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.”

Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, a panel of human rights experts reporting to a U.N. body said on Tuesday, disputing a conclusion reached by a separate U.N. probe into Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship.

The so-called Palmer Report on the Israeli raid of May 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists said earlier this month that Israel had used unreasonable force in last year's raid, but its naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip was legal.

A panel of five independent U.N. rights experts reporting to the U.N. Human Rights Council rejected that conclusion, saying the blockade had subjected Gazans to collective punishment in "flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law".

The four-year blockade deprived 1.6 million Palestinians living in the enclave of fundamental rights, they said.

"In pronouncing itself on the legality of the naval blockade, the Palmer Report does not recognise the naval blockade as an integral part of Israel's closure policy towards Gaza which has a disproportionate impact on the human rights of civilians," they said in a joint statement.

An earlier fact-finding mission named by the same U.N. forum to investigate the flotilla incident also found in a report last September that the blockade violated international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says the blockade violates the Geneva Conventions.

Israel says its Gaza blockade is a precaution against arms reaching Hamas and other Palestinian guerrillas by sea.

The four-man panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer found Israel had used unreasonable force in dealing with what it called "organised and violent resistance from a group of passengers".

Turkey has downgraded ties with Israel over the incident.

Richard Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and one of the five experts who issued Tuesday's statement, said the Palmer report's conclusions were influenced by a desire to salve Turkish-Israeli ties.

"The Palmer report was aimed at political reconciliation between Israel and Turkey. It is unfortunate that in the report politics should trump the law," he said in the statement.

About one-third of Gaza's arable land and 85 percent of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures, said Olivier De Schutter, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, another of the five.

At least two-thirds of Gazan households lack secure access to food, he said. "People are forced to make unacceptable trade-offs, often having to choose between food or medicine or water for their families."

The other three experts were the U.N. special rapporteurs on physical and mental health; extreme poverty and human rights; and access to water and sanitation.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy backed the creation of a "viable" Palestinian state on Monday but was cautious about repeating his foreign minister's support for possible recognition of a state before its borders were set.

Speaking at a news conference in Paris with visiting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Sarkozy repeated France's support for statehood for Palestinians but added: "We have always said a viable Palestinian state."

"What we want when we argue for a Palestinian state is a real state, which can give hope and a future for millions of Palestinians. It's not just an idea," he told reporters.

In a newspaper interview at the weekend, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that to break a stalemate in Middle East peacemaking, some countries might recognize a Palestinian state before its borders were fixed.

"One can imagine a Palestinian state being rapidly declared and immediately recognized by the international community, even before negotiating its borders. I would be tempted by that," he told the Journal du Dimanche.

Sarkozy said that Kouchner was thinking of possible ways to bring momentum to the peace process but that France's goal remained a functioning Palestinian state in clearly set borders.

"In Bernard's comments, there was the thought that if we don't manage that, then when the time comes, in accord with our Palestinian friends, we might underline the idea of this state politically, to lift it up a notch in a way," he said.

"But the objective is the idea of a Palestinian state in the frontiers of 1967, with an exchange of territory, just as we have said all along."

'Geopolitical conditions are ripe'

The Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership said last year it would seek UN Security Council backing for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war.

It said the initiative would not be a unilateral declaration of statehood but would aim to secure international support for the eventual creation of a state based on the 1967 borders.

Sarkozy said that if any such initiative were launched, "we would see what we would do" but that it was up to the Palestinians to decide how they wished to proceed.

Israel has sharply criticized the idea of any unilateral initiative and says only negotiations can produce results.

But there has been growing speculation in Israel that the Palestinians are looking for ways around direct talks which have been suspended for over a year.

A think-tank close to the Israeli government says the Palestinians "have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood" with serious implications for Israel.

"Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia," said a recent paper by Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

The EU and the United States recognized the independence of Kosovo without the support of a Security Council resolution. Palestinian leaders now believe "geopolitical conditions are ripe" to follow that path, Diker said.

Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Islamist movement's government in the coastal enclave, said other armed groups in the Gaza Strip should observe what has amounted to a ceasefire since Israel's major offensive a year ago. That, Haniyeh said, was in the interests of protecting Gazans from Israeli attacks.

Monday, Israel's defense minister had warned Hamas to rein in its allies "or else" -- a threat of more Israeli action.

Rocket fire by smaller groups Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, and Israeli air strikes that killed several Palestinians, made the past two weeks among the most violent since the three-week war that killed 13 Israelis and over 1,400 Palestinians before a ceasefire in mid-January 2009.

"We call upon Palestinian factions to intensify their meetings in order to reinforce the national agreement and to work in a joint spirit to protect our people and to protect our interests and to block any possible Israeli aggression against our people," Haniyeh said before a cabinet meeting in Gaza.

Despite denials from some of the smaller groups, Hamas has insisted lately there was an agreement to hold back on attacks.

EGYPTIAN RELATIONS

While hostility between Hamas and Israel is the norm, the Palestinian Islamist movement has also been concerned of late over a deterioration in relations with Egypt, which controls the short southern border of the Gaza Strip.

Already frustrated in its efforts to promote reconciliation between Hamas and the rival Fatah party of West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and by its difficulties in brokering a prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel, Cairo was angered last week by the death of a soldier at the Gaza border.

He was shot during clashes when Hamas supporters rallied at the frontier in the town of Rafah to protest at Egyptian efforts to stem supplies reaching Gaza through secret tunnels.

Egyptian officials have said the soldier was hit by a bullet fired from the Palestinian side. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said Tuesday there was evidence the Egyptian border guard could have been hit by a bullet from his own side.

Whatever the case, Haniyeh said, Hamas was working in good faith to clarify what happened and to protect relations with Cairo: "We are carrying out an investigation ... (which) aims to arrive at the truth and to put measures in place that ensure Palestinian-Egyptian relations are protected."

Cairo has long had cool relations with Hamas, which shares roots with the banned Egyptian opposition movement the Muslim Brotherhood. But Egypt, the first Arab state to make peace with Israel, is also keen to avoid being portrayed as an ally of the Jewish state in its conflict with the Palestinians.

(Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Tim Pearce)

Hamas said on Sunday the Islamist group was in the final stages of reconciling with the rival Palestinian Fateh Party after its leader met Saudi officials to try to narrow the rift.

"We made great strides towards achieving reconciliation," Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal told reporters at the Saudi foreign ministry during a visit to Riyadh. "We are in the final stages now."

An Egyptian proposal to promote reconciliation between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fateh group has called for presidential and legislative elections to be held in the West Bank and Gaza Strip next June.

Mishaal said Hamas still had some points to resolve in the Egyptian proposal.

Azzam Al Ahmad, a senior Fateh official, said Fateh had already endorsed the Egyptian proposal and it was up to Hamas to either follow suit or reject it.

"We urge Hamas to sign it so that we begin implementing the agreement," Ahmad told Reuters.

Mishaal's meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal was designed to help reconciliation of the feud, Saudi officials said.

Another senior Fateh official, Zeyad Abu Ein, said Mishaal was trying to put on a good face in Saudi Arabia.

"Khaled Mishaal did not come with anything new. The Palestinian people and Fateh are waiting for Hamas to sign on the Egyptian paper for reconciliation to take place," he said.

Egyptian barrier

Mishaal said Hamas wants Saudi Arabia to play a special role alongside Egypt and other Arab countries to unify the Palestinian position and also to prompt Arabs to confront the Israeli government.

It was the first known meeting between Saudi and Hamas officials since Saudi Arabia brokered the Mecca Agreement in 2007 between Hamas and Fateh.

After the Mecca agreement, Hamas drove the Fateh movement out of the Gaza Strip. Abbas' Palestinian Authority runs the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel pulled out of the cramped Mediterranean Gaza enclave in 2005, then launched a military offensive against it in late 2008 in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed and key infrastructure destroyed.

Mishaal's meeting with Saudi officials took place ahead of an expected visit by the US presidential envoy for the Middle East, George Mitchell.

Saudi officials say Iranian support for Hamas has widened the rift with Fateh and hampers a resumption of peace talks.

"This meeting should dissipate doubts about roles being played in our region," Saudi Arabia's Faisal said. "We must clarify the picture, especially to Palestinian officials, and also understand from them what are their orientations and goals."

A Western diplomat said Hamas also hopes Riyadh will convince Cairo to abandon a plan to build an underground barrier along its border with the Gaza Strip.

Hamas calls the project a "wall of death" that could seal an Israeli-led blockade by smothering smuggler tunnels from the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

"The wall could turn the table on Hamas," the diplomat said.

Hamas does not recognise Israel's right to exist and opposes the Fateh strategy pursued by Abbas of seeking to negotiate a permanent peace deal.