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.”

George S. Rishmawi is so busy that he nearly forgets to call. "But your email reminded me!" It is five o’clock Bethlehem time and Rishmawi has had a busy Wednesday. "Yes, yes, full days every day. That is the way we want it to be. Full days." For Rishmawi, this will be an eventful week. On Palm Sunday he plans to ride a donkey into Jerusalem. And if Jesus could do that 2,000 years ago, why can’t he?

The idea for the donkey ride, explains Rishmawi, came from Palestinian children who were fascinated by the story of a Bethlehem man who could just get on a donkey and go to Jerusalem. "Why can’t we ride donkeys to Jerusalem?" Rishmawi shared the story with Pennsylvania peacemaker John Stoner, and the rest will soon be history. While Rishmawi helped to organize children and adults in Bethlehem, Stoner recruited 16 Americans. The Americans arrived last Saturday for a week of preparation. On Palm Sunday everyone will simply go down the road with donkeys.

"Neither children nor adults from Bethlehem are allowed to go to Jerusalem," explains Rishmawi. "Of course you can apply for a permit to go, but 99.9 percent of the permits are denied." And even with permits, there is no guarantee you will be allowed to pass. "So we are going to walk from Manger Square at the Church of the Nativity, and we will be trying to get to Jerusalem as Jesus did."

At some point the donkeys will approach a military checkpoint and, hopefully, all the world will see what happens next. Most likely, cameras will snap images, not of palm fronds being thrown under the donkeys’ feet like 2,000 years ago, but of guns and uniforms blocking the way. "Right now the checkpoint is heavily militarized," explains Rishmawi. "There is a military base with lots of patrols going back and forth. Rooftops in the area have been camouflaged, and Israeli snipers are all over the place."

When the soldiers order a stop to the ten donkeys and their human escorts at the northern border of Bethlehem along the Jerusalem-Hebron Road, a few folks will be prepared to break from the procession to engage in some form of nonviolent resistance, perhaps a sit-in. "There have been many positive responses to the plans," says Rishmawi before hanging up. There are voices at his end of the telephone and he has to go now.

Rishmawi serves as Coordinator of the Travel and Encounter Program for the Holy Land Trust. For a month or two during the summer, pilgrims to Bethlehem can learn Arabic, work with volunteer organizations, and see the sights. And since they are pilgrims, not Palestinians, they can even visit Jerusalem, too.

"I am myself committed to peacebuilding and resisting the occupation through nonviolent means," Rishmawi has explained earlier in the phone call. He grew up in Beit Sahour, a town East of Bethlehem that he describes as very active. "I was raised up this way."

"The Western media do not pick it up," he says, "but a strong nonviolent resistance struggle has been active in Palestine at least from the 1930’s until now." From 1987 to 1993 for example, the people of Beit Sahour participated in a tax revolt, refusing to pay taxes to the Israeli occupation. "We had a slogan for that movement," he deadpans: "No taxation without representation." Growing up, the 33-year-old Rishmawi remembers how his uncle, who had one arm only, was beaten up by soldiers during a downtown protest and taken to the hospital.

Around the issue of walling, Rishmawi remembers going downtown with his mother during a general strike and joining a series of nonviolent demonstrations in protest of the coming fences. And when the Intifada started in 1987, he remembers a December day shortly after the Greek Orthodox Church left town, when he and other young men piled stones in the street to block the advancing Israeli Army. When the teenagers saw the army coming down the street, they ran.

As a peacemaker, however, Rishmawi is not running from plain talk about Palestine. I ask him to respond to impressions that we are getting from American media that the Israeli government is relaxing its grip on Palestinian territories. I’m not used to Rishmawi’s sense of humor, so I don’t quite know how to handle his comeback: "Do you want me to answer in French or English?"

"Well, let me answer in French," jousts Rishmawi as I stumble, "It’s bullshit. Total crap. They are betraying us. The source of violence here is the Israeli occupation, and we still have 600 checkpoints, and we are still totally restricted. We don’t even come into downtowns anymore. Zone C is what they call the West Bank, and nothing there has been removed, nothing has been changed."

"Last week, a friend of mine got an injury in his eye. I called the ambulance. But the ambulance could not get through the checkpoints. They said an eye injury is minor and ambulances are not permitted to travel through checkpoints for minor injuries. So we could not go to the Hospital in East Jerusalem. Meanwhile they are building the wall, and for that thousands of acres of land are being taken daily. And America is giving funding to all this." Rishmawi wastes no time speaking clearly.

"The media have been lying to the American people and betraying them all the time. The American people are being betrayed because they don’t know how many of their tax dollars co-fund the occupation in Palestine." Rishmawi's raw expression of Palestinian experience leads me to wonder what makes the refined lie necessary?

Who's afraid of Americans hearing the blunt truth that Palestinians are simply not free and that American tax dollars are partly to blame? Is it the occupiers themselves? Or is it their American proxies who on Easter Sunday would rather not have their churches full of dressed-up Christians asking questions about where the money for this occupation comes from? In either case, the carefully planned Palm Sunday image of the donkey at the checkpoint will speak with the innocence of a Palestine child who would simply ask the world, especially the Christian world, why can't we ride to Jerusalem like Jesus anymore