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.”

Israel is examining a Hamas truce proposal delivered by Egypt, defense officials said, but violence persisted Friday as a Hamas militant was killed in what the group said was a clash with Israeli troops near the Israel-Gaza border.

Israeli calls for cease-fire talks with the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip grew Friday as an Israeli Cabinet minister said he supported such negotiations under certain conditions.

A Hamas official implied the offer was part of the Islamic group's efforts to reach out not only to Israel, but also to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has controlled only the West Bank since June when Hamas ousted his Fatah party's security forces from Gaza.

Since the Hamas takeover, Abbas has rejected offers by the group to talk, insisting Hamas must first step down in Gaza. Israel has also refused to do business with the militant group, and has virtually closed all crossings with the impoverished area where 1.5 million Palestinians live, allowing in only food and humanitarian aid.

Earlier this month, Israel and Abbas' administration began the first official Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in almost seven years. But the question of what to do with the Gaza Strip plagues the negotiations on a final peace agreement, which the sides hope to complete by 2009.

Israeli defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Thursday the Hamas offer was limited to stopping the rocket fire in exchange for a halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza.

They said Hamas gave assurances it could impose the truce on the militant groups that are firing the rockets _ Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees.

Israeli Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Friday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may consider talks with Hamas on a long-term cease-fire. But, as part of such a deal, Hamas must also cease smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip and open talks for the release of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas-affiliated militants last year, Ben-Eliezer said.

"The prime minister I know doesn't totally rule anything out," Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio. "If a serious, realistic proposal is put on the table and Hamas is willing to discuss a long-term cease-fire and is willing to stop the terror, to stop the smuggling and is willing to open talks on the release of Gilad Shalit, I would go to negotiations."

Olmert's office reiterated Friday that Israel is not currently holding talks with Hamas and would only consider them if the militant group renounces violence, recognizes the Jewish state and accepts peace agreements.

Hamas official Salah Bardawil said the offer by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was part of the group's general policy to close the rift with Israel and would have to include talks with Abbas as well.

"All the Palestinians are in a crisis; not Hamas," Bardawil said. "We are not lovers of war. We love our rights. If we can get them through a truce, that would be an achievement."

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the group had not yet seen any sign that Israel wants a truce.

"To this minute, what we see is Israeli aggression," Abu Zuhri said after at least six Palestinian militants were killed in clashes with Israeli troops on Thursday. "The occupation (Israel) is proving that it is not interested in any truce."

Violence continued Friday. A Hamas militant was killed by Israeli troops near the Israel-Gaza border, the group and medics said. The Israeli army spokesman's office said it was not aware of any clashes in the area.

Late Thursday, Hamas said it fired three rockets at Israel, its first such claim in weeks, putting the truce talk in doubt.

Abu Obeida of the Hamas military wing said the target of the rockets fired by Hamas was an Israeli military base. "This is a tactic of the Hamas military wing," he said. "It has nothing (to do) with a truce or escalation."

Hamas first floated the idea of a truce earlier this week when Haniyeh called an Israeli TV reporter. Previous truces have been negotiated through Egyptian mediation, but none have held for long.

On Friday, Haaretz newspaper reported a confidant of Olmert has gathered majority support in parliament for a bill that would compensate Jewish settlers in the West Bank who move before Israel withdraws from some areas as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The effort by Vice Premier Haim Ramon is meant to prevent forcible evacuation of tens of thousands of settlers from the territory. In Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israeli forces had to physically remove most of the almost 9,000 settlers living there.

Israel hopes to hold on to some parts of the West Bank, where 270,000 settlers live, so it is unclear how many will be forced to leave.

Israeli military experts have formulated a plan to gradually cut off electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip in response to ongoing rocket fire from the Palestinian area, defense officials said Wednesday.

Israel provides more than half of Gaza's electricity, and any power cutoff is sure to make life more difficult for residents of the already impoverished territory. The move is also certain to draw harsh international condemnation.

The plan was formulated by a team headed by Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defense minister, and is expected to be approved by Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday, the Israeli officials said. But it is not yet clear when the decision would take effect, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge details of the planned cutoff to the press.

"It's clear that we have to cut off ... the supply of electricity and the supply of fuel," Vilnai told Army Radio. "We will dramatically reduce the flow of electricity from Israel over several weeks."

Israel's government last month declared Gaza a "hostile territory," clearing the way for Israel to impose sanctions. That decision followed the June takeover of the territory by the Islamic militants of Hamas and constant rocket fire by Gaza militants at towns in southern Israel.

Israel has severely restricted the flow of cargo and people through Gaza's borders since its seizure by Hamas, which Israel, the U.S. and the European Union consider a terrorist group.

Alaa Araj, an economic adviser to Gaza's Hamas government, said the Israeli measure was a violation of human rights that would hurt the entire population.

"Society will be drawn into darkness and daily life will be crippled," Araj said.

Israel can expect international criticism if it moves ahead with the move.

When Israel first announced its intentions last month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticized the idea in unusually strong terms, saying the step "would be contrary to Israel's obligations toward the civilian population under international humanitarian and human rights law."

Israel counters that it must act to protect its civilians suffering from near-daily barrages of crude rockets from Gaza. Despite its economic blockade and regular military incursions and airstrikes, Israel has been unable to halt the rocket fire, which has killed 12 Israelis in six years and severely disrupted life in the area, continuing after Israel pulled its army and settlers out of Gaza in 2005.

Most of the rockets have been fired by militants from the Islamic Jihad group, with Hamas' men limiting themselves mainly to launching mortars at border crossings. But Hamas has done nothing to halt the rockets, and Israel holds Hamas responsible because it controls Gaza.

Israel supplies around 60 percent of Gaza's power, with about 30 percent produced in Gaza and the rest supplied by Egypt. But even the electricity produced in Gaza could be threatened, because the power plant runs on fuel supplied by Israel.

The Israeli defense officials said Israel would start by cutting off electricity for 15 minutes and then lengthen the blackout each day as long as rocket fire continues. It was not known when the policy would take effect.

Vilnai, the deputy defense minister, said Israel would not cut off the power supply to hospitals and other vital installations to try to avoid a humanitarian crisis. But Israel plans to eventually cut off all electricity to the Gaza Strip, he said.

"We hope that the Gazans will produce their own electricity and won't be dependent on us," Vilnai said.

In reality, it is unclear what effect an Israeli cutoff would have. Gaza already suffers from frequent electricity shortages, and many buildings have backup generators.

Akram Hamad, an unemployed resident of the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, said the Israeli decision was "collective punishment." The rocket fire at Israel, he said, would continue because it was "legitimate self-defense."

"This can't be accepted by international organizations, to cut electricity from the whole town because a rocket is fired," Hamad said.

In violence Wednesday, Palestinian gunmen in a passing car shot and seriously wounded a soldier waiting at a bus stop near the West Bank settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said.

The assailants opened fire at several vehicles on the road, slightly injuring an Israeli civilian, before escaping and leaving their car in flames, the military said.

A previously unknown offshoot of Fatah, the movement headed by moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, took responsibility for the shooting in a phone call to The Associated Press.

The shooting came a day after Israeli troops killed two militants from Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank, and two days after a prisoner from Islamic Jihad was killed in a riot at the Israeli jail where he was held.

West Bank - Israel has begun laying the foundations for a new Jewish settlement deep in the West Bank — breaking a promise to Washington while strengthening its hold on a stretch of desert it wants to keep as it draws its final borders.

The construction of Maskiot comes at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seeks U.S. backing for eventually annexing parts of the West Bank as part of a plan to set Israel's eastern border with or without Palestinian consent.

The Palestinians and Israel's settlement watchdog group Peace Now say the Maskiot construction amounts to a new attempt to push Israel's future border deeper into the West Bank. "It's about grabbing land," said Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now.

Otniel Schneller, an Olmert adviser, confirmed Israel is building in additional West Bank areas to ensure they are not included in the lands given to the Palestinians. He said Israel needs to keep the Jordan Valley, where Maskiot is located, as a security buffer against Islamic militants based in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere.

Olmert has said that if efforts to resume peace talks fail, as expected, he would annex large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank and draw Israel's final borders by 2008. A separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank is to serve as the basis for the future border.

In order to ensure a Jewish majority in lands it controls, Israel plans to evacuate as many as 70,000 West Bank settlers, relocating them to the western side of the separation barrier. Israel depicts the move as a major concession, but Palestinians fear Jewish footholds like Maskiot will prevent them from being able to build a contiguous state on the evacuated lands.

Maskiot would initially house 20 families, all former Gaza settlers forced out of their homes when Israel withdrew from the coastal strip last year. Israel has promised Washington it would not build new settlements in the West Bank.

The future residents of Maskiot say their homes are being financed by right-leaning Jewish donors and the Israeli government, and that they will be renting homes built by others.

Asked about Maskiot, Stewart Tuttle, the U.S. Embassy spokesman in Tel Aviv, said such settlement activity violates U.S. policy. "As a general principle, the U.S. government is opposed to settlement expansion," Tuttle said. "Ceasing settlement expansion is one of Israel's commitments under the road map."

At Maskiot, bulldozers have cleared the top of a hill and work crews have laid foundations for four houses. New trees have been planted on the edges of the settlement.

The first 20 families, all from the former Gaza settlement outpost of Shirat Hayam, are expected to move there in coming weeks, said regional settler leader Dubi Tal.

The Kinarti family from Shirat Hayam has moved into a temporary concrete block home in Maskiot. A knock on the door produced a man with a large skullcap who refused to comment on the construction of his new home but said he's originally from Shirat Hayam.

Another future Maskiot resident, Yossi Hazut, said he was settling in the Jordan Valley to help determine the borders of the state of Israel.

"I don't think there is even one Israeli who thinks that the Jordan Valley is not important," said Hazut, who is living in a nearby community until his house is ready. "God willing, many of us from Shirat Hayam will live in Maskiot."

Schneller, an architect of Olmert's West Bank plan, said Israel could move the separation barrier deeper into the West Bank to include Maskiot on the Israeli side.

Israel's Defense Ministry, which oversees settlement activity, confirmed it decided before Israel's March election to approve the construction of Maskiot.

The defense minister, Amir Peretz, has not tried to derail these plans, defense officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the press. Peretz, leader of the Labor Party, is seen as a leading opponent of settlement expansion, but apparently wants to avoid stirring up too many conflicts in Olmert's coalition government.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel will eventually have to decide whether it wants to build more settlements or reach a peace agreement. "Every settlement is meant to take Palestinian land and meant to undermine a two-state solution," he said.

West Bank - Ilan Peretz is taking a gamble. Forced out of his home last summer when Israel left the Gaza Strip, he has moved to the Jordan Valley, along the eastern edge of the West Bank.

Given the area's strategic value, he doesn't think Israel will ever leave it.

But even when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speaks of keeping the valley as Israel establishes its final borders, he refrains from mentioning Jewish settlements there. The Gaza experience has taught many Israelis that settlements don't necessarily add to security.

Olmert has announced plans to withdraw from much of the West Bank within the next four years. But with Hamas militants in charge of the Palestinian Authority, it appears increasingly likely that Israel will draw its borders on its own, keeping major Jewish settlement blocs to the west and the Jordan Valley as a security zone in the east.

That would leave parts of the center of the West Bank in Palestinian hands, but require an Israeli corridor linking the two sides it wants to keep. And that, say Palestinians, destroys any hope for the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War.

The Jordan River, which forms the West Bank's border with Jordan, has great strategic importance. Since Israel captured the land nearly four decades ago, the country has invested in the area with a view toward keeping it for good.

Today 7,000 Jews live in 21 settlements there, among about 50,000 Palestinians.

Peretz, who is planning a cherry tomato farm in the hot, desolate area, hopes Israel will annex the valley as a security buffer.

"We know that Israel will evacuate other areas of the West Bank, and that's why we didn't choose to go there," Peretz said. "Here they will never evacuate."

When Israel started putting Jews in the valley in 1968, it saw them as a way to prevent Jordanian and Iraqi attack from the east. Peace with Jordan removed one threat, but the current war in Iraq has made it an unstable entity with the potential to infiltrate al-Qaida terrorists and other extremists into Israel.

The Hamas victory in Palestinian elections in January "has created an entirely new strategic reality for Israel which vastly increases the importance of the Jordan Valley for Israel's security in the near term," wrote Dore Gold, a foreign affairs adviser to the Israeli government, in a recent research paper.

While most Israelis now favor pulling out of the West Bank, support for keeping the Jordan Valley is high.

"This border will not belong to anyone else except Israel," said Housing and Construction Minister Meir Sheetrit, a key figure in Olmert's centrist Kadima Party. "We don't want a Palestinian army to control this region."

Palestinians say Israeli annexation would be a disaster, since the Jordan Valley, 45 miles by about 11 miles according to the current Israeli definition, is almost 15 percent of the West Bank.

"This is a very important area for the Palestinians," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who lives in the area. "This is the food basket for Palestinians and contains the eastern aquifer. This is also the Palestinians' passage to the east through Jordan."

Israel has given no indication what will become of the Palestinian farmers in the valley, or whether the corridor will become an impenetrable wedge dividing the West Bank.

But whether the Jewish settlements will stay is a different question. The 21 Gaza settlements were frequent targets of attacks and required huge defense allocations in budgets and manpower. Defending West Bank settlements also carries huge costs.

Sheetrit offers no guarantees to settlers like Peretz, saying: "Sometimes the settlements defend and sometimes they don't," referring to Israel's long-standing policy that Jewish settlements provide a security buffer to towns and cities inside Israel.