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.”

Jerusalem - The Palestinian and Jordanian governments on Tuesday recommended withdrawing recognition of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Jerusalem, a victory for rebel clergy seeking to oust him over his alleged role in a contentious land deal.

The deal leasing church properties in east Jerusalem to a Jewish group has infuriated Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as capital of a future state.

The decision of Jordan, which is still regarded as the custodian of Jerusalem holy sites, needs final approval from King Abdullah II but is expected to seal the fate of Patriarch Irineos I. The patriarch's supporters said he would accept the king's decision.

Church tradition holds that the patriarch must be recognized by the chief powers in the area _ Israel, the Palestinians and Jordan.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas also must approve the recommendation by his Cabinet to withdraw recognition, a senior official said.

"We are in full coordination with the Jordanians," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Abbas was traveling in South America on Tuesday and did not comment.

Israeli officials said they would not get involved.

Archbishop Aristarchous, the chief secretariat of the church, said the patriarchate regards Jordan as the principle authority.

"We are bound to the Jordanian government by an old law," he said. "I think Irineos has to be accept this. I don't know what his intentions are, but objectively he should accept this decision."

The church complies with a 1958 Jordanian law that bans any sale of church land and property. Jordan ruled east Jerusalem and the West Bank until Israel seized the territories in the 1967 Middle East War. Israel has since annexed east Jerusalem.

Jordan renounced its claims to east Jerusalem in 1988, but maintains custody of holy shrines there.

Archmandrite Milinios Bassal, an Irineos supporter, said the patriarch will abide by the king's decision, but added: "We believe the Jordanian government decision was is based on false and incomplete facts and we hope that the king will not ratify it."

Irineos' opponents in the Church said last week that the 17-member Synod Holy Synod, the church's main decision-making body, had dismissed him. But Irineos' supporters said the vote was invalid because the patriarch had not convened the Synod.

Archmandrite Atallah Hannah, a church spokesman and critic of Irineos, praised the Palestinian Cabinet's decision.

"We thank and salute the Palestinian government for its position and we hope that president Mahmoud Abbas will adopt this position," he said.

Irineos, who has denied any involvement in the deal, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The need to receive government recognition of the patriarch dates back to when the Holy Land was ruled by the Muslim Ottoman empire, which ruled other religions through their religious leaders, said Daniel Rossing, an expert on Christian denominations in the Holy Land.

The Israeli army on Tuesday denied reports that its troops forced a Palestinian man to play his violin at West Bank roadblock, publicly humiliating him, before allowing him to pass.

A human rights activist who filmed the Nov. 9 incident said soldiers ordered Wissem Tayem, 28, to play the instrument for about two minutes before permitting him to cross the Beit Iba checkpoint near the city of Nablus.

The army, however, said a probe found the soldiers had not acted improperly, but were guilty at most of insensitivity. The army said it drew its conclusions after interviewing the activist and all the military personnel present at the post that day.

"Our investigation concluded that he was not forced or even asked to play. He did it by himself and it only continued for 10 seconds," said the regional commander, who identified himself by his rank and first name as Col. Yuval.

However, Wissam Tayem, 28, told the Associated Press Tuesday that the soldiers not only made him play, they also "told me to play something sad."

Video images show Tayem standing and playing his violin behind a concrete barrier as a soldier inspects his documents.

Tayem said he was traveling from Nablus, where he is a student, to his home in a nearby refugee camp to look after his 70-year-old mother, who is ill.

"Even though it was humiliating, if they were to make me play again I would, because I have to go through to be with my mother," Tayem said.

Col. Yuval said the soldiers acted insensitively only in that they did not make Tayem stop playing sooner.

The army says the West Bank checkpoints prevent Palestinian bombers and gunmen from reaching Israeli targets. But the Palestinians say the roadblocks are a form of collective punishment, meant to crush their spirits.

Jewish settlers with assault rifles slung over their shoulders moved into two buildings in a crowded Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem on Wednesday, setting off clashes between Israeli troops and Arab residents.

Palestinians, who claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, said the incident showed Israel was more interested in expanding settlements than in making peace. The settlers said they want to re-establish a Jewish presence in the neighborhood.

Israel says it will never relinquish the sector of the city it captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. In recent years, hawkish Jewish groups, with the backing of hardline governments and foreign investors, have bought several properties in east Jerusalem to strengthen Israel's hold there.

At daybreak Wednesday, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews lugged boxes, chairs, tables and potted plants into buildings in the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem. A van packed with sofas and couches arrived, and settlers hauled a water tank onto the roof of one building and set up a generator.

Settlers said eight families are to move into the buildings - a seven-story apartment building and a smaller house - which investors bought for them. The Arab owner of the smaller house said his property was seized unlawfully.

After settlers moved into the two buildings Wednesday morning, clashes erupted in a narrow alley. Palestinian residents began throwing stones from rooftops.

Police and soldiers commandeered three nearby buildings, stationing themselves on rooftops and firing tear gas at the demonstrators. Troops also entered four other Palestinian homes, pulling young men out. Police beat one Palestinian man with a baton and handcuffed six others, dragging them away.

Nine Palestinians were arrested for stone-throwing, and six police officers were hurt, police spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby said. At least three Palestinians were seen bleeding.

The settlers said they were members of the Committee for the Renewal of the Yemenite Village in Shiloah - Shiloah is Hebrew for Silwan - and that their aim was to re-establish a Jewish presence in the neighborhood.

Daniel Luria, a spokesman for the committee, said a community of Jews from Yemen had been established in the area 122 years ago. In 1938, the last of the families were forced to leave during Arab riots, he said.

"Sixty-six years later we have returned Jewish families to the area with the idea of living side-by-side with the Arabs," Luria said, adding that three of the eight families are of Yemenite heritage so "it's really closing a circle."

Sharon adviser Roan Gissin said the Jewish group had the right to live where it wanted in the city.

"There are no Jerusalem settlements ... all of Jerusalem is under Israeli sovereignty since 1967," he said. "It is not so-called occupied land."

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat blamed Israel's government for supporting settlers. "(The settlers) have taken the law into their own hands before; they are taking the law into their hands now with the assistance of the government," he said.

Early Wednesday, Israeli soldiers destroyed the Hazon David settlement outpost - a tent and a shack used as a synagogue - near Hebron in the southern West Bank.

Several hours later, about 300 settlers trying to rebuild the outpost clashed with security forces. David Wilder, a settler spokesman, said a teenager was kicked in the head and was on his way to the hospital.

Under the "road map" peace plan, Israel is supposed to take down dozens of unauthorized outposts and Palestinians must dismantle violent groups.

However, the plan has stalled and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed unilaterally pulling out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.

Sharon said Tuesday he would hold a binding referendum within his hardline Likud Party on the plan.

A "no" vote, at a time when Sharon is also under investigation for alleged corruption, would leave him wounded politically, while a "yes" vote could be the final blow to Likud hard-liners who oppose territorial concessions.

A poll published Wednesday in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper showed 51 percent of Likud members support the plan, while 36 percent opposed it. The Dahaf Institute poll questioned 507 Likud members and had a 4.4 percent margin of error.

"I will bring these things to a democratic test," Sharon said of his plan.

Likud officials said the vote could take place in May, after Sharon returns from a trip to Washington, where he is scheduled to meet President Bush on April 14. Three U.S. envoys were to arrive Wednesday in Israel, seeking more information about the plan.

On Tuesday, the sponsors of the road map - United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia - met in Brussels to discuss reviving the proposal, diplomatic sources said. They expressed qualified support for Sharon's Gaza plan, as long as it leads to further pullbacks and is in keeping with the road map blueprint, the sources said.

The pullout would mark a reversal for Sharon, who has long been a driving force behind expanding Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

In 1987, he moved into an apartment in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City, at a time when he served as a Cabinet minister. But he has rarely used it.

The group that moved into the Silwan neighborhood Wednesday said the two buildings were bought by private investors interested in reviving the Yemenite village and in buying homes near Jerusalem's most hotly disputed holy site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

The larger building appeared empty, but Silwan resident Awad Rajbi said he bought the smaller home six months ago.

Ben-Ruby, the police spokesman, said the Jewish group had a contract showing they bought the house in 2001.

"We have sent both sides to court, and the court will decide whom the house belongs to," he said.