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.”

Palestinian leaders warned Israel on Sunday not to stoke tension in Jerusalem in the hope of thwarting peace talks, after clashes at a sacred site in which Palestinians and Israeli police were injured.

"At a time when [U.S.] President [Barack] Obama is trying to bridge the divide between Palestinians and Israelis, and to get negotiations back on track, Israel is deliberately escalating tensions in Jerusalem," chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erakat said Sunday evening.

"We've seen this before, and we know what the consequences are," the Palestinian minister added, in a statement that recalled the visit of then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the site in Jerusalem's Old City in 2000.

Sharon's presence at al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, triggered the second Palestinian uprising (intifada) and dealt the biggest setback to peace efforts in years.

The reasons behind Sunday's clash were disputed.

According to legislator Hathem Abdel Kader and other Palestinian sources, the clash erupted in the early morning when Palestinians inside the complex - sacred to both Islam and Judaism - saw a group of 15 religious Jews trying to enter.

The Jews never managed to get into the complex, because several hundred Palestinians, who were on alert for such a possibility, began a loud protest. Israeli police responded with tear gas then stun grenades.

Presence of tourists disputed

The clash occurred mere hours before the start of Yom Kippur, the solemn "Day of Atonement" which is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Police were on alert for violent protests in several flashpoints where Jews and Arabs live side by side.

Protesters threw stones, chairs and whatever they could lay hands on as riot police rushed to the scene. Video showed them trying to drive police away from the doorway of the al-Aqsa mosque, but there was no sign that police entered it.

Police said 17 officers were hurt and 11 rioters arrested, and medics said 13 Palestinians were treated for injuries. There were no reports of serious injury or death.

Israeli police said it began when religious Palestinians angered by immodestly dressed tourists grew violent.

Palestinians dismissed that account, saying no tourists were involved. There was no further comment from Israeli authorities, who were observing the Yom Kippur silence.

"Providing a police escort for settlers who are against peace at all costs, and whose presence is deliberately designed to provoke a reaction, are not the actions of someone who is committed to peace, but of someone who will go to extraordinary lengths to scuttle all hopes of peace," Erakat said.

He said it was "deliberately timed to coincide with the eve of the anniversary of that visit" by a government "emboldened by its ability to fend off calls for a settlement freeze".

The complex is known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary). Located above the Jewish prayer site at the Western Wall, it includes al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock mosque.

In Muslim tradition, the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven from the rock at the centre of what is now the Dome of the Rock shrine. The gilded dome sits over the spot where Jews believe Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac to God before an angel stayed his hand.

Jewish visitors need permission from Israeli police to visit this part of the site. During mass Muslim prayers, Israel also restricts access by Palestinian Muslim men under 50.

Sharon's 2000 visit enraged Palestinians and the resulting uprising rapidly escalated, with numerous suicide bomb attacks on Israeli civilians.

Hamas brands clash at Temple Mount a 'Zionist crime'

Earlier Sunday, the Islamist group Hamas branded the clash at the Temple Mount as a "Zionist crime" and a provocation.

"The Israeli occupation is not interested in calm," the Palestinian news agency Ma'an quoted Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesperson, as saying. The news agency said Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called for Palestinians to rise up against Israel to retaliate for the incident.

Ma'an also quoted other Islamists in Gaza as calling for an uprising and condemning Israel.

"The Israeli assault is part of a central Israeli decision to escalate in the whole region," Islamic Jihad leader Khalid Al-Batsh was quoted as saying. "This escalation might reach neighboring Arab countries."

Despite the clashes, Jewish worshippers continued to pray at the Western Wall - situated below the Temple Mount - in the lead-up to Yom Kippur.

On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces said it would place the West Bank under general closure until the end of Yom Kippur due to security concerns.

Police questioned Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday morning for approximately five hours as part of a corruption probe against him for the third time since he took office as Foreign Minister.

Police believe the Yisrael Beiteinu leader will need to be questioned once more before fraud squad detectives can complete their work and hand over material from the investigation to the State Prosecutor's Office.

The site of Lieberman's questioning has been kept secret by police, in an effort to prevent the media from covering the minister's arrival for questioning.

According to police estimates, meanwhile, material gathered in the probe thus far provides an evidential basis for charges of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust.

Investigators are also examining the possibility of adding bribery charges to the list.

On Sunday, Channel 2 revealed that the Yisrael Beiteinu leader has been questioned over suspicions of obstructing the probe against him. It reported that Lieberman is suspected of changing the names of straw companies he established in Cyprus, in concert with his partners, after he believed police had become aware of their identities.

Jerusalem Police announced on Friday they would prevent the so-called Palestinian Culture Festival the Palestinian Authority plans to organize in the city on Saturday.

The PA is planning to fly a glider plane painted in the colors of the Palestinian national flag over the walls of the Old City as part of the festival, which is meant to declare the city to be "the capital of Arabic culture for 2009."

The police said that they were determined to enforce the law, whereby any event organized and funded by the PA is prohibited within Jerusalem's municipal jurisdiction.

The head of the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel, Nachi Eyal, on Wednesday urged Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Police Commissioner David Cohen to thwart the staging of the event.

"To the best of my understanding, this is an attempt to demonstrate Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem in an illegal manner," said Eyal.

"The law...obligates the Palestinian Authority to respect the sovereignty of Israel within the boundaries of the State of Israel, including East Jerusalem."

Since early Friday morning, large police forces, including Border Police, have arrived at the city and are slated to deploy to East Jerusalem and the surrounding Arab villages on Saturday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, is slated to kick off the celebrations from his headquarters in Ramallah. Events are also due to be held in Gaza, Lebanon, Nazareth and Bethlehem.

The search for the killers of two police officers on the Jordan Valley's Route 90 Sunday night is continuing, but it has mostly focused on intelligence gathering.

Security forces are convinced that the incident was a terrorist attack, but there is still no clear view as to which group the culprit, or culprits, belonged to.

Monday, Israel Defense Forces sources rejected claims of responsibility by a group called Imad Mughniyeh Battalions, named after the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist mastermind.

Forensic investigators have concluded that the two officers were shot at very close range with a 9mm pistol, and it is believed that this had happened when they stopped their patrol car to assist passengers in a vehicle that they thought was experiencing problems.

According to the police theory, the minute the officers stepped out of their car they were shot, and the assailant, or assailants, fled in their car.

The theory is based on equipment for changing a flat tire found near the patrol car.

"At this time there is no substantial progress in the investigation and we do not know what precisely happened," a senior police officer involved in the investigation said Monday. "All scenarios, including the one that the gunmen had faked car problems are still theoretical. We cannot say who was behind this attack, where they came from and how they surprised the officers, and where they fled to."

The officer added that "even though it is clear to us that the motive behind the attack is nationalist, the evidence we have so far collected does not, from our point of view, allow us to determine that it was not a criminal incident."

One of the officers, Superintendent David Rabinowitz, was laid to rest at the Haifa cemetery. Hundreds of civilians and police officers were in attendance.

Police Commissioner David Cohen spoke at the funeral and referred to the two dead officers as "heroes who gave their life to protect the country."