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.”

A week ago, just days before his U.N. speech, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met a small number of so-called American Jewish leaders. It wasn’t the first time he tried to talk with a group that supposedly holds sway with both American and Israeli audiences. But this encounter was awkward: many leaders of the major American Jewish organizations declined to attend, claiming that negotiating with them was no substitute for negotiating with the government of Israel — and all the more so since Abbas has for four years now refused to resume peace talks with Israel until the construction of settlements in the West Bank is frozen.

Even those Jewish leaders who participated found reason to complain. Why, one of them asked, won’t Abbas acknowledge the Jews’ ties to Jerusalem? In a statement two months ago, the Palestinian president’s office declared that the city “will forever be Arabic, Islamic and Christian.” Other Palestinian officials have also said that Jerusalem was Palestinian “throughout history” and questioned whether there ever was a Jewish temple on Temple Mount.

In response, according to reports from participants at the meeting — some of whom I’ve spoken with — Abbas made a pledge: he would show more sensitivity. And he invited the group to watch his address to the U.N. General Assembly, hinting that they would find in it a remedy to their complaints.

The speech was a disappointment. It was angry and full of frustration. (Abbas has once again been threatening to quit — though this might be a gambit to force other Palestinian leaders into begging him to stay and then give him more leeway.) As for Jerusalem, Abbas supposedly made good on his pledge to show more sensitivity to Jewish history by saying that the “land of peace” was “the birthplace of Jesus (peace be upon him), and ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and the final resting place of Abraham (peace be upon him) — the land of the three monotheistic religions.”

This would seem to be a subtle acknowledgment that Judaism, being one of the three monotheistic religions, has some vague connection to the land of Israel. But that’s a bit too subtle for most Jews. Note Abbas’s shrewd choice of characters: Jesus is, no doubt, the ultimate Christian icon, and Muhammad is the Muslim prophet. But Abraham, as the father of all three monotheistic religions, is a much safer pick than Moses, Jacob or King David. What’s more, according to tradition, Abraham was buried in Hebron, a city in the West Bank that Palestinians claim in its entirety. (At least some of them are willing to split Jerusalem with Israelis.)

This part of Abbas’s speech was not about being sensitive to Jewish claims. It was a rhetorical trick.

Not that this matters to the historical record and to Jerusalem’s great Jewish past: David and Solomon, the first and second temples, Herod and the Roman siege. The day before Abbas’s speech, in synagogues around the world Jews recited the Yom Kippur prayer. A central part of it describes the sacred rites performed by the high priest at the temple on the mount. And it ends — and so the holiest day of Judaism ends – with this wish: “Next year in Jerusalem.” Abbas may deny, but Jews remember.

In such an atmosphere, it would be naive, maybe even foolish, to expect a calming of tensions in the land of peace. If after asking Jewish leaders to watch his speech, Abbas could only give them this meek acknowledgment of their ties to Israel, the long road to peace may be very long indeed.

In October, when Tzipi Livni, who had won the race to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as head of Israel's ruling Kadima Party, announced that she was unable to form a governing coalition, you could almost hear the groans coming from across the Atlantic and from European capitals. The reason? Livni's failure to assemble a government means new elections will take place in February. And, if the polls are any guide, that means the Israeli political moment the international community has been fearing for years could be just around the corner: The dreaded Bibi Netanyahu may soon be back in power.

It's possible that no Israeli leader has ever been reviled so intensely in the West. When Netanyahu was booted from office by Ehud Barak back in 1999, Clinton officials were elated. The administration "has made little effort to conceal its interest in a victory for Ehud Barak," explained The New York Times on the day Israeli voters went to the polls. Netanyahu aide David Bar-Illan would later write of a "massive American intervention" intended to help Barak oust Bibi. James Carville, Robert Shrum, and Stanley Greenberg--Clinton advisers all--worked for Barak's campaign. "Dislike is not a strong enough word, " an acquaintance of then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once told me. "She hated him." Bill Clinton himself made his feelings clear in a meeting ten years ago with Shimon Peres, now Israel's president, when he reportedly said that he had lost confidence in Netanyahu.

A decade later, Bibi still has plenty of detractors in D.C. Netanyahu, editorialized The Washington Post last month, "is seen as inflexible and untrustworthy by many in Washington; his election could spell a fractious period in Israeli-U.S. relations." Indeed, Barack Obama has had unkind words for Netanyahu's party, telling a group of Jewish leaders back in February that "there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel--and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."

And, whatever the feelings of American politicians toward Bibi, they are mild compared to the disdain directed at him from European capitals, where the name Netanyahu can generally be counted on to elicit a grimace or a sneer. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder once described Bibi's ideas as "weird," while French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine--explaining in 1998 why his country decided to hold peace talks without Israel--said, "You can't have a peace summit with Netanyahu."

The source of all this scorn is simple: Westerners blamed Bibi for trying to torpedo the peace process in the late '90s--and many believe he will do so again today. The truth, however, is that, when it came to foreign policy, Netanyahu was always considerably more pragmatic than Americans and Europeans gave him credit for. He talked tough but relented time and again. Through Ronald Lauder, his emissary to President Hafez Assad of Syria, Netanyahu affirmed his willingness to give up the Golan Heights in exchange for peace. He may have kicked and screamed during the Wye River negotiations in 1998, but, in the end, he acquiesced--ensuring that the Oslo process moved forward. Bibi, wrote Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at the time, has put the "final nail in the coffin to a claim by any major Israeli political party to 'all the land of Israel.'"

What's more, history has been kinder to some of Bibi's stances than many in the West would like to admit. His reluctance to view Yasir Arafat as a credible partner for peace was vindicated in 2000 when Arafat launched the second intifada, while his objection to Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza three years ago does not, in retrospect, seem quite so preposterous now that the territory has been taken over by Hamas.

Today, the practical distinctions between Netanyahu and his rivals on foreign policy are marginal at best. As the far-left Israeli columnist Gideon Levy has written, Bibi is "no worse than his fellow candidates, but immeasurably more persecuted." Of course, the three main contenders for prime minister--Netanyahu, Livni, and Barak--tend to play up their differences in order to distinguish themselves in voters' minds. But, in contrast to the 1990s when voters were sharply divided over Oslo, Israeli society has arrived at a remarkably coherent consensus on the peace process. Israelis are generally skeptical about the prospects for peace but are willing to play along in a cautious game of trial and error. It's pretty clear that, no matter who wins the upcoming election, the next prime minister will end up roughly carrying out the overwhelming popular desire for cautious pragmatism in negotiations with the Palestinians. As for the question of what to do about Iran's nuclear program, all three candidates agree that it's dangerous and needs to be stopped. Barak and Livni are hardly soft on Iran. Barak has had tough words on the subject: "It is our responsibility to ensure that the right steps are taken against the Iranian regime," he said a year ago. "As is well-known, words don't stop missiles." And, when Livni was recently asked if she supported discussions between the United States and Iran, her reply was blunt: "The answer is no."

And yet there are perfectly good reasons to be wary of Netanyahu--just not the reasons Americans and Europeans have generally fixated on when carping about Bibi over the years. A good number of Israelis are dreading Netanyahu's return to power, but their dread has less to do with Bibi's stance toward Palestinians, Syrians, or Iranians--and much more to do with how he has treated his fellow citizens. Netanyahu's first stint in office suffered from plenty of problems--he was disorganized and "prone to panic," as Ariel Sharon once said about him--but the biggest flaw was that Bibi was a divider, not a uniter. If this doesn't change, he will once again be a failed prime minister.

During the late '90s, Bibi essentially managed to alienate half of Israel. At a time when a sense of unity was essential--following Yitzhak Rabin's assassination--Netanyahu encouraged the right to hate the left and shamelessly exploited the country's divide between religious and secular. (He was once caught on tape whispering to a notorious rabbi that "they"--namely, everybody to the left of him--"forgot how to be Jews.") Worst of all, however, was his constant denunciation of elites, rhetoric that, in retrospect, makes him sound like an Israeli Sarah Palin. "We all know," Netanyahu once said, "that there's a small group here that's snobbish and arrogant." In May 1999, he told voters in the Tikvah market in Tel Aviv that "those elites, what's known as the elites, hate the people. They hate anyone who isn't them. They hate the Sephardim, the Russians, the Ethiopians. Anyone who isn't one of them."

Bibi lacked the wisdom of another Likud leader, Ariel Sharon, who realized in his second stint as prime minister that, to be a successful leader in Israel, one has to rule from the center--because of both the parliamentary political system (which requires holding together fractious coalitions of small parties) and the political culture (an Israeli prime minister frequently faces the kind of tough national security decisions that require broad agreement among the citizenry). Either Netanyahu didn't understand this, or he was unable to pick his fights wisely and selectively. As a result, he came to be viewed as the hostage of right-wing hacks and ultra-Orthodox parties. He had a coalition--but it was a coalition of angry minorities.

In politics, image can be everything, and, if Netanyahu wants to be a successful prime minister, he will have to change his. He will have to prove that he can be more cool-headed. He will need to find a way to recapture the confidence of the many Israelis who were hurt by the economic measures he promoted as a very successful, but also very conservative, finance minister. And, through his rhetoric, he will need to convince the center that he has learned his lesson and is ready to be the leader of all Israelis--just as Sharon did, after a decade and a half in the political desert.

If Bibi does win--and if, as seems likely no matter who occupies the prime minister's seat, progress toward peace continues to move at a less-than-swift pace--Americans and Europeans will invariably blame him. This will be largely unfair (Barak failed at Camp David, Sharon failed in Gaza, and Olmert failed at Annapolis), but it will also be convenient. Someone has to be blamed in such situations, after all, and the options are limited: Obama can't be blamed (he is too new), blaming the Palestinian president is boring (he is too weak), and blaming Arab leaders is useless (no one expects them to do anything anyway).

Most Israelis, by contrast, will know better than to fault Bibi if the peace process once again stalls. When it comes to his habit of governing by demagoguery and division, however, they may not be so forgiving.

It's hard to really know what Senator Barack Obama wanted to achieve when he spoke last month at the America Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference.

He definitely wanted to prove to the 5000 delegates that he will be a good president for Israel, a friendly one. This has been his goal for quite a while now, starting with the first major speech on Israel, a year and a half ago, to a group of AIPAC supporters in Chicago. And to some degree he even succeeded. Some Jewish voters might still feel that Obama will not be as strong a supporter of Israel as Republican John McCain; they might take an issue with some of the positions he uttered regarding talks with Iran; they might raise questions about some of the policy advisors he surrounded himself with; but by and large, they got the message: Obama is making an effort. He is not hostile.

He was well received in this AIPAC speech a couple of weeks ago ? the morning after he clinched the Democratic nomination. The room was filled with positive energy. And then, in just one sentence, Obama seemed to go overboard: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided", the Illinois senator said. Undivided! Not even George W. Bush, the greatest friend at least in the eyes of Israelis, committed himself to such position. Could Obama really mean that?

The answer was quite obvious - and this week Obama made sure to make it official: no, he did not. Certainly not in the way some angry Palestinians and delusional Israelis have interpreted his words. "The truth is," Obama said in an interview this week, "that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech." What he meant to say was "that we don't want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent."

Thus, just a week before he makes a celebrated trip to Jerusalem, the headlined preceding his visit were in the style of: Obama backtracks on undivided Jerusalem. "Poor phrasing" indeed - but also poor timing. This can cost him in some anti-Obama demonstrations in Jerusalem next week. Not exactly the message he'd like to convey to the American voter at home. Obama got the worst of all possible worlds: he enraged both Palestinians and Israelis, one at the time. That's the price of talking about the most delicate of all delicate issues - Jerusalem - without thinking first.

However, Obama will be traveling to Israel, and to the Palestinian Authority, and will have meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in a week in which Abbas, amazingly, seems to be the stronger politically than his Israeli counterpart. He will travel to Ramallah, and most probably to the town of Sderot as well. McCain will be able to claim that when he was in Sderot it was under the threat of fire ? Obama got lucky and will only see it after the cease fire has taken hold.

Obama does not expect that this trip will change perceptions over night. A Gallup poll published last week has revealed that most Orthodox Jews will vote for McCain, most other Jews for Obama. The J Street poll on which I wrote yesterday has a similar message. Essentially, this poll could not point to any major shift in Jewish public opinion: maybe those voters have already made their minds.

And anyway, investing such huge effort in the Jewish vote does not make much sense. The Obama camp long ago realized that a script in which the tiny Jewish community will be the one to cast the decisive vote is very unlikely to materialize. Thus, one should look at Obama's courting of the Jewish vote as part of his larger effort to reintroduce himself to the American voters.

Getting the Jewish voters on board is not the goal but rather the tool. If one follows such logic, the result will be something along these lines: Obama wants Americans to be assured that he is patriotic, that he understands the difference between good and evil, that will be standing on the right side of the major conflicts or these stormy times. If the Jewish community can be convinced that he will stand with Israel - Obama can claim a small victory. He can show that with the right approach and the adequate message he can win over suspicious voters.

Hence, traveling to Israel sends a message of exactly the right tone - assuming no poorly crafted statements will be made (Dennis Ross will be traveling with Obama to help make sure it all goes well):

I will stand with Israel, but will also work for peace (Obama will travel to Ramallah, McCain did not).

I am a world leader (proof: I know Shimon Peres).

Israelis find me acceptable (there's a lot of curiosity regarding in Israel, and he will be received with great fanfare).

Moderate Palestinians find me acceptable (the Palestinian Authority will probably make sure not to have noisy demonstrations against Obama).

If all goes well, Hamas leaders in Gaza will make some derogatory statements toward the distinguished guest. This will enable Obama to show that the bad guys do not want him - meaning, he is one of the good guys.

Can you imagine a J Street poll suggesting that most American Jews oppose a vigorous Israeli-Palestinian peace process? Can you imagine such a poll asserting that American Jews oppose any American pressure on Israel to make compromises?

If you can't, this is your lucky day. J Street just released a public opinion pollwith no such surprises. Not if you read the press releases accompanying it. American Jews, the poll says, want peace, readily support American pressure, and believe that Middle East peace is "a core American interest" (55 percent).

Case closed: American Jews support the J Street agenda.

Or do they?

Let's take a look at a couple of interesting numbers from this poll:

1.

J Street's press release reads the following: "Instead of holding the hawkish, hard-line positions often expressed by many established Jewish organizations and leaders, American Jews actually overwhelmingly support assertive peace efforts and an active U.S. role in helping Israelis and Arabs to resolve their conflict? American elected officials and politicians have for years fundamentally misread the American Jewish community," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street?s executive director in the press release.

But here's what the poll says: More people agree that "established" and "traditional" Jewish organizations represent their views than the number of people who say such organizations do not represent them. Even when AIPAC - supposedly the great Satan - is mentioned by name, more people (34 percent) believe it accurately represents their views than those (23 percent) who don't. The 40 percent who do not have an opinion also represent a group that can hardly be considered "fundamentally misread."

2.

J Street opposes military action against Iran, "a terrible option for the U.S., regional stability, and for Israel." But American Jews will be more likely than not to vote for a Congressional candidate who believes that "America must do everything it can to protect Israel's security. This means militarily attacking Iran if they pursue a nuclear weapons program, supporting an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iran, cutting off aid to the Palestinians if their schools allow textbooks that don't recognize Israel, and letting the Palestinians know where we stand on Jerusalem by moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem."

Indeed, there's still a significant minority (41 percent) of people less likely to vote for such a candidate. Even more people will support someone encouraging talks with Iran. But here comes the funny part: the way this poll was devised - presumably with great care - it's impossible to know whether the "less likely" lot who opposes such a statement do so because they oppose attacking Iran, or because they object to a more firm stance vis-à-vis the Palestinians. By the way, a reliable answer to such question can be found here. It is quite clear: do not attack. But we don't need J Street to tell us that.

3.

My friends at the Orthodox Union (I have friends all around town) were quick to note, that J Street's PR for their poll conveniently omits mention of its findings on an issue we feel is of the utmost importance - the indivisibility of Jerusalem. Even among their respondents - who support 'assertive peace efforts and an active U.S. role' (i.e. pressure) and withdrawal from the West Bank - a majority do NOT believe Jerusalem should be re-divided with its eastern neighborhoods becoming part of a Palestinian state."

While that is correct, it is only half the story. People who support "the United States exerting pressure on both the Israelis and Arabs to make the compromises necessary to achieve peace" - (81 percent) - but oppose the possibility of "neighborhoods in East Jerusalem" becoming part of a Palestinian state just don't know what they're talking about.

Either that, or the "compromises necessary to achieve peace" they envision are totally different from those supported by J Street.

4.

The way this poll was conducted is quite bizarre. I called poll-masters that I trust and read for them some of the questions. It made them laugh. Take this one for example, and imagine the email signaling that someone wants to ask you a question: Do you agree to this very, very, very long statement?

"I am 'pro-Israel,' and believe that America must consistently support our trusted ally Israel. Part of that support should be helping to promote serious efforts to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace because ending the conflict is vital to Israel's future and security. I disagree with American politicians who make statements, such as demanding we move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, that sound supportive of Israel and make vocal activists happy, yet really undermine both peace efforts and America's role as a mediator. I will always work to maintain the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and I support policies that help Israel achieve an enduring peace."

Chances are that you:

A. Stopped reading somewhere in the middle and just wrote yes.

B. Stopped reading somewhere in the middle, regained consciousness at the end, read the final sentence ("I support policies that help Israel achieve an enduring peace"), then wrote yes. Of course you support Israel, duh!

In short, this seems like a good way to ask a question if you want 71 percent to respond yes. Look at all the very long statements in this poll and see for yourself. With barely one exception, the longer the statement, the better the chances that people say yes.

5.

"Jews firmly remain a very progressive Democratic constituency," say the good people of J Street, but as my friends at JTA have noted in their story: "American Jews are less supportive of Barack Obama than previous Democratic nominees."

Actually, this is not even new. I thought the more intriguing was the percentage of Jews disapproving of Senator Joe Lieberman, a Jewish American politician that set a historic precedent: 48 percent.