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 - "I cannot enter into this so long as this criminal is on your screen," a Hamas spokesman calmly told Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera.

He had just realised he was sharing a live broadcast with an Israeli army spokesman.

In fluent Arabic, Major Eitan Arusy followed up as though nothing had happened, denying Hamas accusations that Israel was behind a deadly blast in the Gaza Strip.

"They are always telling all sorts of lies," he said.

The exchange on live television between the army and militant group Hamas was a first for Israel, even if the two men never spoke directly.

Putting forward its message on Arabic media has become increasingly important for Israel since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000.

Efforts have been stepped up further following a withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip that Israel hopes will encourage better relations with the Arab world and end old animosities over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

Israeli faces tend not to get a favourable reception on Arab television. Israel's aim is to take its viewpoint into living rooms in the Arab world, even to countries technically still at war and people who oppose the existence of the Jewish state.

"This is a way to show we are here, that Israel is more than just conflict with the Palestinians and not all Israelis are monsters with horns on their heads," said Amira Oron, the Foreign Ministry's first Arabic spokeswoman.

"Still, we have our security concerns. This is what we are trying to show."

Qatar-based Al Jazeera was one of the first networks to put Israelis on air as part of an editorial policy of allowing opposing opinions since it started broadcasting in 1996.

Though condemned by many Arab governments for hard-hitting news and criticised by some Westerners who say it is anti-United States and anti-Israel, Al Jazeera's popularity has soared. It has also given Israel a hearing it never previously had in the region.

Other Arabic networks have followed. Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Sheikh said Al Jazeera did not give anyone a "platform for propaganda".

Seeing an Israeli speaking Arabic on television is far from being enough to overcome Arab anger at the Jewish state, abhorred for its tough handling of the Palestinian uprising, some analysts say.

"If he is wearing a military uniform and is justifying, in however nice a tone, settlement expansion and assassinations, I don't see how that will serve Israel's cause," said Jordan-based Mouin Rabbani of the International Crisis Group think tank.

"Often, it comes across as exceptionally brazen," he said.

Many Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank said they did not believe Israelis who appeared on Arabic channels. However, some wanted to hear the Israeli point of view.

"We are Palestinian and we have to know what they are up to. But we can't trust them," said Safa Shalaldi, a business management student.

Hamzi Shabani, an unemployed 20-year-old from Hebron, said: "Even on television, they look scary."

Israeli spokesmen have typically not joined televised debates on Arabic media, preferring more controlled interviews.

However, confrontations do occur. Satellite network Al Arabiya pulled an Israeli off air after a Lebanese guest protested against appearing with a "Zionist official".

The incident prompted Israel's Foreign Ministry to boycott the station, but not for long.

Israel is keen to capitalise on relative goodwill in the region after ending its 38-year military rule over Gaza, removing settlers for the first time from land where Palestinians seek statehood. Palestinians also want the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Rifts with foes such as Syria show few signs of healing. The president of non-Arab Iran, another old enemy, said last month Israel should be "wiped off the map", although Tehran played down the comments after international condemnation.

Elsewhere, Pakistan agreed to accept Israeli aid for the first time as part of international relief after its devastating earthquake last month. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said he would recognise Israel if a Palestinian state was created, his spokesman said.

In the Gulf, some Kuwaiti newspapers have taken the unpopular step of calling for political normalisation. Qatar, which maintains low-level ties with Israel, gave $10 million to build a sports complex in a sign of warming relations.

Egypt and Jordan sent their ambassadors back to Israel after a truce in February that eased the Gaza pullout.

"We have to build dialogue and relations with our Arab neighbours. If suddenly peace erupts, we should be ready," said the Foreign Ministry's Oron.

The ministry set up the first official unit for Arabic media in 2003, followed shortly by the army.

All major Arabic satellite channels have offices in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. With Israeli consent, Arab media gave extensive cover to the evacuation of Gaza settlers.

Oron has given interviews to television channels from countries that have no diplomatic ties with Israel, and is willing to speak opposite Palestinian militants.

However, Oron still has limits on those to whom she will speak -- such as Iran's state-run Arabic channel or al-Manar television of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas, who fought Israel in south Lebanon and still skirmish on the border.

"There is nothing to talk about," she said.

Jerusalem - An international envoy has criticized Israel for delaying agreements to open Gaza Strip border crossings following its withdrawal and said that could hinder a Palestinian economic revival essential to peace.

James Wolfensohn expressed his concern in a letter obtained by Reuters and addressed on Monday to the peacemaking Quartet of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia, who hope the Gaza pullout could revive a peace "road map."

Quartet envoy Wolfensohn said that because of security concerns, Israel was "almost acting as though there has been no withdrawal, delaying making difficult decisions and preferring to take difficult matters back into slow-moving subcommittees."

Gaza has been largely cut off from the outside world since Israel completed its troop withdrawal on September 12 after 38 years of occupation.

Israel said it was doing all that it could to ensure that borders opened as soon as possible, as long as that did not harm its own security or allow a destabilizing flood of weapons and possibly foreign militants into the Gaza Strip.

"I'm hopeful that in the next few days we can reach understandings that can allow the maximum possible flow," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev. "It's in everyone's interest, including our own, that Gaza will be a success story."

The Rafah foot crossing to Egypt has been largely shut since troops left. Agreement has still not been reached on a formal re-opening, possibly with foreign monitors to ease Israeli concerns over arms smuggling.

A promised route that would allow safe passage for Palestinians traveling between Gaza and the occupied West Bank has not yet been set up and even the few Gazans who had been allowed to enter Israel have now largely been barred.

Wolfensohn said the number of trucks carrying exports into Gaza had dropped from 35 a day to "a mere handful."

Wolfensohn, a former head of the World Bank, said that free movement was essential for efforts to bring peace.

"Without a dramatic improvement in Palestinian movement and access, within appropriate security arrangements for Israel, the economic revival essential to a resolution of the conflict will not be possible," he said.

Wolfensohn also criticized the Palestinian Authority for worsening the economic situation by deciding on a public sector salary hike and because of continuing insecurity.

"Time is short and optimism is a fragile commodity," he said. "If all of us Palestinians, Israelis, our friends in Egypt and donors miss this opportunity for change, we will regret it for the next decade."

GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian policemen stormed into Gaza's parliament building on Monday to demand a crackdown on militants, and deputies called on President Mahmoud Abbas to sack the cabinet for failing to stamp out chaos in the streets.

The two challenges highlighted Abbas's uphill struggle to impose law and order in the Gaza Strip to make it the proving ground of a future Palestinian state after Israel's withdrawal of settlers and soldiers completed last month.

"We are on the verge of civil war if the situation remains out of control," said Qaddoura Fares, a reformist legislator with Abbas's mainstream Fatah movement.

Parliament voted 43-5 with five abstentions in favor of a committee report demanding that Abbas form a new government within two weeks or face a no-confidence vote.

The vote came shortly after policemen disrupted the session in fury over the killing of a security force commander by Hamas gunmen in street battles with police in Gaza City on Sunday.

The protesters said police were badly outgunned by militant groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Authority seemed to lack the will to impose order. Abbas, citing a civil war risk, aims to co-opt, rather than try to crush, grassroots militant groups.

"We want the Palestinian Authority to take a stand on Hamas. Our blood is flowing for the Authority and they are not doing anything," one protesting officer told Reuters.

There was no shooting in the building but shots were fired outside the compound. One policeman entered the chamber, briefly interrupting the session, before he and his comrades withdrew.

There were no casualties in the incident, which took place while Abbas was in Gaza but not in the building.

"IRRESPONSIBLE CHAOS"

"What is happening is chaos and irresponsible," Abbas said on Palestinian television on Monday. "People are saying this is a test for a Palestinian state. If we continue on this path these people will say we don't deserve one."

He said he would use all means to subdue militants.

A U.S. State Department spokesman supported Abbas's attempt to crack down on the militants.

"We have welcomed recent steps by President Abbas to implement a strategy that outlaws the public display of arms ... end violence and dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Palestinian police said Sunday's fighting began when a Gaza police patrol pulled over a carload of Hamas gunmen who were flouting a new ban on the public display of weapons agreed to by political leaders of the various militant factions.

A police commander and two civilian bystanders were killed in firefights between policemen and Hamas gunmen. Fifty people were wounded, including children, when militants tried to storm a police station shortly afterwards, police said.

Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said the militants fought police on Sunday "solely in self-defence". He said they also acted to protect homes of Hamas political leaders that came under gunfire from policemen.

A no-confidence vote would force Abbas to name a new government. His own post is safe because he was elected by popular vote in January.

The Gaza lawmakers were participating by video-link in a debate by parliament at its headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah on whether to endorse a committee's motion to "start no-confidence procedures against the cabinet".

Pointing to public discontent with lawlessness, legislators urged Abbas to "form a government that is capable of delivering in its tasks (and) to fire all directors of security services who failed to fulfil their duties and appoint new ones".

"There is no Palestinian Authority at all. It exists just on paper," said Ibrahim Abu al-Naja, another Fatah legislator.

Hamas is defying Abbas in a power struggle whose stakes have risen since Israelis departed Gaza after 38 years of occupation.

Abbas wants to talk peace with Israel, while Hamas refuses to disarm and vows to destroy Israel.

(Writing by Mark Heinrich in Jerusalem, additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Saul Hudson in Washington)

Jerusalem - Israel is considering linking the Gaza Strip and West Bank with a train, bus convoys or even a sunken motorway with no off-ramps after it withdraws from the narrow coastal strip starting in mid-August.

Barring an outlet, the impoverished strip faces isolation that could plunge it deeper into economic crisis and political turmoil -- and raise the security risk for Israel.

But Israel does not want any "safe passage" to threaten its security.

Officials on both sides say they agree that once the pullout is finished, a process expected to take weeks, they must find a way transport people and cargo between Gaza, home to 1.3 million Palestinians, and the West Bank, home to another two million.

Israel has proposed running a non-stop train between Gaza and the southern West Bank, although there is no agreement on the idea with the Palestinians, an official in Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres's office said.

She said Israel wanted to ensure it bore no responsibility for Gaza after the pullout, especially for jobs and trade, and had an interest in allowing links to the outside world.

"If you take a broader view of security, then of course you have a tremendous interest in making sure that you have a successful Gaza economy," the official said.

"It is very clear that once Israel disengages from Gaza, you can't just disconnect Gaza from everywhere."

A railway would cost $175-200 million, take at least three years to build, and would not ease Palestinian movement in the short run, a Western diplomatic source familiar with the project said. Any link would run in Israel for at least 35 km (20 miles), the rough distance between the West Bank and Gaza at the closest point.

Two other options, an elevated road and a tunnel, have been largely ruled out as too expensive. The diplomatic source said those would cost billions of dollars.

The Palestinians prefer a sunken motorway, which would run inside a trench and not have any off-ramps along the route, saying it is more cost-effective, could be built faster and affords greater flexibility. But they have stopped short of rejecting a train outright.

A senior Israeli government official said Israel also was willing to consider the sunken motorway idea.

In the meantime, both sides are looking into the possibility of running escorted bus convoys to the West Bank until a longer-term link is ready. Palestinian internal movement within the West Bank is also hampered by roadblocks.

The Israelis are planning also to build a rail link for cargo between Gaza and Israel's port at nearby Ashdod, where they are considering installing a dedicated dock for the Palestinians, the official in Peres's office said.

But Palestinians say trains are simply not on their agenda and are suspicious of Israel's motives. They prefer to open their own port to avoid economic dependence on Israel, which captured Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war and worked for years to integrate it with the Israeli economy through trade and jobs.

"They are saying they want to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip, but at the same time they are putting in place measures to ensure they have long-term continued control, economically at least," said Diana Butto, legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The World Bank said last year that hardship could increase drastically in Gaza if Israel sealed borders to labour and trade when it pulled out, or if it cut water and electricity supplies. Israel has indicated it may allow Palestinians to open a seaport, and Palestinians have said they may use rubble from demolished settler homes to build it if Israel leaves the debris behind after it evacuates all 21 Jewish settlements there.

But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has so far rejected calls to allow Palestinians to rebuild Gaza's airport, ruined during 4-1/2 years of a Palestinian uprising.