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.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Sunday welcomed Israel's decision to release close to 200 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to the Palestinian Authority, but said Israel should release even larger numbers of prisoners.

The cabinet approved the release of the Palestinian prisoners, including two prisoners "with blood on their hands," meaning they were directly involved in the killing of Israelis, during the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday morning.

"We welcome the release of any Palestinian prisoner. It is considered a victory for Palestinians," he told The Associated Press during a tour of the northern village of Tubas. "We ask Israel to change its conditions for releasing prisoners and we ask for the release of all prisoners without exception." One of the Palestinians expected to be freed is said to have dispatched terrorists to carry out an attack while another attempted to carry out an attack of his own.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called the move "a step in the right direction" as Israel and the Palestinians pursue a statehood deal by January in U.S.-sponsored talks, but said "thousands, not hundreds" of prisoners should be set free.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the cabinet voted to release the prisoners as a confidence-building measure aimed at bolstering Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and strengthening moderates.

A government official said the release would be carried out around August 25, before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the leading Kadima candidate to succeed Olmert, said the release demonstrated to the Palestinians that dialogue, not violence, achieved the best results.

Ministers on the right, however, attacked the decision as a deterrent in the ongoing negotiations to release abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who was seized by Gaza militants in June 2006 and has been held there since.

"The cabinet decision is additional proof that the Kadima-Labor government is subverting ethical and security norms," said opposition leader and Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Instead of taking a position of attacking terror, the government is freeing terrorists with blood on their hands, in exchange for nothing, while Gilad Shalit continues to rot in jail. The inevitable result is that terror organizations will understand that they can send more terrorists to carry out more attacks in Israel - and they'll know that one day, they too will be freed," Netanyahu added.

A release list has not been finalized but would include long-serving inmates, women and children, and two prisoners involved in attacks on Israelis before the 1993 Oslo peace deal, the official said.

From the Gaza Strip, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called for prisoners from his group to be included in the release. He said freeing only those from Abbas's Fatah faction would be "an attempt to strengthen Palestinian internal divisions."

Palestinian officials said Abbas had requested that the group include Said Atabeh, a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine jailed in 1977 and the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel.

Israel released 429 Palestinians as a gesture to Abbas after the resumption of peace negotiations in November at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

Months of meetings, closely shepherded by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have produced little visible progress on key issues such as control of Jerusalem and the future of millions of Palestinian refugees.

The Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee approved on Monday a bill that would enable the Interior Minister to revoke citizenship or residency of people who were convicted of offenses of abetting terrorism, membership of a terrorist organization, espionage or treason.

The committee passed the bill, submitted a year ago by Likud MK Gilad Erdan, on to the Knesset plenum for second and third readings.

The approval makes redundant a number of similar bills submitted to the Knesset after the recent spate of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. These were perpetrated by East Jerusalem Arabs, who enjoy a resident status and unrestricted mobility in Israel.

MK Zevulun Orlev's rage was not provoked by last week's pogrom at Jabel Mukkaber, where right-wing protesters attempted to storm the house of the terrorist behind the Mercaz Harav attack; rather, the National Religious Party lawmaker's anger was sparked by a remark made by Balad chairman MK Jamal Zahalka, who claimed Jerusalem was occupied land and that he refused to recognize a law stating otherwise. "If each member of the Knesset decides which laws to recognize on an individual basis, then you will be the first to suffer," he informed Zahalka, "and I will see to that personally."

Truth be told: As a member of a party that supports illegal outposts, Zevulun would be best advised to keep a low profile on the subject of the rule of law. But what really matters in this story is the new habit of threatening Arab Knesset members; the dizzying increase in incitement, curses and insults leveled at them, a spike that has gone almost without protest or the involvement of the Knesset Ethics Committee.

The main reason behind this wave of vitriol is, probably, Yisrael Beiteinu leader MK Avigdor Lieberman's belief that elections are in the offing. After the Mercaz Harav attack, Lieberman told Arab MKs that the current government is full of "weaklings. "Believe you me it's temporary, and you're temporary," he said. "Another government will come and take care of you just like the Kuwaiti government takes care of things." Kuwait's government, according to Lieberman, plans to expel all the participants in a memorial for slain Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah.

Of course, the National Union Party could not afford to trail behind, so its leader MK Effie Eitam made this promise to Arab MKs the day after a protest in the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm against Israel Defense Force activities. "A day will come when we will drive you out of this house [the Knesset] and from the national home of the Jewish people," he said. Usage of words like "fifth column," "enemies" and "traitors" has become an inseparable part of Knesset routine.

Meanwhile, right-wing MKs are pushing a number of bills aimed at making the Knesset off-limits to Arab lawmakers. Orlev and Yisrael Beiteinu's Esterina Tartman have introduced two separate bills that would disqualify people who visited enemy states from being an MK. Arab lawmakers consider visits to Arab states an inseparable part of their job. Hadash chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh said: "If we are given a choice of being faithful to our people or being in the Knesset, then I bid the Knesset farewell. I don't want it." Zahalka said: "At the current rate of legislation, the Knesset will be Arab-free."

Yet other bills introduced by Orlev and David Rotem of Yisrael Beiteinu aim to force all MKs to pledge their allegiance to the State of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state." Rotem, who has gathered signatures from 22 MKs to support his bill, including a few from Kadima and the Pensioners' Party, also suggests that MKs vow to support Israeli symbols and values. Israel, says Barakeh, uses its Arab Knesset members as a mask for its democracy. If the bill for pledging allegiance passes, "the mask will fall and the real face [of Israeli democracy] will be revealed. You will only have Zionist Arabs [in the Knesset]."

These bills by Orlev, Tartman and Rotem represent an intolerable notion that some MKs are more equal than others; that some are more acceptable than others, and that those who are worth less need to be cast out. Behind it is a completely misconceived view that Orlev and Lieberman are more entitled to be Knesset members than Zahalka or Barakeh.

To put it into perspective, calls for expulsion or a population transfer are heard on a weekly basis in this Knesset, and nobody tries to remove those who utter them from the parliament. A Knesset that is so adamant in upholding the right's freedom of speech can also house MKs who visit enemy states, and who believe Israel is carrying out war crimes in Gaza just as grave as the Mercaz Harav attack.

Let there be no doubt, Barakeh is right. Israeli democracy benefits from including representatives of the Arab public. Those who seek to cast them out will engender a process which, in a short period of time, could lead to the formation of an Israeli Arab parliament, calling for autonomy or an uprising in Israel. Understandably, Lieberman and his followers in Yisrael Beiteinu are not averse to this: Demand for their politics will only grow as the situation worsens. But the rest of the Knesset - including the National Union Party - should and must be made to stop this process of self-mutilation.

The Knesset is today expected to extend and widen the controversial Citizenship Law, which denies family unification to Israelis and Palestinians.

The law, which was to have expired next month, will be extended to July 2008 and apply to citizens of the four "enemy states" - Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran - as well as to those of the Palestinian Authority.

The law provides for the establishment of a committee to consider exceptions on a humanitarian basis. However, as the Shin Bet, IDF and Population Registrar will have a majority in the committee, not many exceptions are expected to be approved.

The Citizenship Law denies family unification to Palestinian men aged 18-35 and women 18-25.

The Knesset passed an amendment to the law in December, ostensibly to modify it in keeping with the criticism expressed by the High Court of Justice. But human rights organizations said the amended law was worse yet.

The amendment wished to extend the denial of family unification, which until now applied to people who have an immediate family member suspected of involvement in hostile activity, to people whose brother-in-law or nephew are suspected of such activity.

The current temporary Citizenship Law is set to expire April 16. Interior Ministry Roni Bar-On advised the Knesset's Internal Affairs and Environment Committee chairman MK Ophir Pines-Paz that unless he passed the amended law in second and third readings by the end of the Knesset's winter session today, the cabinet would extend the existing law.

Pines-Paz hastened to debate the new proposal, intending to introduce humanitarian improvements.

The committee stipulated that the committee to discuss humanitarian exceptions would have two public representatives, canceled the clause enabling denial of family unification to people whose brother-in-law or nephew are suspected of hostile activity and restricted the law's validity to July 31, 2008 (not to the end of 2008, as planned).

Pines-Paz himself voted against the law, claiming it was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

The head of the Shin Bet's counter-terrorism division told the committee that the terror groups instruct Palestinians in the territories to apply for family unification, then recruit them.

Some 40 percent of Israeli Arabs who were involved in suicide attacks in 2006 were naturalized, he said.