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.”

It is important that the international community comes to realise the dangers posed by the current Israeli policy towards Palestinians which precludes any prospect of peace. The direction adopted by the Israeli government is actually a disaster in the making that will affect the entire region.

Since its inception, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed a policy of alienation and hostility towards the Palestinians. Netanyahu has neither shown any commitment towards a just and lasting peace nor has his government accepted the calls by major powers to engage in processes that would help bring about peace. Instead, almost all of his actions are aimed at establishing a future that takes into account only the interests of Israel with absolute disregard for the environment within which it exists.

The ongoing building of colonies and the retraction on any previous Israeli commitment to a two-state solution is a case in point. And instead of discussing the measurable steps towards reaching this aim, Israel has proposed fragmented options to the current conflict - one that is based on seeing the Palestinians as enemies and not partners.

Undoubtedly, this approach is dangerous as it encourages violence, breeds more hatred, and brings about instability. Hence, the recent call by the US for Israel to stop building all colonies regardless of their type and location comes as a welcome stance.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that there would be no exception with regard to President Barack Obama's demand that all colony activities are stopped by Israel with immediate effect. "Not some [colonies], not outposts, not natural growth exceptions. We think it is in the best interests of the effort that we are engaged in that [colony] expansion cease," said Clinton.

Now it is high time that the US and other powers push concertedly for peace.

In order to find a just and lasting peace and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is crucial that all concerned parties become engaged in the process. It is vital that the major powers, and the United States in particular, take on and continue to support a dialogue for peace between the two sides.

The most recent gesture by the US administration is encouraging. The administration has asked Congress for minor changes to be made to the law so as to allow aid to continue to reach Palestinians if and when Hamas-backed officials join a unified Palestinian government. This step is important given the fact that previous US administrations followed the flawed and counterproductive policy of boycotting and isolating Hamas.

However, the task faced by President Barack Obama is indeed challenging, as he faces fierce opposition both in the United States and from Israel because of his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The reality is that nobody can afford to boycott the peace process or work in isolation from it.

Obama's call actually works towards enhancing unity talks between the two leading Palestinian factions - Fatah and Hamas.

The most serious obstacle for Obama is not the Palestinians - rather it is the Israelis, who have resisted any remote possibility for the peace process to be revived. It is this very position that has led the Palestinians to lose faith and question the entire peace process.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently stated that Palestinians will not be pressured into resuming peace talks as long as the construction of colonies continues. Such a state of despair should not be allowed to continue. It is therefore high time for the peace process to be placed back on the agenda and for Obama's small but steady steps to be encouraged, supported and taken forward.

As the international donors for Gaza gathered on Monday to discuss rebuilding the devastated Gaza Strip, it was revealed by the Israeli group Peace Now that Israel is planning to expand colonies in the West Bank. There are now plans to build more than 70,000 illegal homes on the occupied Palestinian land.

Some consider this to be a natural extension of previous Israeli policies. Most likely though, the Jewish state is seeking to deliver a clear message to the Quartet and to the new US administration specifically: unilateral Israeli plans will be carried out regardless of international laws or the stalled peace process. Israel shows absolutely no commitment to the two-state solution and the current Israeli political scene reflects a lack of interest in either talking to the Palestinians or slowing down the pace of occupation. Israel is currently putting in place one of the most right-wing governments in recent years.

Even though Israel is aware of the fact that according to international law, in the absence of a peace deal, it must freeze its colony activity, the Jewish state's only consistent policy has been constructing and expanding colonies in the occupied territories. The onus is on the new US President Barack Obama to confront Israel and take rapid action to stop such illegal policies from being carried out.

Occupied Jerusalem: Tzipi Livni, who hopes to be appointed Israel's prime minister-designate, said on Monday Israel must give up considerable territory in exchange for peace with the Palestinians, drawing a clear distinction with her rival, Benjamin Netanyahu.

She told a convention of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organisations, "we need to give up parts of the Land of Israel", using a term for areas that include today's Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, repeating her well-known view that pulling out of Palestinian areas would be for the good of Israel, to maintain it as a Jewish state.

Livni told the US Jewish leaders that Israel must take the initiative and come forward with its own peace plan to head off international programmes. "Any plan put on the table will not be in our interest," she said.

She also said she won't take her Kadima party into a coalition led by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu without a commitment to promote a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

"Kadima will not join a government under Netanyahu that has an ideology that I am not a partner to," Livni said in an interview on Channel Two television late yesterday. "I have no intention of being a fig leaf for a government of paralysis."

Livni's centrist Kadima Party won one more seat than the hawkish Likud, led by Netanyahu. He opposes large-scale territorial concessions in peace talks with the Palestinians. He believes negotiations should concentrate instead on building up the Palestinian economy

In his address before the gathering, Netanyahu ruled out unilateral pullbacks from territory, criticising Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, charging that it allowed the group Hamas to take over there.

He said he, too, does not want to govern Palestinians, but Israel must maintain control of all borders, airspace and electronic traffic, indicating that his offer to the Palestinians would be considerably less than a sovereign state.

"Regardless of how the solution is achieved, the Palestinians should run their lives," he said. "They should govern themselves, but they shouldn't have powers that would threaten the state of Israel."

Netanyahu and Livni, the current foreign minister, both claimed victory in last week's election. Each hopes to be picked by President Shimon Peres to form the next government.

Netanyahu appears to have the edge, because a majority of members in the new parliament agree with his views.

Official results of Israel's election are scheduled to be published today, and then Peres will begin formal consultations with the 12 parties in the new parliament.

He is expected to choose a premier-designate within a few days, starting a period of up to six weeks for coalition negotiations.

In an interview broadcast Monday evening on Channel 2 TV, Livni invited Netanyahu to serve in a government she would lead. "I am appealing here to Benjamin Netanyahu to join forces with me in a unity government with a policy that represents the centre of the political map," she said. She has rejected a similar offer from Netanyahu.