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.”

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Tuesday harshly criticized Farouk Qaddoumi, secretary-general of Fatah, for accusing President Mahmoud Abbas of involvement in the alleged poisoning of Yasser Arafat.

The PLO said in a statement that as part of Qaddoumi’s efforts “to disrupt the sixth convention of Fatah, he made hysterical remarks to reporters during his visit to Amman in the last two days.”

Qaddoumi said that Abbas and Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan were involved in poisoning Arafat. He said that the minutes of a joint Palestinian-Israeli-American meeting held in early March 2004 proved that the two were involved in the poisoning of Arafat and the assassination of Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Al-Rantisi.

Qaddoumi said the meeting was attended by Abbas, Dahlan, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and an American delegation led by William Burns.

Those who attended the meeting planned to assassinate a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders, Qaddoumi said, adding that the minutes of that meeting were sent to him by Arafat himself.

The Fatah official said that he was coming out with the disclosure now “to warn Palestinian factions of what is being hatched against them.” The PLO said that “these allegations are the invention of a man who has lost political and psychological balance.”

Arafat’s death in November 2004 in a military hospital near Paris triggered rumors that he had been poisoned. French doctors said the 75-year-old died from a “massive brain hemorrhage” but could not explain what prompted it. Arafat’s widow, Suha, refused to allow an autopsy.

Accusations have since been routinely directed at the Israeli government which saw Arafat as an obstacle to peace, putting him under house arrest in Ramallah and allegedly talked of eliminating him. Israel has strongly denied any involvement in his death.

Arafat became ill in October 2004 and was flown from his Ramallah headquarters to France. He died a few weeks later.

Arafat is seen as a national hero and was the first to give the Palestinian cause a legitimate voice on the world stage. His photograph still adorns homes, offices and public buildings in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday ordered his security forces to release most members or supporters of Hamas in a goodwill gesture to his rival movement before the renewal of inter-factional talks.

Azzam Al-Ahmed, a member of Fatah team to Cairo reconciliation talks, said that the release process is expected to complete during the coming 24 hours and will include all Hamas activists "except the people who pose a public security threat and still have trials underway."

Al-Ahmad added that the move "comes under the efforts to pave the way for the success of the national dialogue," referring to Egyptian-sponsored talks.

Earlier, the Palestinian Authority said it had freed 20 Hamas prisoners from its jails in the West Bank where Fatah holds sway.

In 2007, Hamas routed pro-Abbas forces in the Gaza Strip and seized the territory. Since then, the two groups have been cracking down against their political opponents — Hamas people in the West Bank and Fatah members in Gaza.

Hamas says up to 750 of its supporters are held in the West Bank while Fatah says Hamas continues hunting down its partisans, especially the former security employees, in Gaza. Egypt said it was determined to declare a Palestinian reconciliation by July 7 though Hamas and Fatah did not yet settle all outstanding issues.

Egypt has hold five rounds of talks aimed at overcoming the increasingly feud.

Prior to July 7, specialized committees will continue meetings in Cairo to bridge the gaps, although Hamas and Fatah have not made any clear progress on the issues of forming a unity government, reforming security services and elections.

Egyptian sources said on Sunday that the reason Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited Egypt over the weekend was to hear about Cairo's plan to advance a broader deal for a cease-fire with the Gaza Strip and a rapprochement between the Palestinian factions.

RANMALLAH: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu plans to tell US President Barack Obama that Israel will accept “some form” of the Arab Peace Initiative, the daily Jerusalem Post reported yesterday.

The Post quoted sources close to the policy review being undertaken by the new Israeli government, Israel will compromise on the Palestinian issue to obtain more direct and aggressive US assistance on the Iranian front.

It is not known if such help includes logistical support for Israeli strikes in the case of a military confrontation with Teheran, the report said. The Arab Peace Initiative was presented by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah in 2002.

It calls for normalizing relations between Arab states and Israel in exchange for a total Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 armistice lines and a “just solution” to the Palestinian demand for the return of refugees.

If the traditionally hawkish prime minister indeed invokes the Arab Peace Initiative in his May 18 meeting with Obama in Washington, it would mark a major diplomatic concession for a Likud-Israel Beiteinu government, the report said.

But a senior Israeli official familiar with the issue told the Post that such a move would be more form than substance, since Israel has been in agreement with “some parts” of the initiative for years.

“President Peres has called the Arab initiative ‘important’ and (former) Prime Minister (Ehud) Olmert has said it has ‘positive elements’,” the official noted.

But the acceptance of “some parts” of the plan doesn’t mean Israel has accepted it as a whole, the senior official added.

“The main problem is the demand for (the return of) refugees. The plan calls for a ‘just solution’ according to (1948 UN General Assembly) Resolution 194,” which calls for refugees “wishing to return to their homes and live at peace” to be “permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”

The United States rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people as a condition for renewing peace talks between the two sides, a report said yesterday.

The Israeli daily Haaretz quoted the US State Department as saying in a press statement, during special envoy George Mitchell’s visits over the weekend to Ramallah and Cairo, that Netanyahu’s demand is unacceptable to the US and that the Palestinians need not recognize Israel as Jewish state before talks.

The State Department added that the US would continue to promote a two-state solution.

The demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people was raised for the first time about 18 months ago in talks between Israel and the US ahead of the Annapolis Conference.

Then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni demanded that the conference’s closing statement mention a nation-state solution, a formulation meant to neutralize a Palestinian demand for refugees’ right of return.

However, the Bush administration accepted the Palestinian objection that the issue should be subject to negotiation.