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.”

Whether the Jordanian government likes it or not, the Jordanian-Palestinian agreement and the mood of the people regarding Jerusalem require it to take a new look at the situation in the holy city.

Forty-six years ago Israel occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Since then much has happened on the issue of Palestinian nationalism, the PLO and the emergence of the need for an independent Palestinian state. But while it is accepted that Palestinian statehood will take place on Palestinian soil (and not in Jordan as right-wing Israelis at one time wanted), the final status of Jerusalem has remained in doubt. Israel insists in no uncertain terms that the unified city of Jerusalem will continue to be part of Israel while Palestinians talk about East Jerusalem being the capital, and therefore part and parcel, of the independent state of Palestine.

Since 1967, Israel has unilaterally annexed and expanded East Jerusalem, a move that has not been recognised by any country in the world. Politically, however, Israel has worked hard — and to a certain level succeeded — to isolate East Jerusalem and its Palestinian residents from their natural physical and political connections in Ramallah, Bethlehem and throughout Palestine. But while Israel has weakened Palestinian-Palestinian relations, it has not been as successful in stopping Jordan from playing a direct role in Jerusalem. The role of Jordan, especially in the Old City and in relation to the holy places, has continued, albeit at a low key. Employees of the Jerusalem Awqaf Department are paid directly by Jordan and the waqf guards continue to guard all but one of the gates leading to Al Aqsa Mosque. Israeli police also stand alongside the waqf guards and Israel has total control over Bab Al Magharbeh which is the closest gate to the Western Wall.

Jordan also strengthened its political presence in Jerusalem by inserting a clause in its peace treaty with Israel, under which the Kingdom will have a key role in any decision regarding the final status of Jerusalem’s holy sites.

Jordan also received a further boost to its legitimacy in talking about Jerusalem when His Majesty King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed an agreement recently recognising the Hashemites’ historic custodianship of holy sites in the city.

This background is important to understand when reviewing the unprecedented decision by the Jordanian Parliament last Wednesday unanimously calling on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador in Amman and to recall Jordan’s ambassador from Tel Aviv. The MPs decision came after news that Israel allowed right-wing Israelis to visit Al Aqsa Mosque at the same time that Israeli security prevented Palestinians from entering the mosque for two days. Palestinian fears that Israel is trying to change the decades long ground rules on the third holiest site in Islam was the main source of concern for the Jordanian parliamentarians. Daily demonstrations have also been taking place near the Israeli embassy in Amman.

This grassroots anger at the Israeli actions requires the Jordanian leadership to review its policies in Jerusalem. It is no longer enough to make political statements; Jordan needs to adopt a holistic approach to this most sensitive of all cases. It needs to use its political connections both with Washington and Tel Aviv to work on de-escalating this political crisis and to reach workable agreements that will keep radicals from taking advantage of the situation. Sources in Jerusalem point out that in the aftermath of the 2000 Al Aqsa Intifada frictions between Palestinians and Israeli troops allowed Israel to turn Bab Al Magharbeh into a regular (rather than emergency) entrance to the mosque. Tourists, as well as Jewish fanatics, bypass the existing regulations on the entry to the mosque by using this gate. This deprives the Islamic waqf authority of the ability to regulate the entry of non-worshippers to the holy site, their dress, the time they enter as well as precious income that tourists entering from all regular gates are obliged to pay.

Jordan’s re-engagement in Jerusalem will also need to try and find a mechanism to empower the disenfranchised Jerusalemites. Anywhere between 250,000-350,000 Palestinian political orphans live in East Jerusalem but are not able to practice any nationalist political activity. Any attempt by Jerusalemites to organise is seen as a hostile act and an attempt to introduce the Palestinian Authority into Jerusalem, which Israel violently opposes. If Jordan can empower Jerusalemites this can go a long way in helping them stay steadfast in their city, in order to combat Israel’s constant attempts at ethnic cleansing, which is described by some Israelis as “bureaucratic slow transfer”.

The efforts of Jordan should also include an attempt to deal with the research, media and public relations war in which the Muslims and Arabs are losing badly, even though many of the facts are on their side. Jordanian waqf officials, many of them in their retirement and post-retirement age, are unable to match the Israeli public relations machine. Shifting the public relations file from the awqaf department to any other effective entity is needed to present the Muslim and Arab side of the issues. Compared to the hundreds of think tanks and lobbying groups that Israel and Jewish agencies are working on around the clock, the Arab side is being crushed in academic, research and media presence on issues related to Jerusalem.

The Hashemites’ relationship with Jerusalem is important and continuous for decades. Jordan’s unique political position and the authorisation it has received from the Palestinian leadership, plus the pressures from its own people, require it to do something of importance in Jerusalem. Jordan can no longer deal with the challenges facing Jerusalem using the old methods. A new and bold effort is needed.

Israel may say that it wants peace, but the reality that has become clear once US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry left the region is that Israel feels protected by the charm handed to it for free by Obama and ignoring his advise to seriously work on ending the occupation.

A famous Arab saying goes like this: If you are generous to a decent person, you own him, and if you are kind to a nasty person, he rebels.

What we are witnessing now is Israel’s rebellion against its generous benefactor: the US.

Here are a few examples. Before Obama came to Israel, there was discussion about some confidence-building measures. Palestinians were asked to refrain from taking Israel to the International Court of Justice while Israel was asked to freeze settlement activities in order to facilitate the return to peace talks.

The Palestinians complied, Israelis did not.

Another idea was that Israel should refrain from making any settlement announcements and agree to release Palestinians imprisoned before the 1993 Oslo Accords. When then-Israeli president Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian president Yasser Arafat famously shook hands then, the Palestinians were promised to have their prisoners released.

The leaders of those prisoners were allowed back into Palestine, but the rest are still rotting in jail. Now, 20 years later, the Israelis are still dragging their feet about a promise Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres made and which he has the power, as president, to execute.

Not only were these prisoners not released, their condition worsened. Prison visits are barred and medical services are denied or curtailed, to the point that a cancer patient is literally given aspirin.

There is a case to be made about medical neglect and, again, sheer nastiness. Sixty-five-year-old Maysara Abu Humaida, in jail for nearly 20 years, was coughing severely last September; he was diagnosed with an advance-stage throat cancer. He was taken to a hospital clinic for a checkup but not for treatment. Six months after his diagnosis, he died with his feet shackled to the hospital bed.

The least that should have been done to allow him to get proper medical treatment or release him. Palestinian officials say they were expecting Israel to release him, but again, since Israel could not get anything in return, it let him die in jail.

Israelis insist on dealing with issues only when face-to-face negotiations begin. Netanyahu insists that his government (made up of pro-settler parties) will not freeze settlement activities beforehand.

The Obama-Kerry team also suggested that instead of being stuck on the issue of a settlement freeze, talks should begin on borders and security. This seemed logical considering Israelis and Palestinians had agreed to this exact formula during Obama’s first term.

The wisdom behind this idea is that it deals with what Israelis need, security, and with what Palestinians want, border demarcation. Again, the Israelis refused.

An unnamed Israeli source told the Israeli daily Haaretz that dealing with these issues gives Palestinians what they want and gives nothing to Israel. This is strange. Land for peace has always been the basis for peace talks, and one wonders how Israel fails to consider reaching security arrangements in its favour.

The Israeli arrogance is based on the feeling that the relative quiet in the West Bank will last forever. But already there are signs that it will not last long.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike are demanding that they be either tried or released and this has captured the imagination of the Palestinian public.

Samer Issawi, who has been refusing to take in any solid food for six months, is protesting his detention without charge or trial. Instead of releasing him, the Israelis are trying to get rid of him by suggesting he voluntarily agree to move permanently to Gaza. In response to European countries’ protests about his continued detention, the Israeli government replied by suggesting that a European country accept to take him.

If Issawi is such a security threat, why would Israel agree to allow him to live in Gaza and not send him to live in a ally European country? It is only logical that Israel should release him or if it does have serious accusations against him, try him.

Israeli officials are totally oblivious to the fact that over three million Palestinians are still living under their brutal military control. Travel restrictions continue; local churches say that 60 per cent of Palestinian Christians were denied permits to visit Jerusalem on Easter holy week.

Gaza remains under an illegal siege and the only port of movement for West Bankers, the King Hussein Bridge, is at times operating at a snails pace.

Attempts to build a Palestinian airport near Jericho continue to be thwarted without any logical reason given and there is no chance that the Gaza international airport (opened by Bill Clinton) will operate soon.

It is clear that by being generous to a nasty person, that person has rebelled. The Obama charm offensive has clearly boomeranged; it is being totally abused and misunderstood as a sign of American weakness.

This week, hundreds of Palestinians attempting to return home using the only crossing point allowed to them, the King Hussein Bridge, found themselves stuck for hours and hours at the bridge.

It appears that Israeli bridge officials were not ready to accept the Palestinians, which included many umra pilgrims.

On Sunday and Monday the bridge was closed at noon, causing travellers who made it before closure nearly 10 hours of delay, while others arriving after that time were asked to come back the following day. Some, choosing to pay as much as $108 per person to cross the bridge using the VIP service, had to wait for at least four hours.

This is not the first time that Palestinians suffer from long delays, which is routine in summer months. Ever since October 2000, the Israelis got rid of the Palestinian police that was stationed at the bridge, reduced bridge hours from the 24 to an 8am-10pm weekday schedule and a much more reduced schedule on Fridays, Saturdays and on Jewish holidays. The Israeli airport and other crossing points are open around the clock, even during Jewish holidays.

Restriction of movement across the bridge is just one of many restrictions that have been imposed by the Israeli army and has not been retracted despite the relative quiet witnessed by the West Bank for years.

Ten years ago, the Bush administration brokered an agreement called roadmap. This multi-phased plan required Palestinians to democratise their government and the Palestinian security to keep the peace.

Israel was asked to freeze settlement activities, dismantle illegal (according to Israel itself) outposts and return the issue of movement of Palestinians to the pre-October 2000 situation.

In addition to the return of the Palestinian police at the bridge, the agreement requires Israel to remove the hundreds of checkpoints restricting internal movement.

Israel was required by the Oslo agreements and other more recent agreements to allow safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank. Except for a few days, the ability of the Palestinians to move between Gaza and the West Bank is highly restricted.

Palestinians have been seeking for years help on the issue of free movement by using the Gaza airport and by building a West Bank airport north of Jericho. The latter was part of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s statehood plan but has not moved at all because of Israeli restrictions on developing area C, which the Israeli army controls and which covers over 60 per cent of West Bank land.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to avoid any political solution to the 46-year-old occupation.

US Secretary of State John Kerry correctly explained to Netanyahu that what is needed is a political and not an economic peace. Kerry and Netanyahu have agreed to work on both.

International experts and UN institutions have repeatedly pointed out that the Israeli occupation is the main cause of the dire economic situation of the Palestinians.

The World Bank issued a report on the issue on March 19, saying that it “is important to recognise that the continued existence of a system of closures and restrictions is creating lasting damage to economic competitiveness in the Palestinian territories”.

The Palestinian government welcomed the World Bank report, saying that the only way to avert the threat to the economy would be to secure “an end to Israel’s occupation”.

“Israel’s continued military occupation, its system of restrictions and controls, the settlement regime and full control over Area C is an assault on Palestinian national rights to statehood and economic potential,” Palestinian government spokeswoman Nour Odeh said in a statement.

Palestinians, leaders and people, are quite sceptical that a peace agreement is around the corner. Some understand that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has little choice but to give US President Barack Obama’s overtures a chance over the next few months. However, when this period ends, we will be back to pretty much where we are now.

Privately, Abbas told his aides that even if there is no political breakthrough maybe he can gain the release of some prisoners, especially those from the pre-Oslo accords period.

While Abbas should continue to demand a settlement freeze and a demarcation of the borders of Palestine, he might wish to challenge the Israelis to bring back the Palestinian police to King Hussein Bridge as they were before October 2000, to allow free passage between Gaza and the West Bank and to start building the Jericho airport.

Ending the occupation should continue to be the goal of all Palestinians and of those supporting peace in the region. At the same time, free movement of people and goods, a prerequisite for economic development, must be guaranteed immediately.

The agreement signed between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah regarding Jerusalem came at a highly sensitive time.

Jerusalem’s holy places, and especially Al Aqsa Mosque, have been under an escalating threat from radical forces, some of whom are now senior members of the Knesset and government ministers in Israel.

Ever since the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, the large compound comprising Al Aqsa Mosque was the target of radical Jewish zealots who wish to rebuild the Jewish temple on what they consider to be its site and which is under the Aqsa Mosque. Jews claim that the ancient temple was built on Mount Moriah, where Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son.

For years, this messianic Jewish passion was neutralised by a Jewish religious edict. Because Jews believe that the area of Al Aqsa Mosque most probably lies on top of the ruins of the Jewish temple, devout Jews were forbidden to set foot in the mosque so as not to “defile” it.

A sign to this effect was placed at the entrance of Bab Al Magharbeh, the only one that Al Aqsa guards are not protecting and which Jews often use to enter.

In recent years, however, this all-encompassing edict that indirectly provided for relative peace in the Noble Sanctuary’s compound was revised. It was declared that certain areas of the mosque could be visited because, according to this ruling, they are definitely not on top of the location of the Jewish temple.

This decision complicated the situation. Every time Jews enter these locations, Muslim worshipers gather to stop them and the Israeli army usually interferes.

With time, an understanding took place. Jews, like all foreigners, are allowed to enter the mosque at times allocated for tourists, on condition that they do not pray.

So in recent years, Jewish “tourists” would enter and leave at certain times. However, the questions then were whether these Jewish “tourists” also pray and what constitutes prayer. Is it physical movement, is it mumbling words, or both?

Jordan has always had a direct role in protecting Islam’s third holiest mosque. Guards working for the Jordanian Waqf Authority are stationed (along with armed Israeli police) at all but one entrance to the mosque.

The Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement includes a clause reaffirming Jordan’s role. Article 9 of the Wadi Araba agreement, signed in 1994, states that “Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines”.

The situation in Jerusalem and the most recent agreement notwithstanding, for an effective defence of Muslim and Christian sites in the holy city, there is need for more than declarations and agreements.

Politically, the city of Jerusalem suffers from an unprecedented low level of political coordination and activities. Israel has succeeded in denying Palestinians any political role, in violation of US commitment, in the 1990s, that Israel will respect existing Palestinian political institutions.

The Orient House, the chamber of commerce and other leading institutions of Palestinian activity have been closed by Israeli orders based on the emergency laws adopted from the British mandate period. This has meant that the only Arab/Islamic institution allowed to work in Jerusalem is the Jordanian Waqf Ministry, but its role needs to be revolutionised.

With Israeli and Jewish groups pouring millions of dollars and utilising the latest technologies, PR activities and political muscle, the waqf is absolutely no match.

Recently, Queen Rania’s Madrasati-Palestine programme was attached to the Waqf Ministry and this has introduced some new blood and fresh young faces and ideas. But overall, the Waqf Ministry in Jerusalem suffers from old age and its management needs to be revamped.

Much more is needed to upgrade the Palestinian, Arab and Islamic response to the Israeli and Jewish machine dedicated to reverse Islamic presence and to Judaise the holy city on account of its inhabitants and its religious sites.