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.”

Another day passes in the packed refugee camp of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, with the Palestinian militant group Hamas releasing a new video of a roadside bomb exploding under an Israeli tank. The video shows the huge tank passing over a mound of sand when an explosion is triggered and dust fills the scene.

Militant factions assert that Israeli forces have incurred huge losses in soldiers and armour, but have been covering it up, during the ongoing onslaught in the northern Gaza Strip dubbed "Days of Penitence" by Israeli military officials.

Testimonies and eyewitness accounts from residents of the refugee camp, being aired around the clock on local radio stations, either confirm seeing an Israeli tank ripped apart by a roadside bomb or helicopters landing nearby to evacuate Israeli casualties.

A recent statement by the Izzeddin Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, says one of their cells managed to destroy an entire column of Israeli tanks on October 10 in one of the battles taking place at the entrance of Jabaliya. A senior Hamas figure verified the attack and the results.

The brigades' statement details that the cell first detonated a roadside bomb near an Armoured Personnel Carrier and another one near a tank, while firing two homemade rocket-propelled grenades at a second tank, destroying its cannon turret and damaging the hull.

Both militants who carried out this attack were killed after an Israeli drone pinpointed their location and bombed it with a missile. Hamas video footage revealed the location of the destroyed armour mentioned in the statement, buried deep under the sand dunes west of the refugee camp.

Dr. Nizar Rayyan, a political leader of Hamas, told Arab Media Watch that Palestinian resistance has been defending Jabaliya valiantly since the first day of the invasion, using the meager weapons they have in addition to makeshift explosives. He added that Israeli forces lost 20-40 soldiers during the attack near Beit Lahya alone.

This was surprisingly assured when Israeli army radio reported this attack once during their midnight news bulletin, mentioning that at least 20 Israeli soldiers were killed in the northern Gaza Strip and that all communication with them was severed.

Later on, the army radio dropped this news item from subsequent bulletins.

Many local radio stations in Gaza receive an enormous number of faxes from different Palestinian factions, claiming responsibility for some attack against Israeli forces in northern Gaza Strip.

Majdi Al Arabeed, director of Sawt Al Hurriya (Voice of Freedom) local radio station in Gaza City, estimates that from the faxes the station has received so far, about 15 tanks, 10 armoured bulldozers and a number of jeeps and other vehicles were destroyed in separate attacks. They collectively resulted in the deaths of 20 soldiers.

Israeli media reported a fierce debate between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon about what is happening in Jabaliya. Israel's Channel 2 quoted Ya'alon as asking Sharon: "Do you want me to get my soldiers killed in the alleyways of Jabaliya?"

Jabaliya is not a place to rush in a huge organised army, Israeli strategic analyst Yoram Schweitzer told Arab Media Watch by phone.

"Jabaliya refugee camp is a crowded population centre where 100,000 Palestinians live in dire poverty and have an increasing Islamic zeal. Most of the population supports Hamas or other Islamic resistance groups, making them prefer death than turning themselves in to the Israeli army," Schweitzer explains.

He made clear that the misreporting of casualties on the Israeli side demoralises the soldiers and discredits the Israeli media and military institution.

Spearhead of the intifada

Jabaliya was the place where the first intifada broke out in 1987, and has remained a stronghold for most Palestinian militant groups, but mainly Hamas, throughout the years.

During the Al Aqsa intifada that erupted on September 28, 2000, Jabaliya was one of the first areas to rise up against Israeli forces, and has been the cradle of settlement attackers and 'Qassam' rocket launchers in the Gaza Strip.

In an effort to bring the Palestinian civilian population to fight the militants, Israeli helicopters have dropped Arabic-language flyers over northern Gaza, telling residents that "terrorism pushes you further into a life of misery and poverty." The leaflets also have a drawing of a monster with "terrorism" written on it.

This common tactic, said Palestinian political analyst and newspaper columnist Hani Habib, has been used by the Israeli army many times to crack local residents' support for militants, which is impossible.

"Those militants are also sons of the refugee camp itself. They're someone's cousin, uncle, brother and even father, so how can they turn their backs on their own blood," explains Habib.

Indeed, the network of narrow pathways in Jabaliya were recently covered with awnings to protect militants from Israeli combat helicopters and unmanned drones hovering over the camp around the clock. Almost 70 of the 110 Palestinians killed there were targeted by these warplanes.

Jabaliya resident Abu Moath believes the stiff resistance in the camp has stopped the advance of Israeli forces, adding that fighters from different Palestinian factions are spread throughout the camp's alleys, planting explosive charges and fixing sand bags as bunkers for them to hide around, not to mention firing homemade mortars and rockets at Israeli tanks and bulldozers attempting to enter the camp.

Nader Duweidar never expected that sending his only daughter Islam to the nearby grocery shop would be a fatal decision.

I had organized an interview with Duweidar several days ago when I heard that his two-storey house in Tal Al Zaatar, a hilltop neighbourhood overlooking Jabaliya refugee camp, had been reduced to rubble by an armoured Israeli bulldozer to clear a spot for the tanks invading this northern Gaza Strip camp.

Upon reaching him at a modest apartment deep inside the teeming camp, however, his personal tragedy had suddenly escalated beyond his worst nightmares.

"I thought losing the house I spent years saving money to build was the worst that could happen to me," Duweidar sighed as he pointed towards a large dark spot in the middle of the street.

"That's where my daughter was murdered. She was shot dead by an Israeli sniper from somewhere near my demolished house."

During the six-day Israeli onslaught on the northern Gaza Strip, particularly in the sprawling Jabaliya refugee camp where more than 100,000 Palestinian refugees live in shabby cement and tin houses, more than 80 people have been killed by Israeli gunfire, tank shelling or helicopter missile attacks.

On October 4, Islam became the 19th child on this list.

On that Sunday, Duweidar remembered, the shooting and shelling had been a bit lighter than usual. Islam was returning home from school as usual, running between the rubble of homes, trying to avoid any stray bullets Israeli snipers might fire.

"When she arrived home, I was listening to one of the local radio stations. They were saying the invasion might last for a long time, so I thought about stockpiling some food in case a closure is imposed by the occupation forces," said Duweidar.

"I told Islam to change her school uniform and go get some bread from the grocery shop across the street, but she ran straight out the door without changing."

Minutes after, and without warning, machine-gun fire crackled through the alley from the direction of the Israeli tanks. Duweidar heard people shouting that a girl had been wounded.

"I raced to the window hoping and praying it wouldn't be Islam. When I looked from the window, I saw her on the ground, just yards from the door. There was blood around her head. I couldn't take it, I just collapsed," Duweidar remembered.

Israeli forces have dubbed their military campaign in northern Gaza "Days of Penitence"; it is a plan devised by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to save face, says Talal Okal, a political analyst and Al Ayyam columnist in Gaza.

Israeli military sources claim the invasion of northern Gaza aims to eliminate the Palestinian resistance operating there, mainly Hamas and its military wing, the Izzeddin Al Qassam Brigades. The Brigades fire homemade Qassam rockets from certain areas in the north at nearby Israeli settlements and towns.

"If Sharon decides to pull out from Gaza now, without stopping the rocket attacks as he vowed, he'll weather harsh attacks from members of his Likud Party as well as the settlers, who have already threatened to kill him if he goes ahead with his disengagement plan," Okal told Arab Media Watch.

The columnist said the enormous death toll so far reveals the true intentions of the Israeli onslaught. "Death, destruction and mayhem, in an effort to make Palestinians fight resistance activists who fire Qassam rockets. So far, he [Sharon] has failed," Okal argued.

"Eighty-five percent of those killed in Jabaliya are civilians. Is this what Sharon means by eliminating the resistance? These daily massacres make people pray for the resistance to fire these rockets," Okal added.

The death of Islam is a case in point.

At the small and crowded Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya, hospital director Dr. Mahmoud Al Asali told AMW that Islam Duweidar would have died shortly after being shot. "She was shot once in the head, causing a fatal injury. This certainly indicates an intention to kill," he noted.

Mazen Abu Salem, 25, who owns the grocery shop across the street and was the last person to see Islam alive, swore that she was not shot during the outburst of gunfire.

"I'm 100 percent sure it was just one bullet. It was a silent one that was fired before the hail of bullets from the tanks began. I saw Islam crossing the street to her house when she suddenly fell to the ground. At first I thought she slipped and fell, but when I got out of the grocery shop, tanks started firing and I had to run back to take cover," he said.

When the shooting stopped, Mazen went out to check on Islam.

"She was between life and death when we picked her up and tried to get her to a hospital. I'll never forget that moment. She looked at us and asked us about the bread she had bought for her father."

Six-year-old Suad Matar is a child like many others in the Nemsawi neighborhood of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

Seized from her bed by her mother, Awatef, as Israeli forces approached the area, her family is now homeless.

The Matar home was just one of 47 to be reduced to a pile of concrete rubble that night – clothes, books, toys and furniture buried in 30 minutes by a huge, gloomy bulldozer tearing through rooms one by one amid deafening roars and the crackle of gunfire. A further seven homes were left unsafe for habitation, according to the UN.

Suad woke up the next morning in a white tent pitched several hundred metres away from her house, her mother boiling water in the dust outside. Her elder brother, Sofian, has rescued some of her books, now battered.

The Nemsawi neighborhood, funded by the Austrian government - hence the name (Arabic for Viennese) - is home to many Palestinian refugees.

Awatef, a midwife, and her husband Bilal, an accountant, are third-generation refugees who fled their hometown of Majdal, now known as Ashkelon, in southern Israel, during the 1948 war that Palestinians call the Nakba(Catastrophe).

Bilal and his 14-year-old son Sofian survey the rubble of their house, examining the damage. Sofian lifts several bricks to reveal what used to be his desk.

"I don't know what to say, but I'm not alone. The entire neighborhood is homeless, and they're as shocked as I am," says Bilal, looking at the other demolished houses.

Israeli forces often demolish Palestinian homes in order to create what Israeli military officials call a "buffer zone" – more accurately no-go zones guarded by tall watchtowers with mounted machine-gun turrets. Such areas surround each of the 21 Israeli settlements spread throughout the Gaza Strip.

In the 48 months of the Palestinian intifada, 4,022 houses have been completely demolished in the Strip, in addition to 19,371 houses partially damaged by Israeli forces, according to Palestinian sources.

Osama Al Farra, the mayor of Khan Younis, arrived with a delegation from the municipality to survey the damage, telling Arab Media Watch that the city had been declared a disaster zone a long time ago and that the aid coming to it was not enough to compensate for the daily destruction by Israeli forces.

"Unfortunately we're not offered the necessary relief aid by the Palestinian Authority or by international organisations to cope with this destruction. This wave of house demolition is unprecedented in the city, and the human tragedy is beyond imagination," Farra said.

Families lacked the tents, utensils and food supplies they need, he added.

Bilal and Sofian continue their search in the rubble, uncovering Bilal's Palestinian passport.

"As if this would help," he says, referring to Israel's closure of the Palestinian territories, preventing almost everyone from leaving. Bilal smiled bitterly as he tucked the passport in his pocket.

Israeli military sources say most of the houses destroyed in the operation were uninhabited, a claim Sofian dismisses as nonsense, walking through the piles of concrete and iron, picking up a toy or a notebook, pointing to a closet's half door protruding from the rubble.

"There were people here. We children played together after school. They fled their home with us last night. Now they have moved to the city center to live in a rented flat," Sofian said.

Suddenly a child appeared, shouting: "Tank, there's a tank coming." Everyone fled.

"They might scare us today, but we'll return tomorrow," Bilal said, catching his breath a few hundred metres away, the sound of gunfire filling the air. "I'm determined to rebuild my home exactly where it was."