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 unexpected aggressive bombardment of military sites near the Syrian capital last week has complicated matters both regionally and internationally, raising serious doubts about the intentions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, immediately after the raids on Friday and Sunday, left directly for Beijing for talks with new Chinese leaders.

Netanyahu’s trip followed immediately after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had concluded his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who revealed a four-point proposal for settling the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The proposal endorsed full Palestinian sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 armistice lines and occupied East Jerusalem serving as the Palestinian capital, underlying the fact that this “is an alienable right of the Palestinian people and the key to the settlement of the Palestinian Question”. At the same time, the four-point proposal said: “Israel’s right to exist and its legitimate security concerns should be fully respected.”

Whether the Chinese proposal that has also endorsed the amended 2002 Arab Peace Initiative will be a catalyst in the anticipated negotiations remains to be seen. The amendments were revealed in Washington during a visit by an Arab League delegation in order to placate the Israelis.

However, the motive behind Israel’s aggressive actions in Syria, which the Obama administration said was undertaken without prior consultation with the White House, had been seen as an attempt by the Netanyahu government to shelve any talks about a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and focus all attention on the bloody upheaval in Syria.

The Israeli prime minister was reported earlier this month to be worried that the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, who seemed determined to focus immediately on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has been “drifting” towards the Arab League stance on the two-state solution.

“The prime minister’s advisers are not keen about the Arab League’s announcement,” the Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported. “Netanyahu and his advisers believe it would have been better had this announcement not been made.”

Israel has reportedly been dissatisfied with the Arab announcement underlying the new amendment that revealed Arab willingness to make “small shifts” in Israel’s 1967 armistice lines. In other words, “minimal” land swaps. At present, there are more than 500,000 Israelis who settled illegally in the West Bank.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, now Justice Minister in the Netanyahu cabinet in charge of the peace process, had, in the past, accepted land swaps of 6-10 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank area. The Palestinians were reportedly ready to exchange 1.9 per cent of the West Bank’s area in the past. Haaretz reported: “The fact that Kerry stood beside Qatar’s prime minister while he was reading the announcement (about the ”small shifts” in the 1967 Israeli armistice line) increased Netanyahu’s aides’ suspicions toward Kerry.”

The Arab League officials who were in Washington had assured Kerry and Vice-President Joe Biden that the League was still committed to the plan it first proposed more than 10 years ago in 2002. Once the agreement is signed, all Arab states are committed to normalise relations with Israel. This position was reported to President Barack Obama during his visit to Ramallah last month.

Israel’s public dissatisfaction with the amended Arab League initiative prompted it to launch its attacks on Syria in a bid to divert international attention to the presence in Syria of caches of Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah, the fighter group that controls the Lebanese-Israeli armistice lines. Israeli leaders have apparently forgotten that Hezbollah has not had any confrontation with Israel since the 2006 war; hence their exaggeration should be dismissed outright.

Although the Obama administration is still uncertain about its next step towards Syria, Israel’s blatant raids last week carry enormous risks. “Instead of prodding Russia into calling for Al Assad’s ouster, it can bring greater Arab sympathy for Al Assad and prompt deeper involvement from Iran and Hezbollah,” the Associated Press acknowledged in a dispatch from Moscow. In fact, the Arab League has already denounced the two Israeli airstrikes.

In an obvious attempt to improve the political atmosphere, the Israeli Army radio station claimed that Netanyahu has this week ordered a freeze on publishing tenders for new West Bank colony homes to avoid hampering US efforts to renew peace talks. However, a quick response from Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran exposed the farce. “This is not a settlement [colony] freeze because construction in the settlements [colonies] is continuing, but you could say it is a show of restraint by Benjamin Netanyahu who does not want to be accused by the Americans of being responsible for the failure of their efforts to restart negotiations with the Palestinians.”

The tragic Boston bombing that killed three and wounded more than 250 others has, unsurprisingly, resonated worldwide, driving some, including hundreds of Palestinian and international runners who were about to launch the Bethlehem Marathon in the small Palestinian town where Jesus Christ was believed to have been born to observe one minute of silence in tribute to the American victims of this horrifying act.

This reflects the feelings of many Palestinians who are usually sympathetic with others, since they, too, have been victims of the merciless Israeli usurpation of their homeland and continued victimisation.

The Bethlehem marathon circles around the ancient biblical city four times on a course that was limited by the confines of Israel’s sprawling and illegal apartheid wall that divides Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories.

The two suspects in the Boston bombing, who are of Chechen origin, were reportedly motivated by the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their act came on the heels of a deadly attack last week in Afghanistan that killed 17 civilians, including 12 children.

Although the era of colonialism has theoretically ended, relations between Western nations and the developing world remain troublesome, if not dangerous, especially if Western military intervention, an expensive venture, seems the only recourse.

It is time that we all find a new way out of this debacle. It is obviously up to the new generation to come up with a more reasonable solution, as is evident in concerns of student groups around the world.

Coinciding with these events was, for example, a “historic decision” of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) at its annual conference in Seattle last week to support the Palestinian boycott of Israel academic institutions.

The 800 academics at the conference were responding positively to a call from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACHI), thus becoming the “first academic organisation in the US to boycott Israeli institutions which are deeply complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and human rights and denial of the right of education and academic freedom to Palestinians,” reported Mondoweiss.net.

It was also noteworthy that while in Turkey last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry unexpectedly saw, much to the disappointment of the Israelis, similarities between the recent Boston bombing and the 2010 Israel commando attack in international waters on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which, loaded with humanitarian aid, was heading to the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed then, and several other pro-Palestinian activists were wounded.

Kerry told a press briefing last Sunday in Istanbul: “I particularly say to the families of (Turkish) people who were lost in the incident that we understand these tragedies completely and we sympathise with them.”

Mentioning the Boston bombing, he noted: “It affects a community, it affects a country. We’re sensitive to that.”

Then Kerry revealed that he had asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to delay his scheduled trip to Gaza, explaining that it was not the right “point in time”. His suggestion created a Turkish uproar and the prime minister declared later that he was definitely going as scheduled to Gaza, where the Hamas is in full control.

This confrontation came just as the new Hamas politburo in Gaza was reportedly asking European leaders to take Hamas off their terrorism list, promising that there will not be henceforth any “martyrdom attacks inside Israel”.

Hamas officials say that they have not undertaken any such attacks since 2004. It is rather bewildering that the Obama administration, much like its predecessors, shuns any serious bid at twisting Israel’s arms to pave the road to peace in the Middle East. There are many other issues where American officials seem willing to hide their heads under the sand, refusing, for example, to focus on Israel’s nuclear arsenal but willing to confront Iran on the same issue.

More to the point, Israel is a major recipient of US financial and military aid which should be used by the Obama administration to compel Israel to reach a decent settlement with the Palestinians. All agree that time is running out for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Meantime, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, on a “charm offensive” in Israel, took a ride in an Israeli military plane and had a bird’s eye view of the country. If Hagel wants to be fair, he might as well take a tour of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and see its shockingly small area, now occupied by some 350,000 illegal Israeli settlers.

The tragic Boston bombings that killed three and wounded more than 250 have surprisingly resonated worldwide, driving some — including hundreds of Palestinian and international runners who were about to inaugurate the launch of the Bethlehem Marathon in the small Palestinian town where Jesus Christ was believed to have been born — to observe a minute’s silence in tribute to the American victims of this horrifying act.

This unprecedented and thoughtful public action reflects the feelings of many Palestinians who are sympathetic towards others, since they too have been victims of the merciless Israeli usurpation of their homeland and continued victimisation. For example, the Bethlehem Marathon circles the ancient biblical city four times on a course that was limited by the confines of Israel’s sprawling and illegal “Apartheid Wall” that divides Israel from the Occupied Territories.

The two suspects in the Boston bombings, who were of Chechen origin, were reportedly motivated by the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It came on the heels of a deadly attack last week in Afghanistan that killed 17 civilians, including 12 children.

Although the era of colonialism has theoretically ended, relations between the western nations and the Third World remain troublesome, if not dangerous; especially if western military intervention, an expensive venture, seems the only recourse. It is time that we all find a way out of this debacle. It is obviously up to the new generation to come up with a more reasonable solution, as is evident from concerns expressed by student groups around the world.

Coinciding with these remarkable events was, for example, a “historic decision” of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) at its annual conference in Seattle last week in support of a Palestinian boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The 800 academics at the conference were responding positively to a call from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACHI), thus becoming the “first academic organisation in the US to boycott Israeli institutions,” reported Mondoweiss.net, “which are deeply complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and human rights and denial of the right of education and academic freedom to Palestinians”.

It was also noteworthy that while in Turkey last week, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, unexpectedly saw, much to the disappointment of Israelis, similarities between the recent Boston bombings and the 2010 Israel commando attack in international waters on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara which was loaded with humanitarian aid for the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed then and several other pro-Palestinian activists were wounded.

Kerry told a press briefing last Sunday in Istanbul: “I particularly say to the families of [the Turkish] people who were lost in the incident that we understand these tragedies completely and we sympathise with them,” and citing the Boston bombing, he further noted: “It affects a community, it affects a country. We’re sensitive to that.”

Here, Kerry dropped a bombshell when he revealed that he had asked the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to delay his scheduled trip to Gaza, saying that it was not the right “point in time”. His suggestion created an uproar and the prime minister declared later that he was definitely going as scheduled to Gaza, where the Palestinian fighter group, Hamas, is in full control.

Unfortunately, this confrontation came at a time when the new Hamas politburo in Gaza was reportedly cajoling European leaders to take Hamas off their terror list — promising that there will not be henceforth any “martyrdom attacks inside Israel”. Hamas officials insist that they have not undertaken any such attacks since 2004.

It is rather bewildering that the Obama administration, much like its predecessors, shuns any serious bid at twisting Israel’s arms to pave the road to peace in Middle East. There are many other issues where American officials seem willing to hide their heads under the blanket, refusing, for example, to focus on Israel’s nuclear arsenal, but willing to confront Iran on the same issue. Israel is a major recipient of US financial and military aid, which should give the Obama administration more political ammunition to compel Israel to reach a decent settlement with the Palestinians. All agree that time is running out for a two-state solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Meanwhile, it was amazing to see Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, on a “charm offensive” in Israel last Sunday and willing to take a ride in an Israeli military plane the next day to have a bird’s eye view of the country — to see how small Israel is! If Hagel wanted to be fair, he might as well have taken a tour of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and seen its shockingly small area, now occupied by more than 350,000 illegal Israeli colonists. That is, if Israel allowed the Palestinians to take him aboard a plane to view the tiny West Bank. He could have told Kerry all about it.

It was noticeable that US President Barack Obama and, a few days later, Secretary of State John Kerry were both wearing blue neckties and white shirts when they met with Israel leaders, the former on his visit to last month and the latter in the past few days, in an obvious gesture of support to Israel, whose flag has blue and white colours.

This nauseating pandering to Israel, notable among some US officials and legislators, was again highlighted this week in a report in the London Guardian, which revealed that the pro-Israel California Democrat, Sen. Barbara Boxer, has been in league with AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) to introduce a Senate bill that would in essence seek “to codify Israel’s right to discriminate” against Arab-Americans should they want to visit Israel.

For the United States to allow foreigners to enter the US without a visa, the visitor’s country must abide by some conditions, chiefly reciprocity. Should Israel be admitted to the American “visa waiver” programme, which includes 37 other countries, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports one serious impediment: Israel has a practice of routinely refusing to allow Americans of Arab ethnicity or Muslim background to enter their country or the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The bill, formally named the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013, introduced by Boxer, which is also supported by Republican Roy Blunt, would allow Israel the right to exclude selected Americans from this right to visa-free entrance.

Moreover, Obama’s newly released 2014 budget request includes $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel and an additional $316 million for joint US-Israeli anti-missile systems. And the popular American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) says “this is just the tip of the iceberg”.

The American president, during his visit to Israel last month, pledged to extend US military aid to Israel well-beyond his presidency, with one report noting that his administration “is opening negotiations to give Israel up to $40 billion in US taxpayer-financed weapons through 2028”.

This year, the average US taxpayers will be giving Israel $21.29, ADC explained, insisting that “we should not be funding Israel’s occupation and oppression of the Palestinians”.

The ADC announcement is part of a national campaign to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and oppose giving Israel additional military funding. Other groups joining ADC include American Muslims for Palestine, Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace.

One other complication that may cast its long shadow on Kerry’s efforts in the Middle East has been the sudden resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the highly respected World Bank official who apparently put the Palestinian fiscal house in order.

Jonas Gahr Store, the foreign minister of Norway, had indirectly praised Fayyad for being “remarkably successful in building Palestinian public institutions”.

His upcoming absence from the Palestinian scene is bound to disappoint many a Palestinian and a Westerner, but in no way should this move curtail the international efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

The hope, of course, is that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas can now join forces to reach a peaceful accord with the Israelis who should drop their objection to Hamas.

If this seems unlikely in the immediately future, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ alternative course should be to form a Cabinet of technocrats that will supervise national elections. The results will determine the next steps.

All these national and international activities are bound to divert, though partially, Kerry’s seemingly well-intentioned peace efforts in the Middle East, particularly the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, that have raised high hopes in the region.

Last Tuesday’s meeting between Kerry and visiting Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Feisal in Washington was a headline grabber. The Saudi minister reportedly pled with the secretary of state to accelerate his efforts towards a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, especially that Kerry has shown a belated US interest in the Arab Peace Initiative.

What Kerry has to be mindful of in the days ahead is how to remain evenhanded and not be sidetracked by the petty fights in the region.