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.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal was absolutely right when he rejected US calls on his country and other like-minded Arab states to improve relations with Israel as a way to help restart Middle East peace talks.

“The question is not what the Arab world will offer… The question really is: What will Israel give in exchange for this comprehensive offer?” Prince Saud said at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after talks in Washington on Friday.

Needless to say, the stance of Riyadh is a faithful reflection of the overwhelming Arab view that taking additional confidence-building measures towards Israel before it accepts reaching a peace agreement on all outstanding issues that divide it from the rest of the Arab world, including of course the Palestinians, is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse.

As Israel is the aggressor and the occupier of Arab territories, it is the one that should take confidence-building measures towards the Arab side by accepting to engage in a comprehensive approach to achieve a durable and just peace.

As the Saudi foreign minister pointed out, the proposed “incremental and step-by-step approach for peace” is no longer tenable. The Palestinian conflict had been in the making for well over 60 years and to now propose a step-by-step approach for its resolution is simply unacceptable.

US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Clinton, together with the US Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell, have been pushing the Arab side to engage in trade and academic exchanges with Israel, and even allow Israeli civilian airlines to overfly Arab territories to demonstrate the Arab desire for peace.

This posturing is simply unrealistic given the deep division between the two sides, especially over the Israeli refusal to commit itself to a full withdrawal from Arab lands it occupied in 1967.

There is but one way left to move the peace process forward and it lies in endorsing the Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for the recognition ofIsrael by the Arab and Muslim worlds in return for the complete liberation of every occupied area and the creation of an independent Palestinian state on Palestinian soil.

Anything short of that is simply wasting precious time.

Obdurate and unconcerned about the opinion expressed by the president of his country’s staunchest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood his ground in Washington, insisting that he supports self government for the Palestinians, but not mentioning one word about a state for these people under decades of Israeli occupation.

True to his pre-election promise, US President Barack Obama told Netanyahu to grasp the “historic opportunity” to make peace with the Palestinians by accepting the two-state solution and stopping the settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“I suggested to the prime minister that he has a historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure,” said Obama, adding for balance, and good measure: “That means that all the parties involved have to take seriously obligations that they have previously agreed to.”

This position, held and re-advocated by the Arab Peace Initiative, as His Majesty King Abdullah made clear during his recent visit to the White House, is clearly based on international legitimacy and, as such, it can easily be translated on the ground. Only it needs a willing partner, and this, Israel is not.

The hardline position of this Israeli government - all governments, truth be told, although some tried to dress their uncompromising stances with discourse made ready by spin doctors - even though not new, is now made conspicuous because the US president, for a change, finally exercises long-deserved evenhandedness.

And so the world might come to finally “see” Israel’s true colours, away from blame on the Palestinians who, admittedly, do not try very hard to help their cause. But that is not really the stumbling block to a solution for this regional problem.

Perhaps Netanyahu is keeping the Palestinian card up his sleeve to bargain about Iran.

Tehran irritates Israel, and Netanyahu said in no uncertain terms: “Israel reserves its right to defend itself.” Of course, no resorting to the UN, to international law, to negotiations.

But it is not right to tie the two issues up - a Palestinian state and nuclear power pursuit by Iran. Especially when, after so many years, it has been established that the cause of most problems in the region is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Even if Israel views Iran’s nuclear capabilities as posing a grave danger to its existence, and Netanyahu wants US assurances against this potential threat, there is no escape from the two-state solution if the people in the region, and that includes Israelis, are to live in peace and prosper.

Obama’s stance is right. It will certainly score high among the Arabs.

Isn’t it time for Israel to come to its senses?

His Majesty King Abdullah said during recent talks in Washington with US President Barack Obama and other high-ranking US officials that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem is the only workable answer on the table.

There are simply no other options that are viable or operational.

Also recently, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that his country would be willing to support the two-state solution if Palestinians themselves agreed to this basis for a settlement.

This could indeed give a positive push to the peace process dynamics and encourage, perhaps, a new attempt at arriving at a solution to this protracted problem; only these are not straightforward pronouncements on the condition for peace in the region.

Ahmadinejad knows only too well that Hamas has yet to come on board for the two-state solution; its rhetoric so far suggests that this answer, on which there is wide international consensus, is not what the Islamic movement has in mind.

Iran enjoys considerable leverage with Hamas and can influence it to reach an understanding with Fateh and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, as a prelude to endorsing the two-state solution.

Tehran has come half way by declaring its acceptance of the two-state solution, because by making it conditional on Hamas’ endorsement of this solution, its new posture remains short circuited.

The current leadership in Iran is busy establishing new bridges with the international community. There is no better way to advance this effort than through encouraging peace between Israelis and the Palestinians.

Tehran’s moving closer to this solution will help it in the region and elsewhere, and help push the peace process forward in a meaningful way.

It is hoped that the Iranian president will continue along this path and come unequivocally out in support of the two-state solution in Palestine.

US President Barack Obama signalled interest in finding a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, made more imperative after the horrors of the just-ended Israeli war on Gaza.

Obama called four Middle East leaders on his first day in office; choosing His Majesty King Abdullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as his interlocutors on the Palestinian issue, Obama may have wished to show that he is siding with the voices of moderation in the region, not with the so-called rejectionists.

It could also point to where the Obama administration stands on the Middle East.

The first concern should obviously be to consolidate the fragile ceasefire reached by Israel and Hamas. By deciding to lend support to the quest for an effective control of border crossings into Gaza, the new US president seems to concur with European countries, especially those that took part in the recent Sharm El Sheikh summit.

Yet Obama’s initial moves and contacts do not point to any dramatic shift in the US policy in the area. Not that any was expected.

Generating movement away from the stalled situation, any movement, is still better than the lack of progress prevailing for quite some time now.

The success of the US tentative change of stance vis-à-vis the Middle East depends first and foremost on whether Obama will have the will and the power to secure an enduring peace deal between Israel and its Arab neighbours, including the Palestinians.

The new president has also started consultations with senior US military people on how to effect an early US troop withdrawal from Iraq. This, while important for the army morale and repeatedly demanded by most in the Middle East and beyond, will have to be carefully considered and orchestrated, nevertheless, to make sure Iraqis are not further harmed. The US cannot just raid a country, wreak havoc with it and its people’s lives and then withdraw, irresponsibly, with no thought for the fate of the people left behind.

Whatever the next moves, overall the US policy on our region remains basically steady and dictated by the same fundamentals.

So if hope is there, it should be tempered with the knowledge that any US president can do only this much. The rest is up to the main protagonists in the Middle East.