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.”

Few with any sense of intellectual or historical integrity would still question the bloody massacre that took place in the village of Deir Yassin 65 years ago, claiming the lives of over 100 innocent Palestinians.

Attempts at covering up the massacre have been dwarfed by grim details by well-respected historians, including some of Israel’s own.

Narratives offered by historians such as Benny Morris — an honest researcher who remained committed to Zionism despite the ghastly history he himself uncovered — presented a harrowing version of the events that unfolded on that day: “Whole families were riddled with bullets… men, women, and children were mowed down as they emerged from houses; individuals were taken aside and shot. Haganah intelligence reported ‘there were piles of dead’. Some of the prisoners moved to places of incarceration, including women and children, were murdered viciously by their captors…”

It was the Irgun Zionist militias of Menachem Begin and the Stern Gang (Lehi) lead by Yitzhak Shamir that took credit for the infamy of that day; and both were rewarded generously for their “heroism”. The once wanted criminals rose to prominence to become prime ministers of Israel in later years.

The magnitude of the Deir Yassin massacre often obscures important facts for historians. One amongst them is that Deir Yassin was one of many massacres perpetrated by Zionist troops, including Haganah units. Another is that these militias had jointly formed the Israeli Defence Forces, following the official Israeli Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, despite their supposed differences during the conquest of Palestine.

David Ben-Gurion had made his decision on May 26 and hesitated little to include both the Irgun and Lehi, alongside the Haganah. Not only did the leaders of the terrorist militias command respect and enjoy prestige within Israeli society, armed forces and the political elite, but the very murderers who butchered innocent men, women and children were empowered with bigger guns and continued to “serve” and terrorise for many more years.

Another often overlooked fact is that what started at Deir Yassin never truly finished. Sabra and Shatilla, Jenin, Gaza and many more are only recreations of the same event.

But another sad reality also emerged and was crystalised in the last 65 years. Since then, the right to credible narration has still largely been reserved for Israeli historians.

Most of these historians, whether sympathetic or otherwise, either played no part in that history, were privileged by its outcome or were themselves active participants. Still, it would take an Israeli historian to “discover” a Palestinian massacre in some village at some point in time.

For example, only when Israeli journalist Amir Gilat chose to run a story in Maariv newspaper a few years ago, citing the research of Israeli master’s degree student Theodore Katz, did Western media acknowledge the Tantura massacre.

It mattered little that the descendants and relatives of 240 victims of that grief-stricken village who were killed in cold blood by Alexandroni troops never ceased remembering their loved ones. A massacre is only a massacre when halfheartedly acknowledged by an Israeli historian.

Even Palestinian historians, at least those who are held accountable to the rules of Western media and academia, find themselves borrowing mostly from Israeli sources, aggrandising Israeli writers and celebrating Israeli historians who are supposedly more trustworthy than Palestinians.

The logic has it that a sympathetic Israeli narrative would win greater acceptance by American or British audiences than one told by a Palestinian, even if the Palestinian historian had lived the event and experienced its every gory detail.

It is a travesty that the Palestinian narrative has to live on borrowed analogies, borrowed histories and borrowed historians in order to enjoy an iota of credibility. And the problem runs much deeper.

In my last book, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”, I charted a detailed account of the massacre of Beit Daras, during which scores of inhabitants of that brave village, located in southern Palestine, were gunned down by Haganah troops only weeks after Deir Yassin inhabitants were massacred in a similar fashion. Beit Daras is the village from which my family was dispossessed to subsist in an impoverished refugee camp in Gaza.

Although Beit Daras was located in the north eastern part of the Gaza District in southern Palestine, it was high on the Zionist leadership agenda as early as the first months of conquest. The small village was one of a few villages and towns marked for destruction in Operation Nachshon and Harel, aimed to completely cut off the Jaffa-Jerusalem landmass.

The war for Beit Daras began early, as heavy shelling started between March 27 and 28, 1948, killing nine villagers and destroying large areas of the village’s crops.

Several attempts failed to drive the resilient villagers out. What turned out to be the last battle took place in mid-May. Um Adel and Um Mohammad were two young girls in Beit Daras at the time. Now old women in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, they helped me connect some of the pieces regarding what happened that day. I provided their historically consistent accounts in my book on Gaza. Here are few excerpts.

Um Adel recalls: “The women and children were told to leave because the news of the Deir Yassin massacre was spreading and with it lots of fear. We were told that the Jews not only massacre people, but rape women. The women had to be sent away, but the men wouldn’t leave. But so many of them were killed. The men fought like lions, and many were killed as well, including Abu Mansi Nassar and his two brothers, Ali Mohammed Hussain Al Osaji, and four youths from Al Maqadima.”

Um Mohammad elaborated: “The town was under bombardment, and it was surrounded from all directions. There was no way out. They surrounded it all, from the direction of Isdud, Al Sawafir and everywhere. We wanted to pursue a way out. The armed men (the Beit Daras fighters) said they were going to check on the road to Isdud, to see if it was open. They moved forward and shot few shots to see if someone would return fire. No one did. But they (the Zionist forces) were hiding and waiting to ambush the people. The armed men returned and told the people to evacuate the women and children. The people went out (including) those who were gathered at my huge house, the family house. There were mostly children and kids in the house.

“The armed men came and said, ‘the road to Isdud is open, evacuate the people’. The Jews let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machineguns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I… started running through the fields; we’d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other’s hand. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured…. The firing was falling on the people like sand; the bombs from one side and the machineguns from the other. The Jews were on the hill; there was a school and a water reservoir for people and the vegetables. They showered the people with machineguns. A lot of the people died and got injured.”

But many fighters remained in Beit Daras. Not even a massacre would weaken their resolve. The wounded were gathered in many houses, but with little medical care to count on. Some of the dead were hurriedly buried. Many others were unreachable, lying in the sun amidst the blooming fields of spring.

Writing in the right-wing FrontPage magazine on April 1, Joseph Puder reiterated the supposed worry in Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s half-hearted apology to Turkey for the murder of nine Turkish activists in May 2010 could open a “Pandora’s box”.

“In fact,” Puder asserts with peculiar confidence, “an Arab diplomat stated last Sunday that some Arab states are considering the possibility of demanding that Israel apologise for killings in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon — just as Israel has apologised to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara”.

Arabs rarely demand apologies from Israel. Instead, along with many other countries, they demand an end to military belligerence and occupation of Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian territories, in accordance with international and humanitarian law. An “apology” for the killing of many thousands and the subjugation of whole nations will not suffice.

Speaking on behalf of “Israelis”, Puder expects an apology from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for “his provocative actions against Israel and his anti-Semitism”.

The “anti-Semitism” reference is particularly interesting. At a UN conference in Vienna on February 27, Erdogan had referred to Zionism as a crime against humanity. The statement sent shock-waves among Israeli supporters, especially those who wished to see Israeli-Turkish relations return to their old status before Israeli commandos descended on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, killing and wounding many.

Writing in Al Monitor, Tulin Daloglu linked Erdogan’s remarks to the March 1 visit to Turkey by the newly-appointed US Secretary of State, John Kerry. “Erdogan had expected him to extend an invitation to meet [Barack] Obama at the White House,” Daloglu wrote. “He did not receive one.” The reason, according to an unnamed US official: “His remarks on Zionism had hurt the bilateral relationship.”

In some ways, international acquiescence to Zionism is an American success story linked to its triumph over the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. In November 1975, UN General Assembly Resolution (UNGAR) 3379 declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” for it provided the needed historical and political discourses through which Palestine’s original inhabitants were massacred and violently uprooted, as their villages and towns were destroyed or claimed by a different, mostly European race. However, in December 1991, international balances of powers had dramatically shifted in favour of Israel and its US-western benefactors. Without having to alter any of the notions deemed abhorrent by UNGA, Zionism had magically ceased to be racist.

To remain an American ally, Erdogan is expected to toe the American line. In a visit to Denmark on March 30, the Turkish prime minister attempted to negotiate a balanced approach to the controversy ignited by his earlier statement. In an interview with the Danish newspaper, Politiken, he insisted that his criticism of Israel is focused on “some critical issues,” and is “directed especially towards Israeli policies on Gaza”. “On the other hand, we have recognised Israel’s existence within 1967 borders based on a two-state solution,” he said.

Probing the issue further on April 4, in the Hurriyet Daily News, Mustafa Akyol wrote that Erdogan was unlikely to be a “committed Anti-Zionist”, “because it is the official policy of the Erdogan government to support a ‘two-state solution’ in the Holy Land ... Anyone who supports the two-state solution can really not be an ‘anti-Zionist’ at the same time”.

Despite assurances by Turkey that its policies regarding Israel and the Palestinians remain as principled as ever, there is little doubt that a hasty shift is underway. This is causing much confusion and inconsistency between Turkey’s official discourse and conduct. The source of that confusion — apart from the appalling violence in Syria and earlier in Libya and other Arab Spring upheavals — is Turkey’s own mistakes.

The Turkish government’s inconsistencies regarding Israel highlight earlier discrepancies in other political contexts. There was a time when Turkey’s top foreign policy priority included reaching out diplomatically to Arab and Muslim countries. Then, we spoke of a paradigm shift, whereby Ankara was repositioning its political centre, reflecting perhaps economic necessity, but also cultural shifts within its own society. It seemed that the East vs West debate was skilfully being resolved by politicians of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Erdogan, along with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, appeared to have obtained a magical non-confrontational approach to Turkey’s historic political alignment. ‘The Zero Problems’ policy allows Turkey to brand itself as a bridge between two worlds. The country’s economic growth and strategic import to various geopolitical spheres allowed it to escape whatever price was meted out by Washington and its European allies as a reprimand for its bold political moves — including Erdogan’s unprecedented challenge of Israel.

Indeed, there was a link between the growing influence of Turkey among Arab and Islamic countries and Turkey’s challenge to Israel’s violent behaviour in Palestine and Lebanon and its rattling against Syria and Iran. Turkey’s return to its political roots was unmistakable. Yet, Washington could not simply isolate Ankara and the latter shrewdly advanced its own power and influence with that knowledge in mind. Even the bizarre anti-Turkish statements by Israeli officials sounded more like incoherent rants than actual foreign policy.

For a short while, Turkey’s political fortunes were boosted by the early phases of the Arab Spring. Then, much hope was placed on the rise of popular movements in countries that have been disfigured by Arab dictators and their western benefactors.

However, the euphoria of change created many blind spots — one of which is that conflicts of sectarian and ethnic nature, as in Syria, do not get resolved overnight. That foreign military intervention, direct or by proxy, can only support protracted conflict. Indeed, it was in Syria that Turkey’s vision truly fumbled. It was obvious that many were salivating over the outcome of a Syrian war between a brutal regime and a self-serving and divided opposition — each faction adopting one foreign agenda or another. Suddenly, Turkey’s regional and global ambitions grew ever more provisional because of fear of chaos spilling over to its border areas and the fear of a strong Kurdish presence in northern Syria.

Turkish calculations grew more muddled. And under American auspices, an insincere Israeli apology was issued to nudge both parties to an urgent alliance. “In the light of Israel’s investigation into the incident which pointed to a number of operational mistakes, the prime minister expressed Israel’s apology to the Turkish people for any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury ... ”, Netanyahu’s apology read in part. No commitment regarding the Gaza siege was made.

It was good news for Israeli and pro-Israel media, which are likely to raise the price of that apology as needed. Turkey and Israel: A ‘what next?’ mindset was the title of an article in the right-wing Israeli daily Jerusalem Post. The answer came in the Jewish Press: “Next on the Israeli-Turkish Agenda: Sending Al Assad to Jordan.” Meanwhile, also in the Jewish Press: Israeli Knesset member “Moshe Feiglin wants Turkey apology for the deaths of 766 Holocaust refugees.”

US President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel, on March 20, dissipated any persisting illusions. As he walked on the red carpet and warmly embraced top Israeli government and military officials, a new/old reality began to sink in: Obama is no different from his predecessors.

On the day of Obama’s arrival, Israeli rights group B’Tselem, released a disturbing video of Israeli soldiers carrying out a “mass arrest” of nearly 30 Palestinian children on their way to school in the Palestinian city of Hebron.

The children pled and cried to no avail. Their terrified shrieks echoed through the Palestinian neighbourhood as they tried to summon the help of passersby.

“Ammo” [uncle], one begged, “for God sake don’t let them take me”.

Nonetheless, several military vehicles were filled with crying children and their schoolbags.

The video was released on the day Obama was meeting Israeli children at a welcoming ceremony at the home of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

“Their dreams are much the same as [dreams of] children everywhere,” he said.

“In another sense though their lives reflect the difficult reality that Israelis face every single day. They want to be safe, they want to be free from rockets that hit their homes or their schools.”

Many Palestinians immediately pointed out the moral discrepancies in most of Obama’s statements during his stay in Israel. Still, his visit was “historic”, declared numerous headlines in the US and Israeli media.

Aside from the fact that it was his first trip to Israel as a president, it was barely momentous. His unconditional support for Israel was tedious and redundant, predictable even.

Those who have followed his unswerving pro-Israel declarations — including his visit to Israel as a presidential candidate in 2008, his speeches before the Israeli lobby group AIPAC and many other examples — could hardly discern a shift except, perhaps, in the total lack of interest in political sensibility and balance.

He truly delivered in Israel, to the total satisfaction of the Israeli prime minister and his pro-settler government, which was assembled just before Obama’s arrival.

Obama spoke as if entirely unaware of the political shift to the extreme right under way in Israel. Indeed, the new Israeli government is more right wing than any before.

The extremist Jewish Home Party has three important ministries, including Jerusalem and housing, and the ultra-nationalists of Yisrael Beiteinu were awarded the tourism ministry. It means that the next few years will be a settlement-construction bonanza, more ethnic cleansing and greater apartheid.

“It’s good to be back in The Land [Israel],” Obama said in Hebrew, at the Tel Aviv airport.

“The United States is proud to stand with you as your strongest ally and your greatest friend.”

It is believed that for four years, Obama has failed to live up to the nearly impossible expectations of Israel.

Israel requires a president with good oratory skills to, for example, emphasise the “eternal” bond between the US and Israel, and Obama did, signing big cheques and asking few questions. He, of course, did that and more. Aside from the $3.1 billion in financial support, he rerouted hundreds of millions of US money to bankroll Israel’s air defence system, the Iron Dome, whose efficiency is questionable at best.

Obama’s past transgressions, as far as Israel is concerned, is that he dared ask the rightwing Netanyahu government to temporarily freeze settlement construction as a precondition to restarting the stalled, if not dead, peace process.

Of course, there is the widely reported matter of Obama’s lack of fondness for Netanyahu, his antics and renowned arrogance. But that matters little, since Israel’s illegal settlements continued to thrive during Obama’s first term in office.

Expectedly, Netanyahu was gloating. He managed to assemble a government that will cater mostly to extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank and also masterfully managed to humble the US president, or at least quash his ambition to make his country operate independently in the Middle East, without Israeli consent or interests in mind.

Now that Jewish colonies are flourishing — with occupied East Jerusalem area EI being another major exploit — Netanyahu is once more hoping to start a war on Iran, one that would not be possible without US funding, support and likely direct involvement.

“Thank you for standing by Israel at this time of historic change in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said while standing near the mostly US-funded Iron Dome.

“Thank you for unequivocally affirming Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.”

Obama did in fact spare a few, although spurious, thoughts for Palestinians.

“Put yourself in their shoes — look at the world through their eyes,” he said to an Israeli audience.

“It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.”

One would applaud the seeming moral fortitude if it were not for the pesky matter that the US voted against a Palestinian state at the United Nations last November and tried to intimidate those who did.

And, of course, much of the horror that Palestinian eyes have seen throughout the years was funded and defended by US money and action.

If Obama is trying to resurrect the myth that the US is a well-intentioned bystander or an “honest broker” in some distant conflict, then he has utterly failed. His country is fully embroiled in the conflict, and directly so. Many Palestinian children would still be alive today if the US government had conditioned its massive support for Israel to Tel Aviv’s ending the occupation and ceasing the brutality against the Palestinians.

In a joint press conference in Ramallah, alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama even demanded that Palestinians drop their condition (proposed by Obama himself) of a settlement freeze in order to return to the so-called peace talks.

“That’s not to say settlements aren’t important, that’s to say if we resolve the [main] problems, then settlements will be resolved,” he said.

“If to begin the conversation we have to get everything right from the outset ... then we’re never going to get to the broader issue,” Obama added.

The broader issue, according to the US president is “how do you structure a state of Palestine,” which again, Obama voted against last year, and passionately so.

Aside from resounding rhetoric about peace, Obama is toeing the Israeli line exactly as Netanyahu and the lobby expect him, or any other US president, to do. He has little to offer Palestinians, or Arab nations, but much to expect from them.

Arab states must seek normalised relations with Israel, and Palestinians must “recognise that Israel will be a Jewish state, and that Israelis have the right to insist upon their security”, he lectured in Jerusalem on the second day of his trip, reported by CNN online.

The obvious danger here lies in the fact that Israel oftentimes conflates security and its right to defend itself by arresting children on their way to school in Hebron, or by inflicting or supporting wars against other nations: Lebanon, Iraq and now Iran.

Obama will eventually get back to his Oval Office, ready to resume work as usual. This will include the signing of many papers concerning additional funds, loans, military technology transfers and much more for Israel.

Palestinians, meanwhile, will carry on with their long fight for freedom without his noted oratory skills.

Meanwhile, the families of the 30 children kidnapped by the Israeli army in Hebron will have many days ahead of them in Israeli military court. But that, of course, is a different matter, of no concern to Obama and his many quotable peace slogans.

“Hi Papa .... Don’t worry about me too much, right now I am most concerned that we are not being effective. I still don’t feel particularly at risk. Rafah has seemed calmer lately,” Rachel Corrie wrote to her father, Craig, from Rafah, a town located at the southern end of the Gaza Strip.

“Rachel’s last e-mail” was not dated on the Rachel Corrie Foundation website. It must have been written soon after her last e-mail to her mother, Cindy, on February 28. She was killed by an Israeli driving a bulldozer on March 16, 2003.

Immediately after her painful death, Rafah embraced her legacy, making her another “martyr” for Palestine. It was a befitting tribute to Rachel who was born to a progressive family in the town of Olympia, itself a hub for anti-war and social justice activism. But Olympia is also the capital of Washington state. Politicians here can be as callous, morally flexible and pro-Israel as any other seats of government in the US, where sharply dressed men and women jockey for power and influence.

Ten years after Rachel’s death, the US government is yet to hold Israel to account. Justice is not expected anytime soon.

Bordering Egyptian and Israeli fences, and ringed by some of the poorest refugee camps anywhere, Rafah has never ceased to be a news topic. The town’s gallantry during the first Palestinian uprising (Intifada) in 1987 was the stuff of legends for other resisting towns, villages and refugee camps in Gaza and the rest of Palestine.

The Israeli army used Rafah as a testing ground, wishing to give a lesson to the rest of the Palestinians. As a result, its list of “martyrs” is one of the longest, and is unlikely to stop growing any time soon.

Many of Rafah’s finest perished digging tunnels to Egypt to break the Israeli economic blockade that followed Palestine’s democratic elections in 2006.

Buried under heaps of mud, drowning in Egyptian sewage water, or pulverised by Israeli missiles, some of Rafah’s men are yet to be located for proper burial.

Rafah agonised for many years, not least because it was partially encircled by a cluster of illegal Jewish settlement: Slav, Atzmona, Pe’at Sadeh, Gan Or and others. The residents of Rafah were deprived of security, freedom and even, for extended periods of time, access to the adjacent sea, so that the illegal colonies could enjoy security, freedom and private beaches.

Even when the settlements were dismantled in 2005, Rafah became largely trapped by the Israeli military border, incursions, Egyptian restrictions and an unforgiving siege. True to form, Rafah continued to resist.

Rachel and her International Solidarity Movement (ISM) friends must have appreciated the challenge at hand and the brutality with which the Israeli army conducted its business.

Reporting for the British Independent newspaper from Rafah, Justin Huggler wrote on December 23, 2003: “Stories of civilians being killed pour out of Rafah, turning up on the news wires in Jerusalem almost every week. The latest, an 11-year-old girl shot as she walked home from school on Saturday.”

His article was titled: “In Rafah, the children have grown so used to the sound of gunfire they can’t sleep without it.” He too “fell asleep to the sound of the guns”.

Rafah was affiliated with other ominous realities, one being house demolitions. In its report, “Razing Rafah”, published October 18, 2004, Human Rights Watch mentioned some very disturbing numbers. Of the 2,500 houses demolished by Israel in Gaza between 2000-04, “nearly two-thirds … were in Rafah.... Sixteen thousand people, more than 10 per cent of Rafah’s population, have lost their homes, most of them refugees, many of whom were dispossessed for a second or third time”.

Much of the destructions occurred so that alleyways could be widened to secure Israeli army operations. Israel’s weapon of choice was the Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, which often arrived late at night.

Rachel was crushed by the same type of US-manufactured and supplied bulldozer that terrorised Rafah for years. It is no wonder that Rachel’s photos and various graffiti paintings adorn many walls of Rafah streets.

Commemorating Rachel’s death anniversary for the tenth time, activists in Rafah gathered on March 16. They spoke passionately of the American girl who challenged an Israeli bulldozer so that a Rafah home could remain standing. A 12-year-old girl thanked Rachel for her courage and asked the US government to stop supplying Israel with weapons that are often used against civilians.

While Rafah carried much of the occupation brunt and the vengeance of the Israeli army, its story and that of Rachel’s are merely symbolic of the greater tragedy which has been unfolding in Palestine for many years.

Here is a quick summary of the house demolition practice of recent years, according to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, also published in Al Jazeera August 2012: The Israeli government destroyed 22 houses in East Jerusalem and 222 in West Bank in 2011, leaving nearly 1,200 people homeless. During the war on Gaza (December 2008-January 2009), it destroyed 4,455 houses, leaving 20,000 Palestinians displaced and unable to rebuild due to the restrictions imposed by the siege. (Other reports give much higher estimates.) Since 1967, the Israeli government destroyed 25,000 houses in the occupied territories, rendered 160,000 Palestinians homeless.

Numbers can be even grimmer if one is to take into account those who were killed and wounded during clashes linked to the destructions of these homes.

So, when Rachel stood with a megaphone and an orange high-visibility jacket trying to dissuade an Israeli bulldozer driver from demolishing yet another Palestinian house, the stakes were already high. And despite the inhumane caricaturing of her act by pro-Israeli US and other Western media, and the expected Israeli court ruling last August, Rachel’s brave act and her subsequent murder stand at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

It highlights the ruthlessness of the Israeli army, puts to shame Tel Aviv’s judicial system, confronts the international community with its utter failure to provide protection for Palestinian civilians and raises the bar even higher for the international solidarity movement.

The Israel court verdict last August was particularly sobering and should bring to an end any thought that Israel’s self-tailored judicial system is capable of achieving justice to a Palestinian or even an American.

“I reached the conclusion that there was no negligence on the part of the bulldozer driver,” Judge Oded Gershon said as he read out his verdict in a Haifa district court in northern Israel. Rachel’s parents had filed a lawsuit, requesting a symbolic $1 in damages and legal expenses. Gershon rejected the suit, delineated that Rachel was not a “reasonable person”, and once more blamed the victim, as it did with thousands of Palestinians for many years.

“Her death is the result of an accident she brought upon herself,” he said.

It all sounded that demolishing houses as a form of collective punishment was just another “reasonable” act deserving legal protection. Actually as per Israeli occupation rules, it is.

Rachel’s legacy will survive Gershon’s charade court proceeding and much more. Her sacrifice is now etched into a much larger landscape of Palestinian heroism and pain.

“I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world,” she wrote to her mother nearly two weeks before her death.

“I think it could also be an incredible inspiration to Arab people in the Middle East, who are struggling under undemocratic regimes which the US supports.”