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.”

Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, rejected a U.N. proposal to compel Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, to conduct credible investigations into war crimes during last winter's war in Gaza or face possible prosecution by an international prosecutor.

Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who headed a U.N. fact-finding mission probing abuses in Gaza, accused the two sides Tuesday of unlawfully targeting civilians during the conflict. Goldstone's four-member team recommended that the U.N. Security Council instruct the combatants to investigate excesses within their own ranks and if they fail to comply, authorize the Hague-based International Criminal Court to do it.

Rice said that violations of human rights in Gaza should be addressed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which created Goldstone's panel in April, and not by the Security Council, which has the authority to authorize an international probe.

Rice said the United States is still reviewing Goldstone's 574-page report and has not made a judgment on the merits of his findings. But she said it has long had "very serious concerns" about the mandate the Human Rights Council gave to Goldstone, calling it "unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable." Israeli officials have said the mandate was biased against Israel.

"Our view is that we need to be focused on the future," Rice told reporters outside the Security Council. "This is a time to work to cement progress towards the resumption of negotiations and their early and successful conclusion and our efforts, and we hope the efforts of others will be directed to that end."

The United Nations' former top Middle East envoy has sharply criticized U.S. and Israeli efforts to isolate the Hamas-led Palestinian government, saying the policy has further radicalized Palestinian opinion and undercut long-term efforts to establish a viable Palestinian state.

The broadside by Alvaro de Soto was contained in a confidential 52-page report he filed before resigning from the United Nations last month, ending a 25-year U.N. career. It was an unusually candid assessment by the Peruvian diplomat, who has overseen U.N. peace efforts in El Salvador, Cyprus, Western Sahara and other trouble spots.

Starting in May 2005, de Soto directed U.N. efforts to ease the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a turbulent period that included the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, the electoral victory that gave Hamas control of the Palestinian Authority, and the departure of an ill Ariel Sharon, then the prime minister, from the political scene.

The report charged that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and predecessor Kofi Annan provided political cover for U.S. and European efforts to quarantine Hamas. De Soto accused Annan of "hampering" peace efforts by prohibiting him from maintaining regular diplomatic contacts with Hamas leaders.

De Soto also criticized the Palestinian leadership. He referred to Hamas's charter, which advocates the destruction of Israel, as "abominable," and said that Palestinian efforts to stop violence against Israel are "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst." De Soto advised Ban to reconsider the United Nations' membership in the Quartet -- a diplomatic grouping that includes the United States, the European Union and Russia -- saying it has provided a political "shield" for U.S. and European efforts to bankrupt the Palestinian government.

De Soto said that the Quartet has grown increasingly biased in favor of Israel over the past two years. He said that it made a strategic mistake by imposing conditions on Hamas after its January 2006 electoral victory -- that it renounce violence, recognize Israel and embrace prior peace agreements.

"Even handedness has been pummeled into submission," De Soto said in the report, which was first reported by London's Guardian newspaper and posted on its Web site. "The Quartet took all pressure off Israel. With all the focus on the failings of Hamas, the Israeli settlement enterprise and barrier construction has continued unabated."

But Ban defended his approach. "The Quartet, I think, has been contributing a lot to the peace and security in Middle East," he said.

De Soto said that American prestige in the Arab world is at "historically low levels" and that U.S. officials "clearly pushed for a confrontation" between Hamas and Fatah, the secular movement that backs the pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

De Soto described a Quartet meeting on the eve of the February Palestinian peace talks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which were aimed at ending the fighting between the two Palestinian factions. A U.S. representative, he recalled, said: "I like this violence . . . it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas."

De Soto also accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior U.S. officials of having "hijacked" efforts by former Quartet envoy James D. Wolfensohn to negotiate an agreement to provide greater freedom of movement for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

De Soto portrayed Sharon as a brilliant political tactician who boosted Israel's international standing by deciding to withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza. In exchange, he extracted President Bush's written endorsement of Israel's opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel and of large Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank.

De Soto characterized Israel's current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, as a "weak" leader. He accused him of maintaining an economic vise grip on the Palestinian Authority by withholding tax revenue that Israel collects on its behalf. "He has done little, grudgingly and late, to strengthen his hand," he said.

United Nations -- The U.N. General Assembly voted 156 to 7 on Friday to condemn Israel for "indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force" in its military offensive in Gaza, during an emergency session that provided scores of U.N. members with a familiar platform to excoriate the Jewish state's policies in the region. Six countries abstained.

The vote came less than a week after the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution criticizing Israel for launching a Nov. 8 missile strike that killed 18 civilians in the town of Beit Hanoun. Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour opened the session by calling for "an end to this rampant Israeli campaign, which intends to destroy an entire people."

Friday's meeting comes in a year in which the United Nations' human rights bodies have intensified their focus on Israel's rights record. U.S. and Israeli officials said the Jewish state is being unfairly singled out by an organization that fails to adequately address Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli towns and has grown increasingly soft on some of the world's worst despots.

The United Nations' new Human Rights Council has passed three resolutions criticizing Israel for abuses during military operations in South Lebanon and Gaza. On Thursday, the 47-member body ordered a fact-finding mission to probe Israeli abuses in Gaza.

The Geneva-based rights council has not passed a single resolution condemning any other country, shielding some of the world's most oppressive regimes from international censure. Belarus and Uzbekistan, meanwhile, succeeded Thursday in gaining passage of a resolution in the General Assembly's Third Committee, which also deals with human rights, that seeks to shield countries from scrutiny of their human rights records.

U.S. officials said Friday's action in the General Assembly was undermining the institution's credibility. John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, accused anti-Israeli extremists of trying to "transform the organization into a forum that is little more than a self-serving and polemical attack against Israel or the United States."

"Since its inception earlier this year, the Human Rights Council has quickly fallen into the same trap and delegitimized itself by focusing attention almost exclusively on Israel," Bolton said. "Meanwhile, it has failed to address real human rights abuse in Burma, Darfur, [North Korea] and other countries."

The council was created this year to improve the United Nations' capacity to confront the world's worst rights abusers. It replaced the Human Rights Commission, whose credibility suffered because of the membership of noted rights abusers, including Zimbabwe and Sudan.

The Bush administration decided not to join the new rights body, citing concerns that it would be manipulated by states with poor human rights records. But it agreed to approve financing for the rights body and participate as an observer.

European diplomats and rights advocates conceded that the new rights council has gotten off to a bad start. But they say it is too early to write it off as a failure.

One European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized by his government to speak to the press, said that they will begin to confront rights abusers. He noted that the council is already considering resolutions criticizing Sudan and Sri Lanka. "It's not even up and running," the diplomat said. "It has to find its feet."

But some human rights activists say the United States, the European Union and other traditional rights advocates have been outmaneuvered.

Peggy Hicks, a U.N. expert at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Islamic states have targeted Israel by making use of a provision of the council's bylaws that allows the convening of special sessions to address a specific country's abuses.

"There is a real movement by some states with incredibly poor human rights records to seize this moment to push back and make sure that U.N. isn't able to act on human rights," Hicks said.

U.N. diplomats, meanwhile, said the European Union, the United States and other Western governments are taking rights abusers to task. They noted that the General Assembly rights committee passed a resolution condemning North Korea's human rights record. Similar resolutions will be introduced on Belarus, Burma, Iran and Uzbekistan and will be put for a vote next week.

United Nations - A United Nations-sponsored report on the Arab world called for greater political freedom, warning that the region could face "chaotic upheavals" if Arab governments refuse to curtail corruption and yield some of their absolute power.

The third Arab Human Development Report embraced many themes espoused by President Bush in promoting democracy in the Middle East. The report, which was written by 39 Arab scholars and intellectuals, provided scarce credit to the United States for furthering democratic change through the overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

The report sharply criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq and charged that the prosecution of the "war on terrorism" has curtailed freedoms in the Arab world. It said the Iraqi people have "emerged from the grip of a despotic regime" only to "fall under a foreign occupation that increased human suffering."

Mark Malloch Brown, the administrator of the U.N. Development Program, which commissioned the report, wrote in the foreword that the views expressed in the report "are not shared" by the United Nations. But he said the document is "an authentic reflection of the views and analysis of many of the most thoughtful, reform-minded intellectual figures in the Arab region."

The report presented a harsh assessment of Arab governments' efforts to stifle political freedom, saying political participation in the region has "often been little more than a ritual" and elections typically preserve the status of "ruling elites."

"By 21st century standards, Arab countries have not met the people's aspirations for development, security and liberation," the report stated. "Indeed, there is a near-complete consensus that there is a serious failing in the Arab world, and that this is located specifically in the political sphere."

But the authors charged that many Arab governments have cited traditional interpretations of Islamic law to challenge the legitimacy of international human rights norms. They said Arab governments routinely use a variety of other means to restrict individual freedoms, including the imposition of emergency laws in Egypt, Syria and Sudan that strip citizens of their constitutional rights.

The authors challenged the notion that there is a cultural aversion in the Arab world to many of the fundamental political values -- freedom of expression, association and human rights -- associated with Western democracies.

"There is a rational and understandable thirst among Arabs to be rid of despots and to enjoy democratic governance," the report stated. It cited a survey of political attitudes in Algeria, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Morocco that revealed mounting concern over government corruption, poverty and the absence of independent courts capable of delivering justice to all.

The report, which focused on the period between October 2003 to October 2004, does not cover some of the most important political events in the region, including elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories or the withdrawal of thousands of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

But its authors insisted that pressure for political change -- while insufficient -- has been underway in the region for some time. They cited demands by local human rights organizations in Morocco and Bahrain that their governments acknowledge past rights violations and pay compensation to victims' families. "Certainly, incipient reforms are taking place," the report stated. "Some gains are undoubtedly real and promising, but they do not add up to a serious effort to dispel the prevailing environment of repression."

The report, which also charged Israel with impeding the political and economic rights of Palestinians, said the U.S. detention of Arabs and Muslims as part of the war on terrorism was undercutting efforts of reformers to make democratic changes in the Middle East.