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.”

The Middle East has never needed effective political leadership more than at present. Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq are three very troubled states which are in danger of seeing very little political progress in the coming year, and the effects of the continuing violence ripple out to all other nations in the region.

All three share similar problems of poor state structures, lack of leadership and endemic violence, but each has very different local conditions which have created their bad situations.

Palestine remains the key issue. The disastrous effects of 60 years of fighting the Israelis, including 40 years of occupation, means that the whole Palestinian political structure has been naturally focused on gaining political freedom, and has not been successful in managing what civil responsibilities they were able to achieve.

This civil weakness of the Palestinian governments has been gleefully compounded by years of military and political actions by successive Israeli governments. The result is a broken state in which the use of political violence which has become deeply ingrained.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been greatly weakened by the seizing of Gaza by his political rivals in Hamas, with whom there seems to be no hope of reconciliation.

This means that Abbas is unable to deliver any possible peace deal through the Annapolis process sponsored by the Americans and George W. Bush's government. Any route forward has to include Hamas, with whom the Americans refuse to have any contact.

The solution is for any new peace process to include politicians from all sides including Hamas. The two state solution is the eventual answer, but to get there needs vision and tough commitment from all sides, and both are lacking.

In Lebanon, the willingness of several political parties to go beyond the normal factional politics of that struggling democracy has imperiled the whole state for the sake of short term advantage.

Hezbollah retains an extraordinary amount of control over large areas of the south and is not willing to give it up to become a fully integrated part of the Lebanese state.

The government was crippled by the walkout of its Shiite ministers over a year ago, and now the presidency is unable to be renewed.

A possible compromise candidate has been found, but renewed disputes over the authority and make up of the government have stopped a solution being found to the long-running political crisis, which is founded on the political parties being unable to reach the necessary compromises that taking part in government requires.

Failure

The possible tragedy of complete failure in Iraq is the Middle East's worst nightmare. The American led invasion in 2002 tragically and stupidly ignored the need to rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq, and allowed a political and security vacuum to emerge in which every group with a gun was able to resort to gangster style protectionism and crime.

In this savage atmosphere, politically-inspired violence has became normal, and four years of militia style politics has created an atmosphere which Iraqi politicians find almost impossible to overturn without substantial support.

The last year has seen a drop in the amount of political violence, as counted by the Americans, but it is not the answer.

The lull is only an opportunity in which Iraqi politicians have to find a long term answer for their country, and they need to be backed in their decisions by the Americans. Only an Iraqi solution will work, even if it does not suit the politicians in Washington.

A new constitutional dialogue is required, pulling in leaders of all parties including those outside the process at present, in order to draw up a federal structure in which all parties are willing to take their place.

However, such political talks are not happening and there is no move to start them. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki's government sees any such new start as a threat to itself, and George Bush's administration needs a quiet exit from power at the end of 2008 and will not want to start something that it cannot control.

The common link between these three very difference states is that their political impasses have become so deep that they have almost become accepted. To seek for political change requires such terrific political commitment that no-one can quite manage to dream that it can be done.

But the Middle East cannot afford to let these countries continue to drift through shocking and debilitating violence, and it cannot wait for an American president to be interested enough to support such a difficult peace process in any of the countries.

American commitment comes and goes, and depends on how much an American leader is willing to spend time thinking about the Middle East.

The Arab leaders have the opportunity to define agendas for their region, in the full knowledge that any new American initiatives will have to take Arab proposals into account.

The Abdullah Plan for Palestine is an example of an Arab plan which has become part of the accepted way forward, and it is an example of how the new heavy weights of the Gulf are able to influence the region for the better, in the absence of any new political ideas from the traditional leaders like Egypt.

The Arab League is conspicuous by its absence in seeking to take the political lead as the Arab world struggles with some of the largest challenges it has faced for decades.

The future of Iraq hangs in the balance as the Nouri Al Maliki government struggles to find new coalition partners; Iran continues to impose its renewed strength on the region, both in the nuclear sphere and in Iraq; and Palestine faces the horrors of a divided political leadership as Israel and the US administration prepare for President George W. Bush's autumn summit on the Middle East.

Not only is the Arab League silent, but there is little feeling across the region of any need for the Arab nations to plan how to take the political initiative on these issues. Individual countries are very active where they have special concerns, but as a group the Arab states seem to have run out of their collective energy.

Of course, it is hard for the Arab League to take the initiative on any of the issues such as Iraq, Iran, Darfur and others, where there is no formal Arab position, but that cannot be said about Palestine.

The Arab view has been long stated and is very clear: land for peace. This stand goes back for decades and might have become a ritual formula, but it was forcefully restated at the Beirut Summit in 2002 when the Arab nations adopted the plan from Saudi (then Crown Prince) King Abdullah, in which he cut through the years of additions and subtractions to the basic plan, with a simple restatement: If Israel withdraws from all land occupied after the Six Day War in 1967, all the Arab states will give Israel full recognition and full and open peace.

The key to the success of the renewed plan was the condition that all the land was to be returned (not a negotiated segment) for full peace including normal movement of people and goods, and open borders.

The Abdullah Plan is particularly important as the Bush autumn summit gets closer and the attendance of the Saudis is becoming a possibility.

The Arab states at this summit will be challenged to adopt all sorts of supportive positions to the United States' line on Iraq, and on Iran, but they should not vary from the Abdullah Plan when talking about Palestine.

It is a disaster for Palestine that its political leaders have split. The popularly elected Hamas has left the Palestinian government and taken over control of the Gaza Strip, and Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas is left with the presidency and control of the West Bank.

As a result of the split with Hamas, Abbas is in the disastrous position of relying on Israel to offer goodwill moves to increase his political strength.

However, at Bush's summit, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas may share the same aims of making a firm declaration in favour of the two-state solution.

A strong commitment to recognising Israel and Palestine as valid and continuing nations due to share the land equitably, would be a major restatement of what has already been agreed, although by a previous generation of politicians.

Two-state Solution

The two-state solution can be compatible with the Abdullah Plan, if the borders are made clear. Abbas along with other Arab leaders at the summit will need to spell out that the borders cannot be the borders that Israel has been seeking to create over decades through its land grabs and colonies on Occupied Territory, and more recently by building its infamous and illegal wall.

The Arab leaders have to be clear that only the borders that existed before 1967 are acceptable.

If the Bush summit gets such a declaration in place, then the harassed Abbas presidency has something that it can take to the Hamas politicians in Gaza, and will be able to ask them to reconsider their rejection of the present political process.

Bush, his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Olmert need to recognise that they will get nowhere without including Hamas. They cannot ignore the largest elected force in Palestinian politics, and whether Hamas is physically at the summit or not, its position has to be included in the discussions.

It would greatly strengthen Abbas' position at the summit if the Arab states made a united declaration before the summit, restating their support for the Abdullah Plan, and emphasised that the only way Israel will get complete peace with all the Arab world is through complete withdrawal.

If the Arab League does nothing else in the next few months, if it manages this it will have redeemed itself from its feeble present situation.

Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian party, has been badly embarrassed by one of its most senior officials, Hani Al Hassan, who has described other Fatah officials as collaborators who served the interests of the Americans and Israelis.

Following the takeover of Gaza by Fatah's militant Islamist rival, Hamas, Al Hassan spoke out on Al Jazeera against the Fatah government of President Mahmoud Abbas, describing the Hamas takeover as "not a war" between Hamas and Fatah, but one between Hamas and collaborators, adding that what was happening in the Gaza was a defeat for the Americans.

Al Hassan's attack hurt Abbas, who retaliated quickly by dismissing Al Hassan from his post of senior presidential adviser. But Abbas cannot dismiss Al Hassan's record.

He ran his own commando group in the early 1960s, which he merged into Fatah in 1963, he was an aide to Yasser Arafat after 1974 and he joined the Fatah General Council in 1980, and later was Palestine's Interior Minister from 2002.

It is a mark of the desperation with which Palestinians are seeking a way forward, that a man such as Al Hassan with these years of service to Fatah and the Palestinian cause, should speak out so strongly in favour of Hamas, condemning Fatah policies in the strongest possible terms for a country under occupation, using the terrible word "collaborator".

This dispute between Fatah loyalists, like the split between Fatah and Hamas, goes to the issue right at the heart of Palestinian politics, which is how to deal with the Israelis in the light of their decades of refusing to give away anything of substance to Palestine and their disinterest in seeking peace.

Different Palestinian groups have very different answers, ranging from continued armed resistance to dialogue and negotiation.

Those who see Israel as impossible to deal with, based on its duplicitous record and long established ability to dodge any serious commitment to the two-state solution, favour continuing the armed struggle.

Any Palestinian has to agree with that analysis of Israel's record, but many have sought to move to a solution based on politics and negotiation.

The obvious problem is that talks require two parties and this means that any Palestinian seeking a political solution is forced to try to work with Israel, as Fatah has now done for many years.

This gives Israel the priceless advantage of being able to manipulate any talks to their own advantage whenever they want.

It means that while Fatah might propose the much tested route of two-state solution, as developed at many summits including Camp David, Oslo, and Wye River, Israel can make vague noises and do nothing to take it forward, while continuing to occupy the West Bank as they want, continuing to build their wall, mount road blocks and arrest who they want, including ministers in the elected Palestinian government.

This means that Fatah is bound to be discredited with its people, since it cannot deliver on its central policy, which is to work with the Israelis to find a long term solution.

Of course, in addition, Fatah has its own electoral problems with its poor record in government, including corruption which was condemned by its own parliament, and all sorts of administrative chaos.

Far away

What might link both Fatah and Hamas in the future is that they both want to be able to negotiate with Israel from a position of as much strength as possible, and strength comes out of the armed struggle.

This means that Hamas need not be that far away from Fatah, since its continued willingness to fight can build a strong political base from which it can deal with the Israelis later, as Fatah did some years ago when it moved to seek a solution through politics.

Hamas did the same early last year when it agreed to stand in the Palestinian general elections, and having won the elections, it then agreed to form a government and declare a truce. It moved into the political arena, but a year and a half later, its frustrations with the lack of progress boiled over and the present crisis started.

Palestinian politics will continue to revolve around this core issue until there is a full negotiated peace. Parties such as Hamas will try to form the government, and its supporters will not be prepared to put up with years of frustrating quibbles from Israel.

Respected men such as Al Hassan will not be able to endure the grim reality of trying to work with Israel while at the same time seeing the daily effect of occupation continue on the streets.

And parties such as Fatah will find their credibility weakened as the respect it gathered from the armed struggle fades after a decade of political work in Palestine.

The struggle for the soul of Palestine has heightened dramatically in the past weeks, as the years of failure by the establishment Fatah has led to the coup in Gaza by the frustrated and militant Hamas.

This week's ineffectual Sharm Al Shaikh summit did not resolve anything between the two parties, while also failing to make any progress in restarting the peace process, so letting Ehud Olmert's Israeli government off the hook for its continuing occupation and oppression.

The internecine fighting in Palestine between Fatah and Hamas is based on two issues: how to proceed in the struggle with Israel, and whether the Palestinian government should be more secular or more actively Islamic.

The establishment Fatah has failed to deliver anything close to their aspirations in terms of peace and normal life, understandably as the Israelis refused to give way on any major issue, but Fatah also failed to deliver anything like the quality government so many Palestinians hoped for, with deep seated corruption, competing government agencies, and multiple security forces making effective government impossible.

Hamas was born out of frustration with Fatah's failures. It preferred the armed struggle, and took to it with renewed force and determination, while opting out of building anything like a civil society.

Hamas built an increasingly popular position based on continuing the fight with Israel, but until very recently it did not tackle the hard task of trying to build a new Palestinian civil society in the face of intransigent Israeli opposition.

Tough choice

The Palestinians now have the very tough choice of supporting Fatah in the hope that things might get better (and since that relies on concessions from Ehud Olmert's Israeli government, any hopes for improvement have to be in vain), or of supporting Hamas, which offers renewed Islamic militancy.

It is small wonder that many Palestinians opt out of these two choices and take a third route by emigrating and building their lives outside Palestine, leaving the struggle to others.

One of the tragedies of the civil war between the Palestinians is that it allows their struggle with Israel to be overshadowed.

At Sharm Al Shaikh, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did his best by seeking support for restarting the formal peace process, based on a two-state solution as outlined by many international resolutions, but this was not made much of by most of the summit who were there to deal with the crisis in Gaza.

The heads of state from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia put their weight behind Abbas, which is important for him. Regional and international involvement is vital to achieving any success in Palestine, since the country is unmanageable at present on its own.

The West Bank is hopelessly divided into small islands of Palestinian territory, split by Israeli colonies, roadblocks and military positions; with the infamous wall winding its way through large parts of the land.

Gaza has 1.5 million people crammed into a small city, with little economy and no hope of peace, making it a natural starting point for the despairing anger that leads directly to furious militant activity.

The regional support from the three neighbouring states gives Abbas some extra Arab political credibility to deal with the problem of seeking international help from America, which might wreck Abbas'political legitimacy.

While he seeks increased political and financial support from the Americans and Europeans, he must not be made to seem the "American's favourite" since such a fate would kill his political credibility, which is already in trouble since he was brave enough to commit to the peace process, which immediately puts much of his credibility in hock to Israeli goodwill.

Fatah's years of trying to work with the Israelis, and Hamas' successful ceasefire since January 2006 show how both Palestinian parties can work for peace.

They need an Israeli partner who wants to be part of that process, and without such willingness from Israel, the Palestinian frustration and anger can only grow, turning Palestine into a wilder and more ferocious society every year.

This serves no one, including the Israelis, and the political task at hand is to persuade the Israelis to re-engage with the peace process on the basis of the two-state solution, which will strengthen the hand of those who want a peaceful and independent Palestine, and weaken those who relish the present warfare.