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.”

Formally stepping down Sunday to face corruption charges, Israel's outspoken foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, predicted that he would soon return to his post after expedited legal proceedings.

Lieberman announced Friday that he would resign after Israel's attorney general said he would indict Lieberman on charges of fraud and breach of trust, but not on more serious suspicions of illicitly receiving millions of dollars from foreign business tycoons while holding public office.

A blunt ultra-nationalist who has accused the Palestinians of "diplomatic terrorism" and called for a loyalty oath by Israel's Arab citizens, Lieberman is expected to remain a powerful force in Israeli politics and is running in upcoming elections.

Lieberman's party, Yisrael Beteinu, the third-largest faction in parliament, is campaigning on a joint ticket with the Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After submitting his resignation letter Sunday to Netanyahu, who will now handle the foreign portfolio, Lieberman said that his departure from office, weeks before the vote on Jan. 22, would be brief.

"I am leaving temporarily," he told reporters. "I assume that this time the break will be very short."

Lieberman said he hoped legal proceedings would be speedy and while not ruling out a plea bargain, he asserted that he intended to argue his case in court.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein announced last week that he would indict Lieberman for promoting Israel's former ambassador to Belarus after the envoy gave the foreign minister confidential information on moves by the Israeli authorities to investigate his suspected financial dealings there.

Lieberman has said he wants to settle the case before the elections. Although that is viewed as unlikely, he is legally permitted to run for parliament as long as he is not convicted.

Polls have shown that the combined list of Netanyahu's and Lieberman's parties could win close to 40 seats in the 120-member legislature, emerging as the dominant faction.

Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that Lieberman's indictment and resignation were unlikely to affect voting patterns, particularly among backers of his party.

"His public is not going to vote against him because of this," Hazan said.

Even with a trial underway, Lieberman could take a seat in the elected parliament, but could not be appointed minister, pending the result of the court proceedings.

Given the structure of Lieberman's party, in which he wields full control, "he doesn't have to be a member of parliament or the government, but still pulling all the strings from the outside, making all the major decisions and being the major vote magnet for the party," Hazan said.

Originally from Moldova and living in a West Bank settlement, Lieberman has strong support among the 1 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel as well as other voters who share his ultra-nationalist views.

Along with his broadsides at the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, he recently lashed out at European nations for their protests against new plans for expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Lieberman charged that Europe was willing to sacrifice Israel to appease Islamic radicals, comparing Israel's situation to that of Czechoslovakia on the eve of the 1938 Nazi invasion.

Defying mounting international protests, Israel moved ahead Wednesday with plans for a West Bank settlement project near Jerusalem that has been widely condemned as diminishing prospects for a territorially viable Palestinian state.

An Israeli planning committee approved release of the plan for public objections, a first step in a process that could take months and is subject to government approval before building can begin.

Still, the move demonstrated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's determination to advance the project, part of a settlement construction surge announced last week in response to a successful bid by the Palestinians to upgrade their status at the United Nations to that of a non-member observer state.

Israeli commentators have suggested that Netanyahu's reaction was driven largely by domestic political considerations, casting it as an effort to appeal to rightist voters ahead of parliamentary elections next month. His challengers have accused him of deepening Israel's diplomatic isolation.

The United States and other nations have criticized the settlement building plans as undermining efforts to reach a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eleven countries, including key European nations and Egypt, have summoned Israeli ambassadors this week to lodge formal protests.

The Palestinian leadership decided Tuesday to seek a binding resolution at the U.N. Security Council requiring Israel to halt its settlement drive, which includes building 3,000 homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas that the Palestinians seek as part of a future state.

U.S. and European officials have expressed particular alarm over a parallel move to advance plans for additional construction of more than 3,000 homes in a key West Bank area known as E-1, east of Jerusalem, connecting the city with the large settlement of Maaleh Adumim.

Successive U.S. administrations have strongly opposed the development, saying that it would drive a wedge between the northern and southern West Bank, undermining the possibility of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state.

Israel suspended work in the E-1 zone several years ago under pressure from the United States, although it has built its West Bank police headquarters there, as well as roads and infrastructure for future housing.

Israeli intentions to build in E-1 date to the 1990s, with successive governments viewing the area as a land reserve for the eventual expansion of Maaleh Adumim, linking it to Jerusalem. Israel has long considered the settlement town of 40,000 to be a Jerusalem suburb that should remain under Israeli control in any agreement with the Palestinians.

But the Palestinians see E-1 as a vital hinterland for East Jerusalem, which they seek as their future capital. They consider the zone, 3,000 acres of barren hills populated by Bedouin shepherds, as a potential part of East Jerusalem's metropolitan area, linked to Ramallah in the north and Bethlehem in the south, forming the urban core of a future state.

On Wednesday, the planning council of the Israeli military administration in the West Bank approved "the deposit of plans" for the E-1 development for public objections, according to a statement from the Israeli Defense Ministry. "These are not building permits," the statement said. "The start of construction requires approval by the political echelon."

Netanyahu, who was in Germany on Wednesday for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, made the same point in an interview with the newspaper Die Welt. "What we've advanced so far is only planning, and we will have to see," he said, according to an excerpt of his remarks provided by his spokesman. "We shall act further based on what the Palestinians do. If they don't act unilaterally, then we won't have any purpose to do so either."

Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called the E-1 project a "red line" and said Palestinians would fight it with all "legal means" at their disposal.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, warned of dire consequences if Israel follows through with its plans for construction in E-1 and in a West Bank area annexed to Jerusalem known as Givat Hamatos. Israeli building in the latter area, expected to be approved this month, would further separate the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian officials.

If the two developments are built, "it's over," Erekat told Israel Television in remarks broadcast Tuesday.

"Don't talk about peace. Don't talk about a two-state solution," Erekat said. "Talk about a one-state reality between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean."

The re-election of President Barack Obama has left Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly vulnerable as Israel's own national election campaign begins to gather steam.

A strong favorite to win the Jan. 22 vote, Netanyahu is coming under criticism from political rivals who accuse him of having tilted toward Mitt Romney and alienated Obama, who as a second-term president could take a firmer stance toward Israel.

Opposition politicians are charging that Netanyahu — who has publicly confronted Obama over policy toward Iran and peace efforts with the Palestinians — is jeopardizing Israel's long-standing alliance with the United States.

Netanyahu, who as head of the right-leaning Likud party plans to campaign on a platform of safeguarding Israel's national security, has made several conciliatory gestures toward Obama in the days since the U.S. election, in an apparent effort to smooth over differences.

On Thursday, Netanyahu called Obama to congratulate him and pledged to "continue working together." On Wednesday, he summoned the American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, for a televised congratulatory meeting and declared that security relations between the two countries were "rock solid."

Responding to his critics, Netanyahu charged Thursday that they were making a futile effort to "stir up trouble between us and the United States" and said that the two nations' alliance remained strong.

Still, in an election that is likely to also be a referendum on his threat to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Netanyahu's campaign now has a weak spot, according to several analysts.

"Netanyahu is vulnerable on national security and foreign policy, because the opposition will argue that given his bad relationship with Obama and given the need to make critical decisions about Iran in the spring or the summer, he should be replaced," said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Bar-Ilan University.

Netanyahu publicly challenged Obama in September to take a more aggressive stance toward Iran, saying those who were not ready to draw "red lines" with Iran over its nuclear program did not have the "moral right" to prevent Israel from taking military action.

Obama's call in May 2011 for a peace agreement with the Palestinians based on Israel's 1967 borders got an icy reception from Netanyahu, who lectured Obama on the subject in the Oval Office. The two had clashed earlier over Israel's settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The two leaders' tense relationship has invited comparisons to the rift between Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and President George H.W. Bush over Israeli settlement construction in the early 1990s. That diplomatic showdown set the stage for Shamir's subsequent electoral defeat.

Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister who is weighing a political comeback as the head of a centrist bloc even as he faces an appeal of his acquittal on corruption charges, told Jewish leaders in New York on Wednesday that Netanyahu had become a liability in relations with Washington.

"Following what Netanyahu has done in the last few months, the question is whether our prime minister has a friend in the White House," Olmert said, according to an account from an aide that was published in Israeli media. "I am not sure of that, and it could be very significant to us at critical points."

Yitzhak Herzog, a lawmaker from the left-of-center Labor Party, predicted that the lack of close relations between Obama and Netanyahu at a time of approaching "fateful decisions" will be "a problem for Netanyahu in the public."

Shaul Mofaz, leader of the centrist Kadima party, told the Israeli television station Channel 2 that Netanyahu had "definitely caused damage" by seeming to bet on a Romney victory. "I think that a prime minister in Israel doesn't do two things," Mofaz said. "He doesn't interfere in the elections in the U.S. and he doesn't gamble on one of the candidates."

Yet many of Netanyahu's backers in Israel argue that the source of the problem is what they call Obama's cool stance toward the prime minister, who they say is simply defending the country's vital interests.

Abraham Diskin, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the opposition's focus on relations with the United States is a "double-edged sword." While Israelis value those ties, Diskin said, many have rallied behind Netanyahu in times of confrontation and believe that he has emerged with the upper hand.

Some Israeli commentators have speculated since Obama's victory that he might repay Netanyahu in kind by indirectly endorsing his opponents in the Israeli election or take a tough line on advancing peace efforts with the Palestinians. Others predict that the chill in relations will only deepen.

"The American commitment to Israel's security and continued existence will not change," wrote Sima Kadmon, a columnist for the widely circulated Yediot Ahronot daily. "But regarding anything beyond that — there will be a cold shoulder."

When the emir of Qatar paid the first visit by a head of state to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip last week, there were two different reactions from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

In one statement, Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the ministry, accused the emir, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, of backing a terrorist organization and having “thrown peace under the bus.”

But an Arabic-language spokesman for the ministry, Lior Ben Dor, told Radio Sawa, a U.S.- funded station heard across the Middle East, that Israel welcomed the visit of the emir, who pledged generous financial aid.

“Since our withdrawal from Gaza, the goal has been that Arab states come and help the residents of Gaza,” Ben Dor said, referring to the Israeli pullout in 2005.

The double message was a symptom of the unraveling of an Israeli policy toward Gaza that was put in place after Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, seized control of the territory in June 2007.

The Israeli government adopted measures to isolate Gaza, sharply restricting supply shipments at border points, tightening bans on movement out of the territory, and promoting an international diplomatic boycott of the Hamas government.

The policy, strongly backed by Washington, was coupled with moves to promote economic development and foreign aid in the West Bank, where the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is dominant. The intention was to squeeze Hamas by blockading and imposing austerity on Gaza, while boosting Abbas and Fatah through improved living conditions in the West Bank.

But the policy essentially backfired. Hamas rallied popular support in Gaza through a shared sense of siege, and it consolidated economic control by taxing goods smuggled through tunnels from Egypt.

A deadly Israeli commando raid in 2010 on a Turkish ship carrying activists challenging Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza led to an international outcry and a substantial loosening of Israeli restrictions on shipment of goods to the territory.

The rise to power of Islamist movements in Egypt and other countries swept by the Arab Spring provided Hamas with a diplomatic opening. The Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has made two regional tours this year, visiting Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Iran. Egypt has eased restrictions on its border with the Gaza Strip, allowing greater freedom of travel for Palestinians.

The Qatari emir’s visit to Gaza, where he was received with an honor guard and the playing of national anthems — as if the Hamas enclave were an independent state — was touted by Haniyeh as the formal end of “the political and economic siege.”

The emir’s pledge of $400 million for projects including housing construction and road improvements — well exceeding the amount of foreign aid Gaza receives annually — contrasted sharply with the financial woes of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where a falloff in aid has left Abbas and his allies struggling to pay salaries of thousands of employees.

Egypt has promised to allow construction materials for the Qatari-funded projects through its border crossing to the Gaza Strip, following earlier suggestions that the crossing might be opened regularly for passage of commercial goods.

“This signifies the beginning of the collapse of the West Bank-first model, but we still have to wait and see if Egypt follows through,” said Nathan Thrall, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.

Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at al-Azhar University in Gaza, said the assumptions behind the effort to isolate Gaza and its rulers had been upended. “The policy of isolating and weakening Hamas through sanctions and blockade failed miserably,” he said. “The model the U.S. and Europe tried to build in the West Bank did not lead to positive results. Israel is expanding its settlements, the peace process has reached a dead end, and the Palestinian Authority is on life support.”

The new realities have brought some commentators in Israel to call for a reassessment.

Giora Eiland, a former general who headed Israel’s National Security Council during the withdrawal from Gaza, asserted after the emir’s visit that Israel should shift away from trying to undermine Hamas rule and focus exclusively on security concerns, such as halting rocket attacks across the border.

“Israel has an interest that Gaza resemble, as much as possible, a state with a stable government. That is the only way to have an address for both deterrence and dealing with security issues,” Eiland wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily. “Israel has an interest in economic improvement in Gaza of the kind Qatar can bring. Such improvement creates assets that any government would be concerned about damaging, and thus it will be more moderate and cautious.”

Yossi Alpher, an Israeli analyst and former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said in an interview that Israel should “recognize that Hamas is in charge of Gaza and that we’re not going to change that.”

“Let the Qataris rebuild the Gaza Strip,” Alpher added. “The objective should be to reach some kind of modus vivendi with Hamas.”

Long-standing demands by the United States and other international mediators that Hamas recognize Israel and renounce violence as a condition for diplomatic contacts have been overtaken by events, Alpher said.

“The reality is that there are two separate Palestinian entities and no peace process with either of them, so all of these conditions don’t seem terribly relevant,” he said. “The question is, can we can find a way to dialogue with political Islam?”