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.”

In the end ‏(in the beginning too, actually‏) everything here is about money. Nothing shakes Israelis out of their indifference but money. Hardly anything interests them but their wealth ‏(or poverty‏).

Friday night’s TV news broadcasts resembled wartime broadcasts. Yair Lapid appeared on all three channels at the same time. Interviewers tear into him like they’ve never torn into anyone.

The protest is awakening, the country is in a tumult. The finance minister says hit the Israelis in their pockets; nothing hurts them more. It will cost each of us a few hundred shekels a month or year, maybe a few thousand. Yes, that’s a heavy price for many, nothing to scoff at. But the fact that money is our only catalyst for public action is troubling.

Listen to the Israeli discourse − it focuses on money. Every bit of small talk comes down to it. If you’ve just returned from abroad you’ll be asked how much it cost you. If your son goes to university, how much is he paying? If you’ve eaten at a restaurant, how much did it set you back? Even if you buy a book, it will probably be because of the price.

Nothing makes an Israeli happier than a good deal ‏(honest or not‏). It’s all money. Behind it there are other problems, immeasurably greater. But they’re hidden by the smoke screen and the money.

The new finance minister fell into these Israelis’ hands like ripe fruit. He’s exactly what they need to continue the injustice and the blindness. When it comes to him, suddenly the media is caustic and penetrating. A Facebook storm targets him alone, as do the demonstrations.

Other societies also rise to action during times of economic distress, but at least some of them deal with other matters too, even though fewer sins are buried in their backyards. Take South Africa, for example. It’s groaning under economic problems and gaps infinitely greater than Israel’s, yet the stormy public debate there addresses other problems too such as education, crime, violence and AIDS. Who talks about education in Israel? Or about the generations of ignorance and illiteracy growing before our eyes, endangering the state’s future much more than any bomb?

Thousands of African migrants are imprisoned for years at Saharonim without a trial − does that bother anyone? The Knesset pases anti-democratic legislation with hardly any public debate. Our exports are becoming increasingly weapons-based, the Arab League offers peace, and settlements keep being built on robbed private land. The government builds roads that will prevent the partition of Jerusalem and bombs anything it doesn’t like. Ze’ev ‏(Zambish‏) Hever, head of an organization promoting settlements in the West Bank, is running a state-sponsored real-estate mafia. But these issues raise nothing but a yawn.

Even the debate about money, which finally brought Israelis back to life, is biased and distorted. Everyone is up in arms over the modest sums going to the ultra-Orthodox and the large labor unions, but nobody says a word about the big money flowing to the settlements and the defense budget.

They talk about universal military service but don’t mention the labor force of 20 percent of the population, the Arabs, who crave to be part of the state’s growth and productivity but are excluded. The government imports tens of thousands of foreign laborers but shuts the gates to Palestinians across the fence − a more available labor force whose employment would be more just and could serve the peace process.

Where’s the money? Even that debate is false. The big money will come with peace and integration with the region. This Sparta will not last, even if Lapid becomes man of the year in terms of equality and social justice.

Israel will really thrive only if all its citizens take part in its economy and all its neighbors trade with it. It will prosper only if its army and the threats it is compelled to generate return to reasonable proportions. The army needs these threats to justify its monstrous size and insane race for new equipment − five times too big for Israel.

Lapid’s budget proposal is indeed outrageous. His bad old tendency to flee confrontation and his lack of courage certainly should be condemned. But at the end of the day, what are we talking about?

The Yariv Levins have struck again: with the “Jenin, Jenin” law. From now on it will be possible to sue whoever slanders the IDF − and the 19th Knesset’s celebration of democracy has only just begun.

Just before this bill passes in the Knesset, having already been approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, here are some grounds for prosecution: The IDF is an army of the occupation; a substantial portion of its activities are the policing activities of occupiers; an army of the occupation is cruel by definition; the IDF kills innocents, including children; the IDF arrests children who are under the age of criminal responsibility; sometimes our soldiers have light trigger fingers, including in the last few months; the IDF systematically violates international law. Soon these statements will likely result in a lawsuit. Better say them now.

It’s unlikely that the new law will discourage anyone − there’s hardly anyone left to discourage. Even without it the army enjoys wide immunity in terms of public opinion and in the media, which worships the ritual of security and sanctifies the military. Rather than protecting the IDF, the new law will cement its image. An army that needs laws to prevent criticism of it is an army with a problem.

“The legal loophole invites someone to take advantage of it,” the ridiculous preamble to the law says, and the loophole has actually now been widened: Why only the IDF? The libel law, which was justifiably only valid for individuals until now, has been expanded to include the IDF. What about the Shin Bet security service? And the police? And why not the government? And the Knesset? And the Chief Rabbinate? And the National Insurance Institute? After all, they’re all criticized, sometimes falsely, so why not protect them with laws too? Count on MK Yoni Chetboun, who proposed the law.

The IDF chief of staff should have announced now: No, thank you. The IDF will not hide behind laws and intimidation. If Israel is proud of its army and seriously believes that it is “the most moral army in the world,” why does it need these laws? That’s just it − it seems that it isn’t. For if lies are being disseminated about the IDF, they will be cemented even without laws.

Relying on this anti-freedom-of-speech law is the final proof, more than any testimony or slanderous accusations, that something is rotten within the IDF − some sort of lack of confidence in the righteousness of their path, which this law is meant to cure. In this respect the law is actually worth something: It proves that there is something to hide.

The IDF’s image is a result of its actions. A thousand critical or slanderous articles will not alter the damage caused by one day of white phosphorus use in Gaza ‏(its use was recently discontinued, only thanks to the criticism and documentation‏). Operation Pillar of Defense would have looked exactly like Operation Cast Lead if it hadn’t been for the criticism in Israel and across the world. The Goldstone Report was vilified here, until it was eventually heeded in part. Here they insisted upon shrieking that IDF soldiers had acted appropriately on the Mavi Marmara, until Israel apologized for their actions.

A thousand true or false testimonies have not caused the IDF to suffer as much damage as one day of “Cast Lead,” “Defensive Shield,” assassinations, mass arrests, curfews and closures have. The testimonies about them should keep coming, and the opinions on them should continue to be heard. The IDF has more than enough methods of propaganda and publicity to refute what it thinks are lies. Therefore a law is not needed.

The new law, which was created following Mohammed Bakri’s film ‏(that has now had a law named after it, no small matter‏) and the vociferous criticism of a handful of reservists who were enlisted into the army of propagandists, is another link in the chain. Not the first and not the last, it outlines the new Israel: one that will try to spread an atmosphere of fear, to discourage journalists, to strangle non-profit organizations and weaken the courts.

This law, like all those before it, will disparage Israel even more: It will weaken its strongest argument, one of its last convincing arguments, that it is indeed a democracy, if only partially. Jenin, Jenin? Israel, Israel.

If you will it, it is no dream: one just state for two peoples. The establishment of a Jewish State was perceived as something no less crazy less than 100 years ago. Subversive? The establishment of a Palestinian state was considered no less subversive even less than three decades ago.

One state for two peoples? It has already existed for a while now. More than two peoples live in it - Jews and Arabs; ultra-Orthodox Jews; religious Zionist and secular Jews; Jews of Middle-Eastern descent and Jews of European descent; settlers and Palestinians. Over time, the distance that separates these communities grows larger.

Somehow, they live together in one state, but one where justice and equality are absent. This, though, is how an imaginary, just state would appear: It would grant everyone the right to vote, and have a democratic constitution that would protect the rights of all communities and minorities - including an immigration policy like that of all other nations.

Such a state would have a legislature that would reflect the mosaic of the country, and an elected government formed by a coalition of the communities and the two peoples' representatives. Yes, a Jewish prime minister with an Arab deputy, or vice versa.

The end of the world? Why? Arabs and Jews already live together today, but discrimination, inequality, past tensions, racism, nationalism and mutual fear hinder relations between them. These will gradually dissipate, and most of the dangers currently in store for the country will disappear with one state for two peoples.

At home, an egalitarian country like this would defuse most of the hatreds that bubble up from within. Arab citizens and Palestinians, with equal rights, will lose their subversive drive against the state that alienated them and dispossessed them of their rights. It will become their country. The Jews are likely to find that most of their fears were for naught: the moment that justice is established, the dangers - real and imagined - will be subdued.

Even more dramatic will be the disintegration of external threats. Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the rest of the "Axis of Evil" will lose the basis for their hatred. Who, then, will Iran threaten? A Jewish-Palestinian state? And who will Hezbollah and Hamas fire their missiles at? Against a Jewish-Palestinian consensus? Even the international stature of the new state will change in an instant: the world will excitedly embrace it and hurry to funnel large-scale aid to it.

This country will prosper when the massive budgets invested by both sides in preserving their own security will be redirected to other goals. Its fault lines will run, like in every other country, between the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated, the success stories and laggards. In the initial period, these successes will be the country's Jews, who will prosper because their society is more developed, but the equality of opportunity can't help but gradually bridge the gaps.

These imagined goals won't be achieved in one day alone. The realization of this fantasy will be achieved through a long, difficult and complex process of liberation from old beliefs and values that were destructive for both nations. It will also require the overcoming of deep fears that are no less destructive, and drawing a line under the past.

The Jews will be forced to give up the dream of a national state, likewise the Palestinians. This will be the end of Zionism in its existing form, something very painful for those who have grown used to believing that it is the only way. But it will be replaced by something incomparably more just and sustainable.

The moment Israel's Jews are persuaded that the Palestinians are humans like them, with everything this implies, the path will become a shorter one and become possible if a new leadership arises among the two peoples. Not a new politics of old and bad thinking, but truly revolutionary leadership that shatters old and bad paradigms and neutralizes fears.

At least two are required for this tango, and at present there isn't even one. This dance will require a great deal of courage and imagination: right now, there is neither one nor the other. But think of the alternative - where does it lead? To another round in this bloody dance? And another round after that? But what about afterward? There aren't many Israelis today who know how to answer which way the county is headed. To them, let it be said: If you wish a single, just state, it is no dream.

Not only Israelis but Palestinians, too, must learn the lessons of South Africa. The struggle of the black population focused on one issue: universal vote. Nelson Mandela's demand for "one person, one vote" was more than a slogan, it was a strategic goal. It became reality on April 27th, 19 years ago, when the first multiracial elections were held. Ever since, democracy has been safeguarded, elections are held regularly and the new constitution is upheld and guides this state, despite its hardships and complexities.

South Africans have proved that the impossible is possible; that the dream of the majority and the nightmare of the minority can be translated into a new language. That hatred, threats and fears can be replaced by a reality of hope. Mandela, yesterday's 'terrorist,' and his 'terror organization," the African National Congress, managed to quell the fears of the white population.

It was probably the most important step in their struggle, which was managed with full awareness of the limitations of their power. They understood that violence would lead them nowhere, that the regime was stronger, and that reckless terror would lead to the loss of essential international support. The ANC limited its use of force. This is an important lesson the Palestinians should consider.

Of no less importance was the dissidents' unity. The Palestinians, so far, have failed on that score. But the most important factor in South Africa's success was the agreed-upon goal - one person, one vote. It is about time the Palestinians adopt this goal. It is time for them to understand that the two-state dream is becoming impossible. That the occupation is stronger than them, that the settlements are already too large and that the Palestinian state, even if established, will be no more than a group of Bantustans separated by the "settlement blocs" that grew to monstrous proportions and have won consensus approval from Israelis and the international community.

It is time, dear Palestinians, to change strategy. Not to fight the occupation or the settlements; they're here to stay. It is time to follow the South African example and demand one basic right: one person, one vote.

This demand will scare Israelis at least as much as it scared the South African whites. The Israelis will scream, and not unjustly, that this would be the end of Zionism and the Jewish state. But Israel brought this upon itself with the occupation, and the South African experience has taught us that yesterday's fears can soon disappear: that through an efficient constitution and wise conduct, everybody's rights and identity can be safeguarded. In any case, ethnic states, consisting purely of one race or nationality, are on their way out in the new interconnected world. And this world cannot remain indifferent to the basic demand of one person, one vote; no one can possibly refuse such a basic right of every human being.

Focusing on this demand will disarm Israel of all its excuses. What can it say? That the Palestinians aren't human? That they don't have rights like any other nation? Not every nation has a state, but every person has the right to vote. Palestinians do not have voting rights in the state that determines their fate. Theirs must be a struggle for this right without criminal violence, such as the terror of the second intifada. Such a struggle will attract international support by peoples and governments. Nobody, apart from the Israelis, could possible oppose it. Israelis will be forced to reexamine their values, beliefs, and all the sacred truths and red lines they invented. Israelis will be forced to admit that for some time now they are living in one state, but it is shadowed by a form of apartheid. Once this happens, there are only two possibilities: Either the Palestinians will succeed as Mandela did to calm people's fears, and the all-Israeli nightmare of the one-democratic-state solution will make way for the promise of a bright future; or Israelis will finally come to their senses and hasten to withdraw from all the occupied territories and allow, at virtually the last moment, the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. There is no other just possibility for a solution of the conflict.