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 — A year after the United Nations-affiliated International Court at The Hague ruled that Israel’s West Bank security barrier is illegal, controversy over the section in and around Jerusalem could spark new international pressure on the Jewish state to change the fence route or stop construction altogether.

Palestinian leaders warn that the planned route of the “Jerusalem envelope,” which would cut off more than 50,000 Palestinians from the city, could spell the end of any peace initiatives with Israel, and they’re threatening to take the case back to the United Nations.

As with the first West Bank security-barrier case, they can count on international support. World leaders have been critical of the Jerusalem barrier for two reasons: Most of it lies outside pre-1967 Israeli territory and, they say, it could cause severe hardship for Palestinians who find themselves outside its limits.

There’s criticism of the barrier in Israel too: Hawks in the governing Likud Party castigate the government for putting a barrier, part fence and part wall, through the heart of Jerusalem — which, they say, will divide the city in two and make nonsense of the mantra “Israel’s eternal and undivided capital.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Labor Party doves say the government should admit that the fence is designed not just to keep out terrorists but also to secure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and in the rest of Israel by creating the basis for a border that serves Israel’s demographic needs.

Partly to pre-empt international criticism and to forestall decisions against the government by the country’s Supreme Court, Israel is taking measures to ensure that Palestinians cut off from the city suffer as little as possible, promising that they’ll continue to receive the full range of municipal services.

Nevertheless, left-wing Israelis, who empathize with Palestinian concerns, argue that no matter how hard Israel tries, the fence will undermine Arab life in the city. That result, they warn, could lead to further Palestinian radicalization.

Rather than prevent terrorism, the barrier might actually spark more Palestinian violence, they maintain.

In July 2004, the International Court ruled that the barrier is illegal, and it called on Israel to dismantle the fence and compensate Palestinians who had suffered from its construction. The world court was especially critical of the fence’s route, which in many places dips into territory the Palestinians demand for themselves.

Israel continued building the barrier but, after criticism from its own Supreme Court, rerouted much of it closer to the pre-1967 armistice line between Israel and the West Bank, known as the Green Line.

Since the construction of the fence, the number of suicide bombings in Israel has fallen dramatically — although, remarkably, the International Court did not consider terrorism against Israel relevant to the discussion. Since construction began, bombers have been able to penetrate Israel only in areas where the barrier is still incomplete.

But Jerusalem poses a special problem. Some 230,000 Palestinians live in the city, and a fence around it would do nothing to stop terrorists among them from attacking Jewish neighborhoods.

Defending the capital’s Jewish neighborhoods, where 250 people were killed during the intifada — most of them by suicide bombers — is a security imperative for Israel. In some areas, however, Arab and Jewish neighborhoods interlock to form intricate tapestries that no fence can follow.

There also are Jewish neighborhoods and settlements outside the city limits that the government wants included as part of Israel in any final peace deal with the Palestinians. Moreover, the Likud leadership wants to retain as much of Jerusalem as it can as Israel’s capital.

The compromise is a barrier that runs in and out of the city, including some Arab neighborhoods and excluding others, and adding 30,000 Israelis who live outside the city limits.

That’s a tortuous arrangement with no single rationale, which the government could find difficult to defend before the world court.

A mid-July government decision on the fence route highlighted Israeli plans to ease conditions for Palestinians whom the barrier will cut off from the city. There will be 12 crossing points, where residents will be able to move in and out of Jerusalem after passing though a security check.

The municipality and government will provide garbage collection, postal, health, education, transport and other services to Palestinians on the other side of the fence. The government has allocated about $5.5 million for those services, and it intends to raise money from the international community for the crossing points.

None of these moves has placated the Palestinian Authority leaders. President Mahmoud Abbas attacked the Israeli plan, saying, “Approving the fence route in Jerusalem could bring about the end to relations between the two sides. Such steps will not serve peace, nor will they serve Israel’s security.” Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei called the construction a “theft in broad daylight” of Palestinian land. “This decision makes a farce of any talk about peace and turns the Gaza withdrawal into a useless initiative,” he said.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, expressed sympathy for the Palestinian position. Because the fence is not in territory recognized as Israeli, it creates legal, political and humanitarian problems, he said.

The Israeli government argues that the barrier is being built for one reason only: to stop terrorism. Therefore, it says, the fence should have no political ramifications.

Left-wing Israelis have mixed feelings. Some, like Labor’s Haim Ramon, a minister without a portfolio in the national unity government, argue that the fence should be seen in a positive light, as a first step toward a division of Jerusalem that will enable the city to serve as the capital of two states: Israel and Palestine.

But others on the left are worried. Danny Seidemann, a lawyer who has petitioned the international court against the route on behalf of Palestinian clients, argues that the fence will radicalize Palestinians on both sides: Palestinians outside the fence will be dragged down to the standard of living in the West Bank, he says, while Palestinians inside the fence will be cut off from cheaper West Bank markets. The end result, he argues, will be greater poverty and more terrorism.

Writing in Ha’aretz, the historian Meron Benvenisti, a former Jerusalem deputy mayor, predicted that “the fence, and the human disaster it will bring about, are liable to turn hundreds of thousands of people into a sullen, hostile community, nurturing a desire for revenge. The Jewish community will not escape the effects of the Palestinian communal breakdown, and the fence will herald Jerusalem’s return to the pre-1967 years, when it was a besieged border town.” Much will depend on what transpires after Israel’s planned withdrawal from Gaza next month. If that move reinvigorates a peace process, Palestinian criticism of the fence may be put on the back burner. But if the process bogs down, there could be another Palestinian move to put Israel in the dock at The Hague or at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Jerusalem - The appointment of new commanders to lead a reformed Palestinian Authority security force would seem to be a step toward meeting one of the P.A.'s key obligations under the "road map" peace plan.

Yet far from winning plaudits for P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas, the move has hardly moved Israeli officials, who remain skeptical of Abbas' ability to root out Palestinian terrorism.

Their concern reflects a deeply rooted lack of confidence in Palestinian capabilities and intentions, which could have far-reaching political ramifications: Pundits on both sides agree that unless the Palestinians convince Israel over the next few months that they are waging an effective anti-terrorist campaign, the chances of renewing peace talks after Israel's scheduled withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the northern West Bank this summer are extremely remote.

In late April, Abbas announced a shake-up of the P.A. security set-up. The number of services would be reduced from 11 to three and would be put under new commanders: Suleiman Khellis in charge of the national security forces; Tareq Abu Rajab as head of military intelligence; and Alaa Hosni to lead the police.

The three services would be unified under the command of Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, and more than 1,000 officers over 60 years old would be retired.

The reform signals a clear break with the past: Men appointed by the late President Yasser Arafat are out and new, younger commanders, not tainted by corruption, are in.

While Arafat was notorious for his deft manipulation of the plethora of armed organizations to consolidate his power and wage a terrorist war against Israel that couldn't be traced back to him, the unified new force is intended to become an organ of state, dedicated to maintaining law and order and preventing terrorism.

Indeed, Abbas is presenting the force as a significant move toward implementation of his dictum of "one authority, one law and one gun" - in other words, a Palestinian entity with only one legal armed force and no rogue militias.

The trouble is that Israeli officials see the reform as merely a declaration of intent, rather than a done deal. Israeli officials point out that Abbas has done nothing so far to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad - which, they say, makes a mockery of the "one gun" claim.

Indeed, they note that Abbas has not even delivered on the deal he made with Israel on rogue militiamen wanted for their involvement in terrorism.

The Israelis demand that these men be disarmed and promise that once they are, the Israel Defense Force will not target or arrest them. Instead, Abbas has allowed the wanted men to keep their weapons and join the Palestinian armed forces "They don't even bother to disarm them first. It's pushing terror into the services and it's like asking the cat to guard the cream," Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim told JTA.

Boim says Abbas' biggest mistake has been his failure to demand that Hamas and Islamic Jihad hand in their weapons, not only because these might be turned on Israel but because one day they might be turned on Abbas himself.

Abbas claims his policy is working and that Hamas will hand in its weapons after participating in parliamentary elections scheduled for July. However, Hamas spokesman Mushir Al-Masri flatly denies this, saying Hamas will keep its weapons until Israel ends its "occupation" of Palestinian land.

The exchange highlights the difference between the Palestinian and Israeli approaches to the terrorist groups: Abbas wants to talk them into surrendering their weapons voluntarily; Israel wants to see a military-style clampdown before it takes Abbas' "one-gun" slogan seriously.

The Palestinians argue that the relative quiet since Abbas took over in January shows they're making progress in the fight against terrorism, even if they refuse to confront the radicals head-on.

Terror attacks are down by 80 percent, they say; there is security cooperation with Israel; and P.A. forces have foiled a number of attacks, in some cases even handing captured weapons and suicide belts to the IDF.

Moreover, they say, Abbas has not been given credit for his courage in dismissing the entire cadre of senior officers associated with Arafat - a move that pundits say could weaken Abbas' Fatah movement before the upcoming elections.

Abbas complains that Israel is not giving him a chance. Last week he summoned Israeli journalists to his Ramallah office to make his case. "There has not been a single minute without criticism, without complaints, without incitement.just like the first government I headed we can't get a moment's rest . . . and just like during that first government, we are not being given a chance," he protested. The reference was to the brief period in 2003 when Abbas served as prime minister under Arafat.

The key question is what all this means for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank this summer. Ostensibly, by reforming his security forces and helping to reduce terrorism significantly, Abbas has done enough to warrant engagement in peace talks within the framework of the road map.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is hanging tough. In a string of Passover interviews, he repeated several times that Israel would not go forward with the road map - designed to lead eventually to a Palestinian state - unless the Palestinians meet their commitment to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure by disarming Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The United States supports Israel's approach, Sharon claimed. "I suggest that the progress be slow. I'm not saying it should be halted, but we must insist that their commitments are thoroughly met and we must not give an inch on their obligation to prevent smuggling, prevent terror, dismantle the terror organizations and stop producing weapons," he said. "The Americans also don't propose that we yield on these things." With Israel and the Palestinians divided over how much progress Abbas is making on his road-map obligations, it seems certain America will be asked to judge.

After his mid-April visit to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Sharon claims he has the United States on his side.

Abbas will go to Washington in May in an attempt to redress the balance - and his well-timed security shake-up, announced just weeks ahead of the visit, will be one of his strongest cards.

The Israeli defense establishment is considering using the run-up to the Palestinian presidential elections on January 9 to help put a new security regime in place in the Palestinian areas, The Jerusalem Report has learned. The idea is to reduce the Israeli military presence in those areas to a minimum and hand over as much security responsibility as possible to the Palestinians themselves.

The initial plan was to pull the army out of Palestinian towns and cities 24 hours before election day and to move back in 24 hours after. But now the defense establishment is considering staying out for longer, to test whether the newly installed Palestinian leadership can prevent terrorism. A senior Defense Ministry official told The Report: "We will pull out of Palestinian areas to facilitate free elections and freedom of movement on election day. Whether or not we stay out will depend on what they do to fight terror."

As soon as campaigning starts, on December 26, the IDF intends to significantly reduce its activities in the Palestinian areas, and on January 8, the army will pull out of Palestinian cities and towns altogether. Palestinian security personnel may be authorized to carry rifles in and around the cities, the so-called "A" areas that are supposed to be under Palestinian security control, and pistols in the rural "B" areas, under joint Israeli-Palestinian security control.

"We have not yet decided whether we will allow Palestinian policemen to carry arms, but our inclination is to allow them whatever they ask for," the official said. He added that the IDF will also reduce the number of roadblocks to facilitate freer movement between Palestinian towns and cities on election day. If terror flares up again, the IDF will return to the towns and cities, and re-impose the roadblocks. But if relative quiet prevails, the new situation will be allowed to continue for a trial period.

Israeli officials have been encouraged by the fact that in interviews, Mahmud Abbas, the leading candidate for president, has said he will not tolerate terrorist operations against Israel by the radical Hamas or any of the other armed militias. Now, it seems, they are ready to put him to the test.

The January 9 election will be monitored by about 250 international observers. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter will head a 90-member supervising committee. The election will be conducted according to the 1996 model, in which East Jerusalem Palestinians voted at post offices, rather than at regular polling booths. Israel did not want to deny East Jerusalemites the right to vote, but at the same time did not want the fact of their having voted to imply anything about the territorial status of disputed East Jerusalem. The dilemma was resolved by having them cast what could be regarded as a postal vote. The same procedure will be followed this time too.

Jerusalem — If Israeli officials thought the accession of 10 new countries to the European Union would produce a more pro-Israel E.U. foreign policy, the recent U.N. General Assembly vote against Israel’s West Bank security barrier was a dose of cold water.

Now some high-ranking Israeli officials fear the E.U.’s unanimous vote against the fence was a sign that an energized and united Europe will take a stronger stand than ever on Israeli-Palestinian affairs, and could even move the United States away from its traditional support for the Jewish state.

Calling the July 20 vote a watershed, these Israeli officials say a more confident and assertive Europe may pressure the next U.S. administration to impose a deal on Israel and the Palestinians. They also may impose economic sanctions on Israel or even back calls for a single binational Israeli-Palestinian state — one that, through simple demographics, would become a majority Arab state in a few years time.

Other officials dismiss this scenario as far-fetched. They maintain that Israel’s close economic, scientific and cultural ties with Europe preclude the possibility of the union leading a campaign that could mean the end of the Jewish state.

But the Israeli establishment clearly has been rocked by the European vote, and is finding it difficult to assess its full significance.

When Javier Solana, the E.U.’s foreign policy chief, arrived in Jerusalem a few days after the vote, Israeli leaders were scathingly critical. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said it would be difficult to incorporate Europe into any Israeli-Palestinian peace process unless it showed more sensitivity to Israel’s security needs.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said bluntly that he would find it difficult to convince the Israeli people that the European Union was a political partner they could trust.

But Solana brushed off the warnings. Standing at Shalom’s side, he declared confidently: “We will be involved — whether you want us or not.”

The vote was the first major issue on which the enlarged European Union expressed unanimity. Solana sees the vote as paving the way for a more influential European role on the international stage.

The vote proves the union is a political bloc with a common foreign policy, he said in an interview with Ha’aretz, noting that even would-be E.U. members, like Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, had voted the same way.

This single, clear European voice is precisely what some Israeli officials fear. Until now, they note, Israel has been able to maneuver between E.U. countries with which it has closer ties, such as Germany and Britain, and countries that traditionally take a more pro-Palestinian line, such as France. If Europe continues to speak with a single voice, that kind of maneuvering may no longer be possible.

Some Israeli officials expect the worst: They predict the European Union will pressure whoever is elected U.S. president in November to exert more pressure on Israel to resolve the Palestinian conflict, and that either Bush or Kerry — seeking a Middle Eastern success to make up for the imbroglio in Iraq — may well be receptive.

The officials point out that unlike the United States — which if necessary will resort to unilateral action against “rogue states” — Europe sets great store by the application of international law. The officials fear this could be further exploited by the Palestinians, following up on their success against the fence in the International Court of Justice.

Beyond that, the officials fear that if there is no progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, Europe may press for a single Israeli-Palestinian state, which quickly would have a Palestinian majority.

They note that the emerging generation of European elites has less empathy with Israel than their predecessors, and no Holocaust guilt, meaning they would have fewer reservations about joining a Palestinian-inspired campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. “We are losing the battle for legitimacy in Europe,” one official told JTA.

But other Israeli officials are less alarmist. They point out that, for now, the vision of independent Israeli and Palestinian states remains accepted throughout the international community, including the European Union.

Moreover, they say, bilateral ties with Europe are excellent: Israel is among a handful of non-European countries taking part in prestigious E.U. scientific projects like the development of the Galileo satellite.

And, they add, the European Union is seriously considering including Israel as one of the first members of “wider Europe,” a grouping incorporating peripheral states bordering Europe that will get trade and other concessions, in addition to those Israel already enjoys.

They also note that, despite its greater political cohesiveness, Europe is unlikely in the foreseeable future to wield as much political clout as the United States, which remains strongly supportive of Israel.

As for the security barrier, these officials say the Europeans, even those less friendly to Israel, have promised that there will be no economic or other sanctions, no matter how the issue plays out in the United Nations.

They also point out that Solana repeatedly stressed Israel’s right to self-defense, and that E.U. opposition to the barrier was only to its route, which dips into the West Bank at points. The Palestinians seem to have convinced the Europeans that the West Bank should belong only to them.

Israel is taking steps to combat the U.N. vote against the fence, and to forestall an erosion of Israel’s international standing. The government has set up a team under Shavit Matias, a deputy attorney general, to address the legal implications of the July 9 ICJ ruling.

For one, Israel will argue that the fence route already is very different from the one the ICJ ruled on, and that it will change even further in accordance with rulings by Israel’s Supreme Court to lessen the fence’s burden on Palestinians.

Israel also will assemble legal and political arguments asserting that the fence is a legitimate defensive step, not an attempt to grab Palestinian land.

But officials on both sides of the argument over Europe agree that Israel’s trump card is Sharon’s disengagement plan. Pulling out of the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, they say, is the best way to convince the international community that Israel really intends to end its domination of the Palestinians and move toward a two-state solution.

This, they say, is Israel’s best chance of preempting European or other pressure down the road for a binational state.