Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to talk peace with Israel only after the Palestinian bid for UN non-member state status is accepted is correct.

For one thing, nothing comes out of talking to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government at this point in time, as it is interested only in fruitless negotiations while continuing to adopt and implement its policy of changing “facts on the ground” in Israel’s favour through illegal expansion of settlements and confiscation of Palestinian land.

Nothing good can come out of negotiating with a dishonest, ill-meaning partner. Much good, however, can come out if Palestine becomes a UN non-member state and, hopefully in the future, acquires full membership.

When Israel is ready to negotiate in good faith and to implement what has already been agreed upon, I am sure Abbas would more than reciprocate. At this point, under this particular government of extremists and colonialists, talks are a total waste of time.

Abbas’ vision for peace is clear. His commitment to the two-state solution is unshakable. And so is his respect for Israel’s right to exist and live in peace. When he talks about peace, he wants peace for both Palestinians and Israelis. The same can be said about the overall Arab position, as epitomised very clearly not only in the agreements signed between a number of Arab countries and Israel — which even an Islamist like the current Egyptian president fully respects and abides by — but also in the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002.

By contrast, Israel, at least at this point in time, has no vision for peace and no clear position — other than wanting more Palestinian land. And when and if it says it wants peace, it wants it on its own terms and for its own citizens, including the lawless, criminal settlers. No respect and no sympathy for the Palestinians.

Rather than waste time with this Israeli government, Abbas is right in trying to pursue and boost Palestinian interests on other fronts. The UN is one such venue, and Palestinian recognition there will bring both the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people much good support, not just moral but also logistic and material.

If the Israeli government thinks time and facts on the ground are on its side, it is mistaken. This is a shortsighted view of the situation. No matter what it does to change facts on the ground, and no matter how much land it swallows, the Palestinians are not going anywhere, and they will never abandon their right to the land occupied by Israel. The Palestinians’ home is Palestine, nowhere else.

The Palestinians, the Arabs, the Muslims are patient and they can wait — as patient as they were during the crusades, the European colonialism and now the Zionist occupation.

Time can be on our side too.

For these and other reasons, the Palestinian president should not only be confident about his decisions, but insistent and adamant. The last thing he wants to do is strike a bad deal with a bad partner — as was done in Oslo, as we tragically realise now.

The possibility of a Palestinian spring may seem far-fetched at a first glance, yet upon careful consideration, it may be their only course out of the current paralysis.

Of course, the main reason for the stalemate on the Arab-Israeli front is the Israeli government’s refusal to move in the direction of peace. This government seems to believe that Israel’s interests are best served by the deadlock that enables it not only to keep occupied Palestinian land under its authority for as long as possible, but to expand more into it, demolishing houses, confiscating property and annexing more land.

It has become clear that Israel thrives on occupation, usurpation of land and promotion of conflict. In the past, it moved towards peace only when it was pushed by the US (as in the case of the Camp David, in the late 1970s) or forced by Palestinian uprisings, especially the Intifada in the 1980s.

Now there is no pressure on it from anywhere.

The Arabs are busy with their “spring” which, as the Egyptian, Libyan, Yemeni and, most significantly, Syrian situations demonstrate, will take longer than many have anticipated, and the Americans and the Europeans are more concerned with the Syrian situation and the Iranian nuclear issue than with Palestine.

More importantly, the Palestinian leadership is not only divided and fragmented — with the West Bank led by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza by Hamas — but also in a state of boycott and hostility. Such fragmentation both gives Israel the pretext it needs to turn its back to the peace process and aborts any effective popular uprising against the Israeli occupation, which is the only way to bring Israel to the negotiation table.

As a result, Israel is in an extremely comfortable position and in no hurry to talk peace.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, are in a very difficult, very uncomfortable position. There is, first, the Israeli occupation, with the countless checkpoints that impede free movement of people and goods, that keeps on encroaching on the little land the Palestinians have left, and then, their divided, neglectful leadership.

The division between the PA and Hamas has created another paralysis for the Palestinian people, which is affecting them as much as the Israeli occupation.

The economy in the West Bank and Gaza are depressed, especially in the strip, which many international observers are warning will be a true disaster in 2020. And there is no hope whatsoever that peace will be attained.

Under this situation, what can the Palestinian people do? Most probably, they would rise against what they see as a selfish, petty and unworthy leadership.

If the leadership does not move in the direction of reconciliation and to improve the lives of the Palestinians, if it, with the people rallied behind it, does not take a united stand against Israel to pressure it to deliver on the peace front, this leadership will most probably be soon facing an angry Palestinian uprising directed against it, the way other Arab peoples have risen against selfish, corrupt and neglectful regimes.

The idea of a Palestinian spring is indeed not as far-fetched as it would seem at a first glimpse, and if and when it happens, the division between the PA and Hamas will be its main cause.

I, like many who sympathise with the Palestinians during these particularly hard times, was extremely disappointed and saddened by the Islamists’ condemnation of the visit to Al Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem by the grand mufti of Egypt a couple of weeks ago. This condemnation is yet another evidence of Islamists’ shortsightedness and negative vision.

Since the very beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel has spared no effort to turn its occupation of Palestine into colonisation. Throughout the long decades of the conflict, it has made it a policy and a systematic practice to get rid of Palestinians by all means at its disposal: destruction of towns, eviction of inhabitants, deportation of political activists, imprisonment of young people, closure of schools and universities, confiscation of arable land, erection of settlements, separation of Palestinian towns, demolition of houses, shelling and bombardment of civilian areas and subversion of the peace process.

Recent Israeli governments, both influenced and headed by extremists and racists, have intensified efforts to make it as difficult as possible for Palestinians to live a normal life and stay on their land. Israel intends and hopes that somehow the Palestinians would one day vanish.

The Palestinians will not vanish, of course, and no matter what happens, they remain steadfast on their land. But the Palestinians, in facing a most barbaric occupation/colonisation, suffer greatly and need much support.

What support are they getting from Arab and Muslim countries? Not much. Even when the Palestinians filed for UN membership a few months ago, they did not get the necessary diplomatic support from Arab and Muslim countries, which contributed to the erosion of the bid.

Clearly, the Palestinians are in dire need of moral and material support to help them cling to their land and appropriately counter all types of Israeli policies that aim to compel them to depart or deport them.

One basic form of support is constant contacts with Palestinians. Arabs and Muslims should make it a point to keep the channels of communication and contact open with the Palestinian population in order to alleviate their suffering, solidify their steadfastness and contribute as much as possible to the normalisation of their life under the abnormal circumstances that Israel is imposing on them.

Visits to the holy sites in occupied Palestinian territories, by Arabs and Muslims should, therefore, not only be encouraged, but made a priority. Such visits clearly offer much psychological support to the Palestinians, assuring them that their fellow Arabs and Muslims have not forsaken them, but are there for them and with them.

Additionally, constant visits by Arabs and Muslims to Islamic and Christian sites function as a reminder of the importance of these sites to Arabs and Muslims, and the fact that they are under Israeli occupation. This helps focus international attention on Israeli occupation.

This is why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Arabs and Muslims to continually visit Palestine. By boycotting Israel, in effect one boycotts the Palestinians. The same sentiment was echoed by the Palestinian minister of awqaf and religious affairs.

Israel wants and loves nothing more than to have Arabs and Muslims turn their back on the Palestinians and on the holy sites in the occupied territories. Those who are calling for banning visits to the occupied territories are, indirectly and foolishly, abetting Israel’s schemes.

Visits to the Palestinian population under occupation and to holy sites should not, in any way, be seen as normalising relations with Israel. Rather, they should be looked at as concrete examples of what fellow Arabs and Muslims can do to normalise the daily lives of Palestinians and help them remain steadfast on their land — which is what the Palestine question is all about at this point in time.

Arabs, Muslims and peace advocates the world over should keep the road to Jerusalem open and travel it frequently to show solidarity with the Palestinians and to keep the matter of the occupation of holy sites alive in the minds of people.

Israel has not only been tolerating its extremism, but abetting and encouraging it. In light of the Naama Margolese story, will it finally wake up?

Rather than thinking aptly and correctly by seeing a fair peace deal with the Palestinians, whose land it has usurped, as fundamental to the security and stability of both the Palestinians and Israelis, Israel has, in a very manipulative and perverse way, been doing its best to deprive the Palestinians of both peace and their inalienable rights.

Towards this malicious end, the Israeli government — in addition to its mighty military machine, the swallowing of Palestinian lands through illegal settlements, demolition of Palestinian homes, indiscriminate imprisonment of Palestinian demonstrators, the countless checkpoints it erects between Palestinian towns, etc. — has not only been turning a blind eye to continuous provocative and criminal acts committed by Jewish extremists against Palestinian civilians, but also encouraging such acts for the purpose of further uprooting the Palestinian people.

These acts, which have escalated both systematically and dramatically over the years, include, but are not limited to: the burning of mosques, the cutting of olive trees, the shooting of Palestinians going to work in their fields, the forced possession of some houses in Palestinian neighbourhoods, etc.

In the vast majority of these acts, the Israeli police or army “fails” to do anything to protect the Palestinian victims. When the Palestinians seek justice and retribution from Israeli courts, they get nowhere, as Israeli courts often turn down Palestinians petitions, for all kinds of pretexts, or legalise what the extremists commit.

All of this is part and parcel of Israel’s depopulation policies. When the Israelis were “establishing” their “home” on Palestinian lands in the 1930s and 1940s, they used not only violence but terrorism against the Palestinian owners and inhabitants of the land. The massacres of Deir Yassin, Qibya, and others speak louder than words. And so does the total demolition of the three Latrun villages of Amwas, Yalu, and Beit Nouba — in addition to others — in 1967.

The Israeli occupation machine has always relied, in dispossessing Palestinians and expanding its “homeland” into Palestine, on the various monsters and devils that it created.

The current extremists — religious as well as secular — are serving Israel’s selfish and narrow-minded interests, no doubt. However, what will Israel do when these extremists start harming Israelis directly? What should it do when the monsters it has created start backfiring?

It is these same extremists who assassinated former Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin, the only true Israeli peacemaker. Where would the Palestinians and Israelis be today had Rabin’s life been spared? Where would the region be? In a much better position.

And yet, Israel — which, like the Palestinians, has lost a lot as a result of the demise of Rabin — did nothing to combat its extremists. As a matter of fact, such extremism has not only grown, and grown more aggressive, but has become more widespread. The entire Israeli society has become more extreme and controlled by extremists: their current prime minister and the vast majority of his ministers included.

What the ultra-orthodox Jews of Israel — who, according to some estimates, constitute 10 per cent of the entire Israeli population — did to Margolese comes as a vivid reminder of the dangerous path Israel is following by either failing to curb, or nourishing, its extremism.

Margolese, a second-grader who was going to her religious school dressed modestly, was harassed and terrorised by a group of ultra-religious Jews, who called her a “whore” for dressing “immodestly.”

Should not this incident call for some soul-searching on the part of Israel, and some reconsideration of how it has been dealing with its own extremism? Shouldn’t it be a wake-up call for Israeli society?

What the extremist did to Margolese is a metaphor — though a small, tiny one — of what the Israeli extremists have been doing to the Palestinians for more than 80 years.