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.”

Police carried out a pre-dawn raid on the Yitzhar settlement, near the Palestinian town Yasuf, where the mosque was attacked last month.

They are investigating whether there is a link between those arrested and the arson attack, police sources said.

The floor of the mosque and a stand holding copies of the Quran were burned in the December attack.

Of the 10 people arrested on suspicion of damaging Palestinian property four were minors and would be released soon, Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said.

The other six, who included Zvi Sukkot of Yitzhar, Eliran Elgali of Yitzhar and Shlomo Gilbert of Elon Moreh, all 20 years old, were still being questioned, he said.

He denied claims by a Yitzhar resident, reported in the Israeli media, that police beat residents, damaged property and even confiscated cameras.

Mr Rosenfeld said the only items confiscated were spikes, as sometimes used on roads to prevent entry, and the type of torches used to carry a flame.

Witnesses told local media about 100 police entered the settlement, some of whom forced their way into the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva, or Jewish seminary.

The yeshiva issued a statement accusing the authorities of persecuting its staff and students.

The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, published a book last year which, according to the Israeli media, says it is permissible for Jews to kill non-Jews if their presence "causes danger to Jews" - including children "if it is clear they will grow up to harm us".

In the December attack, graffiti was sprayed in Hebrew on the mosque wall which read: "Get ready to pay the price," Israeli public radio reported. Another read: "We will burn you all."

Some hard-line settlers say they will attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.

It is a policy they call the "price tag".

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered a 10-month lull in permits for new settlement homes in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem.

The order followed US and Palestinian calls for a total freeze in settlement building.

Palestinian officials have refused to rejoin peace talks until a total freeze is imposed.

All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Israel's hardline Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has told Israeli ambassadors to stop "grovelling" and defend their national honour.

He told a shocked audience of some 150 envoys in Jerusalem to "stop turning the other cheek" whenever Israel was insulted, Israeli media report.

The envoys were reportedly given no right of reply at the conference.

"We received a monologue without being able to hold a discussion," one unnamed ambassador told Haaretz newspaper.

'A response to everything'

Israel's top diplomat, who worked as a nightclub bouncer in his youth in the USSR, is known for his abrasive style. He famously once said that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could "go to hell".

"I have seen that some ambassadors identify themselves with the other side to such an extent that they are all the time trying to justify and explain," he told the ambassadors meeting at the foreign ministry, according to several reports of the event.

"Terms like 'national honour' have value in the Middle East," he was reported to have said.

"There must not be an attitude of obsequiousness and self-deprecation, and the need to always justify the other side. This is the wrong approach.

"We will not turn the other cheek. There will be a response to everything," the reports quoted him as saying.

In an editorial, the liberal Haaretz condemned Mr Lieberman's "shamefully bullying approach" and called for him to be sacked.

They are being designated as national priority zones, meaning they will qualify for grants, tax benefits, and other forms of aid.

The move comes amid anger by Jewish settlers at a government-imposed curb on new building in settlements.

The Labour Party leader warned some of the new money might go to extremists.

On Friday a mosque in the West Bank was set on fire, and sprayed with Hebrew graffiti.

Labour leader Ehud Barak said: "I don't think that we need to award them a prize in the form of including them in the national priority map."

His five ministers in the coalition government voted against the plan. The other three right-wing parties in the coalition - Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas - voted for it.

Arabs to benefit

The national priority zones plan is designed to funnel money into deprived areas. About two million Israelis live in those areas - approximately 110,000 of them in West Bank settlements.

The international community considers all settlements in Israeli-occupied Palestinian land as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

A senior government official said far more Israeli Arabs than Jewish settlements - eight times as many - would benefit from the programme.

But opposition parties denounced the inclusion of settlements, saying it proved the government was not committed to a peace process with the Palestinians.

The Kadima Party said it "cancelled out any declaration made by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu regarding two states for two peoples".

The left-wing Meretz faction submitted a motion of no-confidence in response to the plan.

But Mr Netanyahu denied the change had any implications for the peace process.

"We will determine the future of settlements only within the framework of a permanent agreement [with Palestinians]," he said.

In Israel, most men and women do military service. As a result, the public's attitude towards their military is rather familial and criticism is mostly expressed in private. But, suddenly, an increasing number of soldiers are openly protesting against their involvement in the evacuation of Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank, reports the BBC's Katya Adler.

The first demonstration to really catch Israelis' attention was last month at the swearing-in ceremony for hundreds of new soldiers in Jerusalem. The evening event was staged at the Western Wall, in religious and political terms, one of Israel's most significant sites.

It was there that a group of soldiers chose to wave a banner proclaiming that their battalion would not evacuate Jewish settlements.

Still fresh in Israeli minds is the pull-out from Gaza four years ago. More than 7,000 Jewish settlers were removed from their homes, some forcibly, by Israeli soldiers and border police. It was seen as a national trauma.

Now, around half a million Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Their homes are illegal under international law, which views the territory as occupied land.

Israel disputes this but its own law doesn't recognise some settlements, often referred to as outposts. Soldiers are called on to help dismantle them.

New refuseniks

Yoel Melamed's son is in a military detention centre for refusing to take part in the evacuation of a small Jewish settlement last week. He has also been demoted and removed from combat duty.

Mr Melamed told me how proud he was of his son, Ahiya, who grew up in a Jewish settlement.

"I agree with my son's actions. I am happy to have a son like that. The Israeli army has one big purpose - to protect Israeli citizens. No democratic army in the world uses its army against its own people."

Israel's press has nicknamed the dissenting soldiers refuseniks, the same term used for the few Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the West Bank or Gaza because they oppose Israel's military occupation.

The new refuseniks say they were trained to fight "terror", not throw fellow Jews out of their homes.

They are being encouraged, publicly, by a number of Israeli rabbis. They, along with most religious Jews, believe that the West Bank is part of the Holy Land given to the Jewish people by God. They insist Jews have every right to live there.

A growing number of religious Jewish soldiers are choosing to serve in Israel's combat units.

Many come straight from centres for Jewish teaching, known as yeshivas. There are battalions, serving in the West Bank, that are made up mainly of yeshiva students.

God or country?

The Israeli press is full of editorials arguing that the soldiers will have to choose between God and country when it comes to receiving orders that clash with their religious beliefs.

It's a huge problem for Israel's leaders. Evacuating a large number of West Bank settlements will be key to any eventual peace deal with the Palestinians.

Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has strongly condemned the dissenters.

He said the security and existence of Israel depended on its army and that "refusing" soldiers could bring about the destruction of the country.

But many soldiers view Jewish settlements as a political, not an existential issue for Israel. They don't want to be involved.

Israelis fear the issue could tear apart their army from the inside - a military that the outside world regards as the most powerful in the Middle East.