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.”

Jerusalem - East to West, the flight has begun. Israel’s controversial “separation barrier”, expanding inexorably over wadis and high streets, is near completion along large stretches of its route. Slab by 30ft slab, it seals off Jewish-majority West Jerusalem to protect it from West Bank suicide bombers. Except that the wall designed to keep out Palestinians has driven thousands of them into inner Jerusalem.

Most East Jerusalem Arabs lucky enough to hold the much-prized Israeli Jerusalem identity cards granting them residency rights have already slipped inside the concrete curtain before its gates slam shut.

The result is drastic social and demographic changes to the outskirts of a Biblical city that is now twice-walled — from some vistas Ariel Sharon’s concrete legacy is clearly visible outside Suleiman the Magnificent’s Old City ramparts.

The “outer” neighbourhoods now lie half-deserted, abandoned by those able and wealthy enough to move.

In the “inner” suburbs the laws of supply and demand have doubled rents and increased land prices in Arab neighbourhoods and even — irony of ironies — forced the new arrivals into Jewish areas. “Many Arabs are moving into the settlements because they are very close to the Arab areas,” said Raed Jaber, a 27-year-old Arab from al-Eizariya, who now owns a creperie serving the overwhelmingly Jewish residents of the settlement of Pisgat Zeev. “I’ll move in myself in a year or so when I get married,” he shrugs, dismissing antipathy from religious Jews who have leafleted the area urging residents not to rent to Arabs.

Pisgat Zeev is regarded as a neighbourhood of Jerusalem by Israel, but lies beyond the green line and was built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war.

Critics regard the half-finished 450-mile West Bank “separation barrier” as a “land grab” by the Jewish State.

United Nations mapping experts say that it slices off 10.1 per cent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem claimed by Palestinians for their future state.

Israel insists that it is a security or anti-terrorist fence, vital to protect its citizens. “It gives a more clear line of the perimeter of the city,” said Miri Eisin, a spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister. “We say, and say cautiously, that this line is not a future border. It is a line which has made a very big difference from that stroll that it used to be for those who came to blow themselves up in Jerusalem.” On its website the Israeli Ministry of Defence points out that it only becomes a wall — it prefers the euphemism “solid barrier system” — along a small fraction of its route in densely populated urban areas such as Jerusalem and “to prevent sniper fire into Israel and on major highways and roads”. A few minutes’ drive north of Jerusalem city centre the Arab neighbourhood of Dahiyat al-Bareed lies just on the wrong side, by a few metres. Here the towering barricade divides streets and even families, local frustration registered by “Victory to Hassan Nasrallah” and a swastika daubed on the bare concrete. Taxis and commuters can still flit through a narrow gap left for builders to complete the final section, but this is expected to close within weeks. The exodus is evident. Streets are empty, the school roll has fallen from 1,500 to 500 pupils, blocks of flats have lost 80 per cent of their tenants and businesses have closed, moving north to Ramallah.

Increasingly discernible is the influx of poorer, socially conservative West Bankers, drawn by falling rents.

Yellow-plated Israeli car numberplates are being replaced by green Palestinian ones, more women are veiled, East Jerusalemites are disappearing from offices and classrooms, and shopkeepers have noticed the arrival of Jenin and Nablus accents, raising security concerns. “The moment they started digging the wall here, people started packing and moving. Now 90 per cent of the homeowners have gone,” sighed Hani Bakir, 42. “Crime has increased, shops are being looted and houses broken into.” A mile south lives Enas Muthaffar, a Palestinian filmmaker whose 2005 documentary East to West recorded her family’s move from “outer” Ar-Ram to “inner” Beit Hanina. “We had to move inside to keep our Jerusalem IDs, because of the health services, so my dad can get to work, to stay in contact with family and friends and simply to have access to Jerusalem without a permit,” she said.

A 2006 study by the refugee rights agency Badil found that 17.3 per cent of 5,100 Jerusalem Palestinians surveyed moved because of the wall.

But Asmahan Amleh, a 48-year-old mother of six, who moved to Jerusalem years ago, says that economics is less important than the city’s huge religious significance for Arabs, as for Jews: “It is the city from which the Prophet Muhammad was raised to the sky. Whoever has a Jerusalem identity can’t even think of letting it lapse.”

Jerusalem - American proposals to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian security forces with additional guns and fighters have alarmed other Western nations, who argue that it is tantamount to supporting one faction in a potential civil war.

Fearing the strength of Hamas in Gaza, some US officials have urged that the moderate President Abbas should be given “deterrent capability” so that his Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority forces can confront the Islamist group if talks on a national unity government fail.

The divisions have led to a stand-off over the past month, with US officials saying that the unity government proposal had “no legs”. Other members of the “quartet” of international mediators — made up of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia — say that it should be given a chance instead of arming one of the Palestinian factions.

Proposals raised at meetings in London and Cairo include doubling the size of Mr Abbas’s presidential guard and persuading Israel to allow thousands of rifles into Gaza to alleviate its chronic shortage of weapons relative to Hamas.

Fatah officials have asked for more than 1,000 reinforcements from the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Badr Brigades, in exile in Jordan.

One Western official said that non-American quartet members emerged from one meeting convinced that the US wanted President Abbas to dismiss the Hamas Government, and to use his security forces to “confront Hamas politically and militarily, having confronted it economically”. “There was effectively a stand-off. As far as we are concerned, what the Americans are proposing to do is back one side in an emerging civil war,” said a western official familiar with the discussions.

Opponents argued that the international community had accepted the participation of Hamas in elections and should therefore look to support a national unity government. Hamas won elections last January but instantly became international pariahs. Sanctions and an aid freeze have left the Palestinian Government broke and unable to pay 160,000 civil servant salaries.

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodrيguez Zapatero, announced a new Middle East peace initiative with France and Italy yesterday. Central to the plan were an immediate ceasefire, a prisoner exchange, talks between the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian President, international ceasefire monitors and a national unity government. Israeli officials dismissed the overture.

Some in Washington are sceptical about a new Palestinian coalition, believing that it will be too close to Hamas and will refuse three international demands — to recognise Israel, renounce violence and abide by previous agreements. “Everybody wants to support Abbas, but there is a difference of opinion on how best you do it — or how much you are supporting him against Hamas against how much you are supporting him as President, which are not necessarily the same things,” said one international observer. “A lot of what the Americans were saying was, ‘If there is going to be a fight, we might as well make sure the right person wins’. We would have a difference of opinion there. You really don’t want to be encouraging a civil war.” The US insists that it has a good relationship with its partners. “We are continuing discussions and working things out. I think it is a little premature to be talking about a civil war as talks about a national unity government are still ongoing,” said a spokeswoman at the US Consulate in Jerusalem yesterday.

Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, confirmed that senior US diplomats travelled this week to Jordan to meet neighbouring Arab leaders, some of whom are hostile to Hamas.

Mr McCormack said that Washington was doing what it could to try to make sure that if the Palestinians produced a government that met the standards of the quartet statement, He said that Hamas had had failed in its attempt to govern.

The quartet has survived previous differences, notably the European insistence on alleviating Palestinian suffering with a temporary international mechanism that channelled salaries directly to some health workers when it became apparent that the international embargo on Hamas left Palestinian institutions near to collapse.

Alvaro de Soto, the UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said: “The need to get a grip on law and order is one of the key reasons for pushing ahead with an agreed new national unity government. Only this could bring about what has been desperately missing until now, which is the security bodies under the authority of the President and those controlled by the Government, instead of facing each other off on the streets and even shooting at each other, working cohesively not only to fight crime and ensure stability but also to act against those who fire rockets into Israel.”

Hamas's ceaseless campaign to win hearts and minds, hearts were the primary focus yesterday. The minds can follow.

The Kalashnikov, the Qassam rocket, suicide bombers and their dismal “martyr” videos are the usual faces that the Harakat al-Muqawama al- Islamiyya (the Islamic Resistance Movement) shows to the world.

But on the green turf of a Gaza football stadium yesterday it was all flowers, sunflower-seed stalls and plentiful orange juice as the ruling Islamist group staged a mass wedding for 84 bridegrooms too poor to afford their own ceremony — thereby earning their gratitude and, the organisers hoped, loyalty.

An annual event for the Hamas-linked Islamic Society in Rafah — the distinction is lost in a blue-and-green swirl of flags and Hamas beards in police uniforms — there was not a bride in sight; they had a separate ceremony two days ago in line with Palestinian Islamic tradition. But the 10,000 plastic chairs in rows on the pitch of Rafah’s football stadium testified to the success of the militant group’s social wing in creating a buzz among families celebrating the biggest day in their sons’ lives.

Riders on horses and camels charged around waving Hamas flags in front of the podium while the band, more used to funerals, played. Relatives cheered from the sidelines, men and women eyeing one another from the two ends of the pitch, separated by a cordon of Hamas armed guards.

Among the excited and besuited celebrants on the platform was Saher Jarbouah, a designer-stubbled, hair-gelled 24-year-old accountancy student who admitted that only 30 of the 84 grooms were religious, and that he was not among them. But the ceremony had saved him about £1,200, he estimated. “Of course this is useful for us,” he said as he donned his neat single-breasted suit. “It would cost a lot of money if you have to organise a wedding celebration yourself, hiring the band, the chairs, the video and so on. Most people can afford only a small celebration but this way you have the chance to be part of a really big event. “It saves people money, it brings joy and happiness and it brings people together. It unites the families of 84 people, so that rich and poor can celebrate, not just the wealthy.” Among the guests invited was Ismail Haniya, the Prime Minister and Hamas leader, but he cancelled later, amid renewed violence in Gaza City and protests against the Pope’s remarks on Islam.

Divided into four main groups — political, military, social and governmental — Hamas knows that its grassroots organisation of mosques, schools, clinics and events such as the wedding are what have earned it a reputation for honesty and sacrifice among Palestinians — vital when it faces a sceptical world far more interested in whether it still harbours violent intent towards its Jewish neighbour. Maintaining grass roots support is crucial for Hamas, which is coming under growing internal criticism for provoking sanctions that have cut hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid money to Palestinians, halting the payment of government salaries.

In a report this week the United Nations trade and development agency, Unctad, said that the Western aid freeze and Israel’s West Bank wall, closures and confiscation of $65 million (£35 million) a month in Palestinian tax revenues, have left the Palestinian economy “on the verge of collapse” and that unemployment — currently 35 per cent — could rise to more than 50 per cent by the end of the year.

Most Palestinians blame Israel and the West for their woes, while Israel insists that the closures on Gaza are vital to maintain its security.

Shlomo Dror, the spokesman for the co-ordinator of government activities in the territories, insisted yesterday that Israel opened the Karni goods and Rafah passenger crossings into Gaza whenever it could. “I agree that the situation in Gaza is very bad. Nobody will tell you that it is good,” he told The Times. “The issue is that the Palestinians have to take responsibility for the situation. They put snipers on the roof to target our civilian staff at Karni crossing and dig tunnels to attack them. When we offer to use other crossings, they refuse.

Mr Dror added: “I think Hamas wants the situation to be very bad because this is the way that they can get money from Europe and America.”

Drums and huge speaker systems drowned out the political debate last night in Rafah, where Nasser Barhoum, the event organiser for the Islamic Society, said that the $10,000 cost of the mass wedding was “money well spent”. “In a poor town like Rafah there is a huge percentage of bachelors who cannot afford their own ceremonies,” he beamed. “We recognise the importance of the marriage institution and we are doing our best to make good Palestinian families.”

Violence moves faster than negotiation. Now that Israel has its tanks in Gaza, military force will drown out everything else until Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decides that his business there is done.

In his office in Jerusalem, Mr Olmert is facing the most important test for any Israeli leader - how well he handles a military crisis. Those who fail the test, suffer severe political damage.

Israel hopes that the presence of the troops and armour will persuade the Palestinians holding Corporal Shalit to give him up. But what if that does not happen?

The Israelis will not turn round and go home if they do not get their man back quickly.

The army and air force will go onto the offensive, aiming perhaps to destroy what it calls the Hamas terror infrastructure.

Attempts to assassinate Hamas leaders are also possible.

Israeli attacks will be resisted, which will be highly dangerous for all concerned - especially Palestinian civilians caught in the middle.

Israeli pressure always produces a reaction on the Palestinian side.

It will strengthen the resolve of the Hamas military wing and other militant groups to fight.

Among the politicians, it might be the catalyst for the establishment of a Palestinian government of national unity.

Before Israel moved its troops in, Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian factions, sealed an agreement that the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya and the Fatah president Mahmoud Abbas have been working on for some time.

In it, Hamas accepted the idea of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

Because of what they did not say, it can be interpreted as an implicit recognition of Israel. Hamas people moved quickly to challenge that.

One of the Hamas MPs, Salah al-Bardaweel, told the Reuters news agency that "We said we accept a state (in territory occupied) in 1967 - but we did not say we accept two states."

Had Ismail Haniya stood up on the morning after the Palestinian elections in January and said what he has agreed to now - accepting that President Abbas can negotiate for a state only on the land occupied since the 1967 war - he would have had a warm reception from some Western countries at least, and might even have headed off moves to isolate his government internationally.

Since there have been no peace negotiations worth talking about between Israel and the Palestinians for more than five years, and there is no immediate chance of them restarting, the discussion, for now, is theoretical.

But in the months since then, the political background has changed.

The big powers have cut off the money that the Palestinians need to run their government and to pay their soldiers, teachers and doctors, which has caused great hardship.

They have established three tests that the Hamas government must pass before the money tap is turned on again - recognising Israel, giving up violence and accepting past agreements.

The Palestinian deal falls well short of that.

The most important thing the agreement does for Palestinians is to reduce the tension between the leaders of Hamas and Fatah, the two most important factions.

Do not forget that their men have been fighting each other on the streets and that there has been talk of a Palestinian civil war.

Palestinians feel very uncomfortable about splits, and are always conscious of the pressure and power radiating from Israel.

Their deal might end up to be worthless if the multiple pressures on the Palestinians destroy the shaky unity that Messrs Haniya and Abbas are now proclaiming.

The agreement would be worth more if both men were masters of their own houses.

But both men have been weakened, and one experienced negotiator here in Jerusalem commented that weak plus weak usually equals weak.

Abbas was weakened by the defeat of Fatah at the elections and the fact that Israel does not take him seriously; Haniya by the pressures of government, the international financial sanctions, and now the abduction of the Israeli soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit, which seems to have taken him by surprise.

There have been suggestions that Haniya is losing the internal debate within Hamas.

Some suggest that there is a strengthening of an axis between the Hamas military wing in Gaza and the exiled leadership of the movement in Damascus - and that the prime minister is the odd man out.

But in this conflict, the different sides have spent years building bigger defences around their own beliefs, and deeper ditches between each other. So, some believe that movement, however small, ought to be applauded.

The European Union thinks Hamas has moved, a little bit. It says the agreement is a good first step.

If there were Israelis and Palestinians and strong outside powers who wanted to create something bigger, it could conceivably lead somewhere.

Perhaps it is a seed for the future.

But first, this place is preparing itself for the more familiar realities of blood, bulldozers, bullets and bombs.