisted that his economic initiative was not meant to replace a political peace process, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insisted on focusing on the political issues such as Israeli settlements and the fates of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Even Kerry’s attempt to build on the progress Obama made in rekindling diplomacy between Israel and Turkey by asking Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan to postpone a planned trip to Gaza was met with refusal and a sharp rebuke of Kerry from Turkey.

All of this suggests that there is no hope on the immediate horizon. Secretary Kerry testified before a Senate subcommittee recently and said there was a window of only one to two years for the two-state solution, and given the lack of opportunity now, this is strong evidence for the position that the path to two states is indeed closed.

In a clear signal of the international community’s frustration with the U.S.’s failure to find any progress in the conflict, a recent letter signed by 19 former European prime ministers, presidents and foreign ministers urges European Union Foreign Affairs Representative Catherine Ashton to take immediate action to save the two-state solution.

“European leaders cannot wait forever for action from the United States,” the letter says, while advocating a clear EU statement that all Israeli settlements beyond the 1967 borders are illegal and calling for stronger efforts to unify the divided Palestinian leadership, among other measures.

Despite repeated pledges of his determination and enthusiasm for resolving the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian impasse, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent trip to the region has provoked more scepticism than hope among observers in Washington.

Speaking in Tel Aviv on Apr. 9, Kerry called his talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “very constructive”, but left with little to show for his efforts.

Kerry trumpeted commitments from Netanyahu to help bolster the economy in the West Bank, but such efforts appear dimmer in the wake of the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

“Economic growth will help us be able to provide a climate… within which people have greater confidence about moving forward,” Kerry told a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel.

“But I want to emphasise – I emphasise this very strongly: This is not in lieu of, or an alternative to, the political track. It is not a substitute. The political track remains the primary focus. But this is in addition to, in a way that could help to facilitate that track, and I believe will begin to take hold immediately.”

But this positive view was not shared by many long-time observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It stirred echoes of previous failures with incremental, confidence building measures, and, despite Kerry’s words to the contrary, raised concerns about the efficacy of economic measures without political progress.

Ambassador Philip Wilcox, former U.S. consul general to Jerusalem and current president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, told IPS that economic measures like the ones Kerry devoted much of his time to in the Middle East are not going to lead to renewed negotiations.

“Small steps like removing checkpoints or allowing more liberalised trade and transit would be welcome but won’t alter Palestinian attitudes very much,” Wilcox said. “Not unless there were a parallel halt in settlement building accompanied with Israeli assurances that such was their policy.”

John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author of the famous book “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”, believes both Kerry, who served as chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for four years, and President Barack Obama know there is no hope for a negotiated solution with the current Israeli government.

“It’s hard to believe that either Kerry or President Obama believes that there is any chance of getting a two-state solution,” Mearsheimer told IPS. “They surely know that Netanyahu is bent on creating a Greater Israel and there is hardly anything the United States can do to stop it.

“That makes me think that Kerry was simply going through the motions in his recent trip to the Middle East, so he could get rebuffed and then use that as an excuse to put the Israel-Palestine conflict on the back burner and focus instead on Asia.”

Obama endured steady criticism for his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict throughout his first term in office. He was frequently attacked by political opponents for being insufficiently supportive of Israel, and now is being criticised for not paying enough attention to it.

His first visit to Israel as president was intended to allay these criticisms. Kerry also made trips to the region both before and after Obama’s visit.

But Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center in Washington, remains convinced that Obama does not plan to spend his energy and political capital on this issue.

“The Obama administration has essentially given up on Israel-Palestinian peace,” he told IPS. “They tried – very gently – in the first term to engage and, like administrations before them, failed to do so in an even-handed way. It’s clear that Obama is resigned on this issue. It takes too much political capital domestically and, with other pressing foreign affairs matters around the globe, Palestine is on the backburner.”

Wilcox believes that all of this activity is meant more to address the political attacks than to truly reinvigorate the peace process. In fact, he says, without genuine political progress, even economic improvements may prove elusive.

“The [Obama] administration feels vulnerable to the attack that it’s surrendered and it has to be seen as active and managing a conflict that is not amenable to a solution right now,” Wilcox said. “But even to achieve effective economic measures there is not easy. In the absence of investor confidence of peace in the future, you’re not going to get a lot of investment in the Palestinian economy.”

Munayyer’s belief that “Netanyahu is very happy” with the ongoing stalemate was bolstered by senior Israeli officials who told the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz that, contrary to Kerry’s requests, “”Israel opposes placing the issues of borders and security at the preliminary stage of negotiations, and we said this to Kerry. On this issue, there is full consent among all the ministers dealing with the Palestinian subject.”

Combined with Fayyad’s resignation mere days after Kerry’s visit and economic talks, statements such as these cast serious doubt on Kerry’s positive description of his trip. Even the apparent breakthrough that President Obama ushered in between Israel and Turkey, ending close to three years of diplomatic freeze between the countries, is drawing scepticism.

Wilcox expressed a lack of confidence that the apparent rapprochement would actually solidify. “[Turkish Prime Minister Recep] Erdogan is going to Gaza, and there is no significant change in the [Israeli] closure regime there,” he said.

Turkey has also refused to attend a proposed meeting of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue Group due to Israel’s participation. And it has issued a stern warning to Israel not to drag out negotiations over compensation to the families of the Mavi Marmara victims.

The Netanyahu government has not responded to these Turkish actions, despite criticism led by Netanyahu’s own political partner and designated foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who said that the apology to Turkey was a mistake.

This indicates that Israel is willing to try to accommodate the U.S. desire to try to restart talks with the Palestinians and mend the relationship between it and Turkey, at least for the moment. But the thawing of relations remains on shaky ground.

With Barack Obama set to travel on his first trip to Israel as president, expectations for a major breakthrough on the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” are low to nonexistent.

The visit, which will take him briefly to the occupied West Bank and Jordan as well, is seen here as motivated primarily by domestic reasons, notably reassuring the U.S. Jewish community and the powerful Israel lobby that his administration’s commitment to the Jewish state is “unshakeable”.

Obama has stated explicitly that he is not going to the region with a plan for restarting the Israel-Palestine peace process.

“President Obama has already announced that he isn’t going to be presenting any peace plan or initiative,” Joel Beinin, professor of Middle East History at Stanford University, told IPS.

“And it would be foolish of him to do so unless he wants to risk once again being embarrassed by Prime Minister Netanyahu. The most evident objective of the trip is to mollify the Zionist lobby. This is of no direct value to the president personally at this point. But it might have some positive impact on Democratic chances in the 2014 congressional elections.”

Aside from shoring up support at home, independent analysts here believe that U.S. and Israeli policies toward Iran and Syria will also figure high in Obama’s discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has just succeeded in constituting a new right-wing government after weeks of negotiations following January’s parliamentary elections.

“President Obama will issue the standard bow that is now the default position of nearly every American administration: ‘We are unequivocally committed to the security of Israel,’” Mark Perry, author and former co-director of the international think tank Conflict Forum, told IPS.

“What Mr. Obama won’t add is the after-the-comma comment that he dare not say in public: ‘We are unequivocally committed to the security of Israel, but we’re not interested in having a war with Iran to prove it.’ And that, and no other issue, will be the centrepiece of talks between him and Netanyahu.”

Perry also believes that Obama will try to bridge the gaps preventing the Israelis and Palestinians from resuming talks, but that Iran will take centre stage in his discussions with Netanyahu.

“The U.S. and Israelis say they are on the same page when it comes to Iran, though that’s clearly not the case,” Perry said. “So while the public eye will be on how Mr. Obama handles the Israeli and Palestinian publics, the real issue that Mr. Netanyahu will focus on will have nothing to do with Ramallah – and everything to do with Tehran.

“In private, my hunch is that the president will press Mr. Netanyahu to implement a series of measures that will give Abu Mazen the political cover to return to the negotiating table. So, yes, there won’t be a breakthrough or a 72-point headline, but I believe Mr. Obama when he says he’s serious about peace. And my hunch is that he will make that clear to the Israeli prime minister.”

The Guardian reports that Netanyahu, believing that Israel and the U.S. will have different views of red lines on Iran and on prospects for restarting peace talks with the Palestinians, will try to persuade Obama to launch air strikes against Syria in order to prevent conventional missiles from being transferred from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Thus far, no official response to this story has come from either Israel or the United States.

Yet despite the potential significance of this trip for actions on the Iranian or Syrian issues, U.S. officials are working to maintain the low expectations the president has set forth for this trip.

Former U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross, speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Obama’s well-regarded Cairo speech of 2009 was perceived in Israel as “coming at their expense”.

“The irony is that this administration has contributed in a very intense way to focusing on security cooperation with Israelis. This trip is designed to blend the realities of that cooperation with the public perception in Israel.”

Administration officials echoed this view. “We felt like this was an important opportunity for the president to go to the region,” said Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes.

“In Israel, we felt that with a new Israeli government coming into place and a new U.S. term here, this is an important opportunity for the president to consult with the Israeli government on the broad range of issues where we cooperate.”

Obama will start his trip in Israel, then meet with leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He will then return briefly to Israel before wrapping up his trip in Jordan.

Notably, Obama will not be addressing the Knesset while in Israel, opting instead to reach out to the Israeli public by addressing a group of students from major Israeli universities, mirroring his decision in 2009 in Cairo, when he spoke under the auspices of Al-Azhar and Cairo Universities.

Obama will hold meetings and press conferences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, as well as private meetings with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Ross believes Obama will also have a message for the Palestinian Authority. “I think the president will tell Abu Mazen (Abbas), if you want to focus on the United Nations, that’s not a road that’s going to lead anywhere, so let’s focus on a road that will lead somewhere.”

The Palestinian Authority last year won a victory at the U.N. when its status was upgraded to non-member observer state. The vote affirmed the status of Palestine as a state and potentially opened the door for the Palestinians to make use of the international legal structure, particularly the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. The U.S. and Israel have both warned the Palestinians sternly against any such actions.

But, Ross said, the U.S. and Israel also have a mutual interest in ensuring that the PA does not collapse. “I can envision a discussion about what do you do to make it less likely that the PA will collapse. I think he will ask the prime minister (Netanyahu) … What can you do to make sure the PA doesn’t collapse?”

Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, believes that the Palestinians should chart a course away from dependence on U.S. diplomacy to resolve the conflict.

“For the Palestinian leadership the Obama visit should be (yet another) occasion for drawing their own conclusions on the need to accumulate leverage independent of U.S. policy,” he said.

The Democratic National Convention erupted in controversy this week over the removal of a clause in the party platform stating that Jerusalem should remain Israel’s undivided capital and only grew worse when the wording was hastily re-inserted.

Though party platforms are routinely ignored by presidents and members of Congress, the politically sensitive issue of Israel, which has been particularly prominent in a U.S. presidential election where foreign policy has been downplayed by both sides, has caused ripples far beyond Washington.

The Democratic Party platform had initially intended to remove the wording from 2008 which had affirmed the party’s stance on Jerusalem in order to bring it in line with long-standing United States policy, upheld by presidents of both parties, which holds that Jerusalem is a final status issue to be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Both Republicans and Democrats, however, have routinely voiced support for Jerusalem being Israel’s “undivided capital” in their party platforms in order to gather support from wealthy pro-Israel donors and secure votes in swing states where Jewish voters are believed to be decisive.

Barack Obama, in a 2008 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the major pro-Israel lobbying group, said that Jerusalem must remain undivided, but quickly backtracked and has since held to a policy of keeping Jerusalem as a final status issue.

Although the George W. Bush administration repeatedly stated its intent to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, it never acted to do so, the embassy remains in Tel Aviv, and the United States still has not formally recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Numerous media outlets reported that the Democratic platform had been vetted by AIPAC, which had voiced its approval. But after the controversy erupted, and Republican nominee Mitt Romney referred to the omission of the Jerusalem statement as “shameful”, President Obama was reported to have personally intervened to have the language re-inserted.

The amendment needed approval by a two-thirds majority in a voice vote on the conference floor. The controversy deepened when three calls for a vote came back without a clear majority in favour, much less the required two-thirds. But conference chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, declared that he had heard the required majority. Video recordings of the vote cast strong doubts on that assertion.

“The handling of the Jerusalem amendment in the Democratic party platform was ham-fisted to say the least,” Saqib Ali, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates and a Democratic Party activist, told IPS.

“By ramming through the amendment on a dubious procedural move, Mayor Villagarosa and party leaders insulted those who believe Palestinians deserve equal human rights to everyone else in the world.

“The Democratic Party platform on this issue contradicts the position of the Obama administration. The divergence between the Democratic platform and the Obama administration policy just doesn’t make any sense,” Ali added.

Palestinians noted the controversy as well. Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said that while the entire episode might just be “election propaganda”, a failure to recognise the Palestinian claim to east Jerusalem will “destroy the peace process” and lead to “endless war”.

The Democrats’ official stance also seems to lack support from the party’s rank and file. In a recent poll by the Arab American Institute, while nearly 60 percent of Democrats said they were not sure what they thought the ultimate disposition of Jerusalem should be, those who voiced an opinion favoured dividing the city over it being controlled by Israel alone by a nearly two-to-one margin.

“Pushing through the amendment was in part a reaction to Republican criticisms that the Obama administration – despite providing record amounts of taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel’s rightist government and blocking the United Nations from challenging Israeli violations of international humanitarian law – was somehow not supportive enough of Israel,” Professor Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, wrote in an article for Foreign Policy in Focus.

“It was also a demonstration of just how determined the Democratic Party leadership is to undermine the Middle East peace process and weaken international law, even if it means running roughshod over their members and thereby hurting their chances in November,” Zunes said.

Other observers were much more explicit about the role of the pro-Israel lobby in the incident.

John Mearsheimer, a professor of politics at the University of Chicago and co-author of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, says that this episode reflected how out of touch U.S. leaders are with public opinion on Israel and the Palestinians.

“I don’t think the flap over Jerusalem will have any effect on the election, since there is no evidence that Obama was responsible for the problem and he fixed it right away,” Mearsheimer told IPS.

“Nevertheless, what happened yesterday was very important because we saw right before our own eyes that the president and his lieutenants were caving into pressure from Israel and the lobby, but at the same time, there was significant opposition to what Obama was doing among the rank and file in the Democratic Party.

“Actually, this is not surprising if you look at public opinion polls on how the American people think about our special relationship with Israel. The evidence is clear that the public is generally pro-Israel, but not so much as to justify the present relationship, where we give Israel more aid than any other country and give it unconditionally.”

Notably, while Obama visibly intervened to change the party platform, he made no mention of Jerusalem in his convention speech, and barely touched upon Israel at all, confining his remarks to a pro forma statement that “Our commitment to Israel’s security must not waver, and neither must our pursuit of peace.”

Obama also was sparing in his remarks on Iran, which has been dominating U.S. foreign policy for the past year. While this may all reflect a general preference of both candidates to speak to ongoing domestic economic issues in this election, some observers thought there might be some small indication of the beginnings of a shift in pro-Israel influence on U.S. foreign policy.

“Like everyone who saw this appalling misprision of democracy by the Democratic National Convention, I was struck by the blatancy of the political manipulation on view,” former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told IPS.

“Whatever the merits of the issue itself in terms of campaign politics, the Israel Lobby can have done itself no good by exposing its contempt for the opinion of the delegates now gathered in Charlotte in this way.”

Mearsheimer agreed. “What makes the special relationship (between the U.S. and Israel) work is the fact that the lobby is deadly effective at putting pressure on American politicians and policymakers to support Israel no matter what. If the public had a real say in our policy toward Israel, we would have a very different policy than we now have. Wednesday, that point was driven home clearly on our TV screens for all to see. Nothing like that has ever happened before.”