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.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is under firm Egyptian pressure aimed at forcing him to agree to the resumption of peace negotiations with Israel. According to the London-based Arabic-language al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, Abbas refused to restart the talks based on an American proposal that he must waive his demand for a complete freeze in the construction of settlements.

According to the report, Abbas is under "a direct threat that he will be completely ignored by the Egyptian leadership." According to the newspaper, a series of reports have claimed that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak threatened the Palestinians that his country would completely give up on the Palestinian issue if Abbas failed to accept Cairo's demand and fully cooperate with the Egyptians.

During his visit to Amman two days ago, where he met with US special envoy George Mitchell, Abbas complained that he cannot accept the Egyptian and American request to resume the negotiations without any preconditions and without Arab and Palestinian support.

The Palestinian president therefore turned to Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and asked him to intervene in order to find a way out from the Egyptian pressure. In Amman, Abbas complained to Jordan's King Abdullah II about the great embarrassment he is in following the recent crisis.

Official Jordanian sources expressed Abbas' fear that Egypt would continue threatening him, saying he was confused as he failed to understand the entire reason for the Egyptian pressure.

They also noted that the Palestinian leader had complained about the firm and harsh remarks made by the Egyptians towards their Palestinian colleagues during their discussions.

A senior Hamas source told the London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published Friday morning that the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian organization on a prisoner exchange deal are facing three major obstacles: Israel's refusal to release 50 prisoners out of 450 demanded by Hamas, its insistence on deporting 130 prisoners, and its refusal to include Israeli Arabs in the deal.

According to the source, the German mediator has been visiting the Gaza Strip and Israel, relaying different offers to both sides in a bid to overcome the difficulties. One of the options raised, the source said, was to deport some of the 50 prisoners Israeli refuses to release abroad, deport others to the Gaza Strip and leave the rest in jail. According to the source, the talks are progressing but no one can predict their results.

Saudi newspaper al-Watan published a similar report, quoting sources monitoring the negotiations as saying that Hamas rejected the offer it received from Israel through the German mediator.

According to the Saudi report, the dispute revolves around Israel's refusal to release 15 prisoners, headed by former Tanzim leader in the West Bank Marwan Barghouti, Secretary-General of the Popular Resistance for the Liberation of Palestine Ahmed Saadat, and 10 leaders of Hamas' military wing, including Abdullah Barghouti and Ibrahim Hamed.

"This is a red line," one of the sources said. "There is no chance the deal will go through without their release."

According to the reports, Israel has also turned down some of the demands made by Hamas. A Hamas source told the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper that the German mediator informed the organization heads that Israel is adamant in its refusal to accept some of their demands.

"This response by Israel could complicate some of the issues related to the negotiations," he said.

According to the report, Hamas may delay the deal's completion following Israel's response, relayed by the mediator, that it refuses to release some of the prisoners on Hamas' list and to accept some of the special arrangements demanded by the Palestinian organization as part of the deal.

'Shalit hasn't been transffered to Egypt'

Arab media reported Thursday that kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit had been transferred to Egypt. But Abu Mujahed, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, said that the reports were media "experimental balloons" spread by the Israelis in order to try to gain information on the Palestinian organizations' stands.

According to Abu Mujahed, the ball is in the Israeli court and the Israeli government could end the affair if it were to accept the demands made by the groups holding Shalit.

He said the reports that Shalit had been transferred to Cairo were false. "We haven't finalized the deal yet in a way that we could start implementing it," he said, calling on the media to be cautious in their reports, which damage the prisoners' morale.

Hamas' representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, also denied a report in Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida that Shalit had been transferred to Cairo together with Hamas strongman Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar and Ahmed Jabari, commander of the organization's military wing. Hamdan said the reports were groundless.

The High Court of Justice ruled this week that the details of the prisoner exchange deal would remain secret and that the judges would not intervene in the military censorship's considerations. They rejected a petition filed by bereaved parents, saying that they had been convinced that the prohibition on publishing the negotiations' details was the result of clear security considerations.

The al-Hayat newspaper also reported that Israel and Hamas had agreed on the names of 400 prisoners which would be released in the first stage of the deal, and that the dispute remained over the names of the other 50 prisoners.

A senior Hamas member told the paper that the main disagreement between the sides revolved around the release of Barghouti, Saadat and three female prisoners.

Will Israel free Marwan Barghouti but keep him away from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ? London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper on Wednesday quoted sources involved in the negotiations for a prisoner exchange deal as saying that Israel was willing to discuss the release – and deportation – of the former Tanzim secretary-general in the West Bank.

According to the sources, the talks on Barghouti are still going on, but if Israel insists on deporting him from the West Bank, it will be entirely up to him.

The senior Fatah member is considered very powerful in the Palestinian street, and his name has been mentioned as one of the candidates to replace President Abbas. Several Israeli officials have also for his release, regardless of the swap deal.

The name of the former Tanzim leader, who is serving four life sentences in Israel for his involvement in deadly terror attacks, has been mentioned more than once as a main bone of contentions in the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas.

Barghouti's brother said last week that the family had received information that he would be released, but Vice Premier Silvan Shalom insisted in an interview with the BBC on the same day that Barghouti and Ahmed Saadat, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, would not be released.

Al-Hayat also quoted Palestinian sources as saying that the German mediator had delivered an offer to Hamas last week with "new principles", which would be "more convenient" to the movement than the ones presented in the previous round of talks five months ago.

The "new offer" includes a reduction in the number of prisoners slated to be deported from the West Bank, an Israeli acceptance of the principle of releasing east Jerusalem residents, an agreement to release prisoners from Hamas' "ground ranks" in accordance with the list submitted, and senior prisoners like Barghouti, Saadat, and members of Hamas' military wing, including Abdullah Barghouti, Ibrahim Hamed, Hassan Salameh, and others.

According to the report, which matches information reported by the al-Arabiya network two days ago, the mediator is expected to meet with Hamas members in the Gaza Strip in order to listen to the movement's stand in regards to the proposal package following consultations within Hamas.

Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar also referred to the swap deal on Wednesday, saying that Hamas feared Israel would try to kidnap soldier Gilad Shalit while he is being transferred to Egypt, without releasing the prisoners.

According to an Egyptian source, an intelligence and Foreign Ministry delegation from Cairo will be sent to Gaza to receive the Israeli soldier from his captors.

The delegation is then slated to return to Egypt under special security arrangements. The source noted that the place where Shalit would be handed over to the Egyptians had yet to be determined, in light of the fear of a last-moment "Israeli maneuver".

The United States has offered Israel, Egypt and Persian Gulf countries to be part of a nuclear umbrella against an Iranian attack, Egyptian newspaper al-Gumhoria reported Thursday.

In its editorial, the newspaper slammed the idea of a "suspicion umbrella", defining it as "a bribe to Israel for indirect normalization purposes."

According to the report, US President Barack Obama us under increasing pressure by Congress members, members of the Jewish lobby, Jewish organizations and the media, after his Cairo speech which was perceived as pro-Arab and anti-Israel.

Due to this growing pressure, the editorial stated, White House advisors and several pro-Israel Congress members suggested "offering a bribe or compensation to Israel so that it approaches the conditions of peace in a more convenient manner. That bribe was the American umbrella of defense against Iran in order to protect the Gulf states."

The newspaper's editor wrote that some of the American administration's "shrewd" advisors said that including the Gulf states together with the US and Israel would serve as indirect normalization between countries ruling this out, like Saudi Arabia.

'Satanic plan'

According to the idea, Israeli and American aircraft would be deployed in those Arab countries in preparation of a response against any expected Iranian strike. Everyone knows, the editor wrote, that those bases would be used to launch a war on Iran if the American diplomatic dialogue with Tehran were to fail.

"The deceptive thought was that Israel would in actual fact defend the Gulf states against the danger they are saying is approaching. We cannot rule out a possibility that they would even present the Gulf rulers with satellite images showing that an Iranian attack against the region is imminent. And this will lead to a war Israel has been planning for some time, with Israel turning later on into the only nuclear regional force in the Middle East, which will be a huge gain as far as they are concerned," the editorial said.

"The American defense umbrella which Israel will be part of is aimed at allowing Israel to enjoy the Gulf countries' trust and be part of the defense lineup over the economic wealth of oil-producing countries. This is indirect normalization and a concealed bribe to Israel."

According to the editor, "The only one to reveal this satanic plan was President Hosni Mubarak, who was very firm in his response. He stressed that Egypt does not support free normalization with Israel, regardless of its reasons."

According to the editorial, Cairo is against taking part in the defense ally, even if Israel is not part of it.

Several days ago, the newspaper's editor wrote, more than 200 Republican and Democratic Congress member send a letter to Saudi King Abdullah, expressing their disappointment over his failure to accept President Obama's call to make steps of normalization towards Israel.