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.”

Arab leaders in Qatar for the Arab League summit sent Israel an ultimatum Sunday: Accept the Saudi Peace Initiative or it will be rescinded.

The draft proposal of the statement states: "The peace initiative being proposed today will not be on offer for a long time. Arab commitment to this initiative is dependent on Israeli acceptance."

The draft proposal was formulated by the Arab foreign ministers, and will be presented to the Arab League's leaders Monday for approval.

The wording is a compromise between the hardline Arab countries, mainly Syria and Qatar, and the moderates, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Egypt is to be represented at the summit by a very low-level official after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit declined to participate, reportedly due to anger at Qatar for making overtures to Hamas. Egypt has demanded Qatar not invite Iranian President Mohammed Ahmadinejad to the summit, and stop its criticism of Egypt on the Al-Jazeera network, which began after Operation Cast Lead.

Most reports over the past week indicated that Ahmadinejad would not come to the summit, although he could still show up by surprise.

Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, arrived in Qatar on Sunday despite a warrant for his arrest issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, on charges of involvement in the massacre of his countrymen in Darfur.

Palestinian Authority sources said they hoped the summit would not widen the breach among Palestinians, and called on Arab leaders to support the PLO and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al) will be attending meetings associated with the summit. Speaking by phone from Doha, he told Haaretz that he had met with officials from Yemen and other Gulf countries. "My opinion, which is what I represent here, is that the international community must force Israel to accept the two-state solution and work to establish a Palestinian state, and if not, a diplomatic price should be paid," Tibi said.

Israel has agreed to free all 450 of the prisoners demanded by Hamas in exchange for kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, and the dispute now revolves around Israel's demand that some of these prisoners be deported rather than returned home, Palestinian sources in Cairo said Thursday.

Ofer Dekel, Israel's lead negotiator on the issue, was in Cairo Thursday for further talks with Egyptian mediators.

According to the sources, Israel is insisting that several dozen of the released prisoners be exiled abroad and that others be released to Gaza rather than the West Bank. However, Hamas has thus far agreed to the deportation of only a handful of prisoners, and has conditioned even this on the consent of the prisoners to be deported. It also opposes releasing prisoners to Gaza rather than the West Bank.

Though Hamas officials are concerned that a deal might be harder to strike once a new Israeli government takes office, they insist that they will not agree to any further compromises. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud A-Zahar even denied Thursday that talks were taking place at all and said Israeli reports of progress are false.

"Hamas isn't talking with anyone about a prisoner exchange for Shalit," he told the Nazareth-based newspaper Kul al-Arab by telephone from Cairo. "If anyone's holding negotiations, it isn't us."

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, also denied reports of progress in the talks.

"It's a lie," he told Kul al-Arab. "The talks with Egypt on the matter are currently frozen."

Meanwhile, Hamas and Fatah continued their reconciliation talks in Cairo Thursday. The talks are expected to continue at least through Saturday.

American and European officials have thus far declined to comment publicly on the expected appointment of Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister. Behind the scenes, however, many officials are asking whether this appointment is really necessary - and newspapers on both continents are criticizing the move openly.

The official position in Washington is that Barack Obama's administration will work with whatever Israeli government is ultimately established. Beyond that, American officials are keeping mum.

But the "Lieberman question" continually arises in State Department briefings for journalists and in other forums. And opinion columns in the American press have presented Lieberman in an extremely negative light, with comparisons to Austria's Joerg Haider and even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, (both use "ultranationalist rhetoric of hate," one paper charged).

No American official is likely to convene a press conference publicly condemning Lieberman's appointment. However, such a choice will almost certainly encourage the U.S. administration to keep its distance from Benjamin Netanyahu's government, as Washington will not want to take the flak absorbed by demonstrating closeness to a government whose public face is widely considered to be a racist.

Moreover, the potential for conflict is already obvious. Even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in the region last week speaking of the importance of resuming Israeli-Syrian negotiations, Lieberman was publicly declaring that he saw no point in talking with Syrian President Bashar Assad as long as the latter continues to support anti-Israel terrorist organizations.

In Europe, too, officials are keeping quiet, but the matter has been widely discussed in the press.

"Avigdor Lieberman is an anti-diplomat," proclaimed an article in the French daily Le Figaro. "His divisive statements and his 'anti' attitude have helped him gain the image of a dangerous radical."

The German paper Suddeutsche Zeitung described Yisrael Beiteinu as an "anti-Arab" party, while the weekly Der Spiegel recalled on its web site that Lieberman had advocated using the same force in the Gaza Strip that Russia used in Chechnya.

European papers in general have reported widely on Lieberman's new role as kingmaker, and have reminded their readers of his statements in favor of transferring Israeli Arab towns to the Palestinian Authority and making Arab citizens of Israel swear a loyalty oath.

In the Arab world, there has also been no official reaction as yet to the possibility of Lieberman becoming foreign minister.

However, it is clear that this would cause great discomfort in the two Arab states with which Israel maintains diplomatic relations - Egypt and Jordan.

Jordan has refused for years to invite Israel's foreign minister to Amman, meaning Lieberman's appointment would not mark a change in Jordanian policy.

In Egypt, however, the change is liable to be more noticeable. Though senior Egyptian officials have refused to comment publicly on the matter on the grounds that it is an internal Israeli issue, in the past, several of them have described Lieberman as "racist" and "rude."

Cairo was particularly incensed by Lieberman's statement several years ago that should Arab countries launch an attack on Israel, Israel would be justified in responding by bombing Egypt's Aswan Dam, among other targets. Egypt was also infuriated by his statement in the Knesset last October that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak "could go to hell."

Asked at the time for a response to the latter, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told Haaretz that Lieberman's comments should not be dignified with a response.

Lieberman's "anti-Egyptian and anti-Arab sentiments," Zaki added, "are well known."

The United States is planning to open a permanent office in Jerusalem for its special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Tuesday.

Mitchell has been tasked with advancing stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He is set to make his second visit to Israel in his current capacity in the last week of February.

Last week, Mitchell told the heads of several U.S. Jewish groups that while the issue of Israeli settlements comes up in every conversation with Arab leaders, "it is not the only issue."

A U.S. official said on Monday, meanwhile, Washington plans to pledge more than $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after Israel's offensive against Hamas and strengthen the Palestinian Authority.

The money will be channeled through United Nations and other bodies and will not be distributed via the militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to make the announcement next week at a Gaza donors conference in Egypt.