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.”

The Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas should be placed in its right context, i.e. in the context of the transformations witnessed in the Arab region. Indeed, the revolutions are placing the interests of their people ahead of the foreign slogans with which the former regimes used to protect themselves, whether this protection is Western under the slogan of their confrontation of the Islamic movements – as was the case in Tunisia and Egypt – or the protection of the positions of the rejectionist regime which is preoccupied with confrontation and liberation, as is currently the case in Syria.

It is in that sense that Khaled Meshaal’s rush to seal reconciliation with Mahmud Abbas can be understood, despite all what he said about the Palestinian president back when Abu Walid’s residency in Damascus was still possible. It is a rush to place Palestinian unity and the ending of the division above all other considerations - except for the Palestinian interests - as though Meshaal was finally raising his voice to say: ‘enough trading with this cause’, but also to confirm following the signing of the agreement in Doha the return of the unified Palestinian decision on the basis of partnership, whether in the context of the authority or in the context of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Why has this become possible now, after it was not so during the last four years, despite Fatah’s repeated calls to end the anomalous situation in the Gaza Strip which cost the Palestinians blood, economic losses and political paralysis? The answer is that the decision of the Palestinian factions now belongs to these factions and is no longer subjected to the residency considerations and the policies of the regimes, which used to be Hamas’s case with the Syrian regime. The Palestinian organizations’ unity should be a national concern, considering they do not enjoy the luxury of division in light of the pressures they are facing at the hands of the Israeli occupation.

The best assessment of the importance of the delayed agreement between the Palestinians is the Israeli side’s reaction to it. Indeed, Benjamin Netanyahu considered that Abu Mazen should choose between “peace with Hamas and peace with Israel,” in a clear attempt to adopt the traditional accusations which used to be cast by Hamas against the Palestinian president during the days of division.

Certainly, there will be numerous tests facing the implementation of the agreement between the Palestinians, whether inside Fatah whose president Abu Mazen assured once again he did not intend to stay in the presidency, or inside Hamas whose president already announced the same thing, at a time when his last decision in regard to reconciliation is facing objections from senior officials in the movement, both inside and outside of Gaza. This reveals that the Palestinian movement will witness critical changes on the leading levels, with which the unity and reconciliation agreement will remain prone to reviewing and recanting at any time, whether under the pressures of the interests of the domestic leaderships or under foreign pressures.

Nonetheless, what is important is that the Palestinian Doha agreement enjoys more chances of survival than its Lebanese counterpart. The latter agreement aimed at saving Lebanon and protecting - as much as possible - Syria’s interests following its army’s withdrawal. It was signed based on the “no winner, no loser” principle, but collapsed after Damascus recanted the commitments featured in it. On the other hand, the Palestinian agreement was sealed despite the Syrian will, and without taking into account its interests on the Palestinian arena, knowing that these interests were never secured except at the expense of the Palestinians’ unity and the agreement between their factions.

How can diplomacy succeed, even when managed by men like Mohamed El-Baradei or George Mitchell, when they have to deal with Benjamin Netanyahu or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

I do not think the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed El-Baradei will come out of his office in Vienna at the beginning of next week satisfied with what he has achieved during the 12 years for which he has served as the head of this agency. Baradei was unlucky, having had to handle difficult issues with regimes not known for their leniency, from Saddam Hussein to Kim Jong-Il, and up to Ahmadinejad. This diplomat and academic, who moved between the hallways of Egypt’s Foreign Ministry and the United Nations buildings of New York and Geneva before reaching Vienna, has dealt with these people with a lot of skill and diplomacy, trying to keep the big stick as far as possible from the methods followed by the agency under his leadership. And he was hoping, especially in dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue, to find in Tehran those who would listen and have greater trust in his management, especially as his constant calls for Western countries to adopt the method of dialogue with Iran had at many occasions brought him criticism from these countries, as well as accusations of being biased.

This is why the IAEA resolution voted upon yesterday, demanding that Iran stop the construction of the nuclear facility near the city of Qom, came as a disappointment for Baradei and for those who, like him, had wagered that the method of making truce and offering incentives would prove useful with Iran, although the language used by the leaders of the Iranian regime to address the world is sufficient evidence that the method of making truce is not the best one to obtain compromises and middle ground solutions from this regime.

Mohamed El-Baradei did not take charge of these heated issues by choice, as it simply happened that they all exploded together at the time when he took over the delicate responsibility of representing the world in monitoring the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the tremendous hopes that were hung on Baradei’s Arab origins may be what drove people to expect him to produce solutions, in comparison with what the case might be for example when Yukiya Amano, who is Japanese, takes over the direction of the IAEA in a few days.

The case of George Mitchell, however, is quite different. Perhaps President Barack Obama was inclined to choosing Mitchell as his representative to resolve the world’s most difficult crises, considering his Arab roots (his mother is of Lebanese descent) and his solid relations with a large number of leaders, politicians and journalists in the Arab region. His success at finding a settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland might also have increased his chances of being selected. Yet there is a tremendous difference between the opportunities that were available to him in Belfast, Dublin and London, and those that are available to him in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv. There the “weapons” of settlement in Mitchell’s hands were ready for use, most importantly international agreement (between the Clinton Administration, the British government headed by Tony Blair and the Irish government headed by Bertie Ahern) In the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, on the other hand, the only “weapon” which Obama could have provided his personal envoy with to ensure the success of his mission was the weapon of firm resolve with Israel, to drive to respect its commitments in order to achieve peace, a weapon which it has become quite clear the US President is unable to use. Thus Mitchell ended up being forced to stand before the media and find reasons to praise the “unprecedented concessions” provided by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The result is one and the same for two men who were driven to resolve the two most difficult crises in the region, that being of course failure. Not to be unjust towards these two men, one must say that such a failure does not point to their lack of ability, as much as it proves that the age of diplomacy is not fitting for every time and place, and that there are regimes in this world that understand the desire to negotiate as powerlessness and defeat, and that leave no way of dealing with them but the language of force and of sanctions.

The public statement concerning the results of talks that took place during the meeting at the White House last Monday, described as “secret,” between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, came in the form of an Israeli announcement of the building of 900 new housing units for Jewish settlers in Gilo, a suburb of Jerusalem. This stance represents the biggest challenge for the Obama administration up to this point.

No one doubts that the dispute between the two men over the issue of settlements was a key point of discussion in this meeting. However, the recent announcement by the Israeli government confirmed that this dispute was not settled in favor of the US position. It also confirms the consensus view in most American political and media commentator circles, as well as in Arab circles, namely that Barack Obama’s maneuvering with the rightwing government in Israel has become weak and the level of credibility he gained among Arabs and Muslims following his election has begun to dissipate, if it has not been completely lost. This is exactly what the Israelis are striving for: showing the American president, who arrived on a wave of popular enthusiasm, that there are limits to his ability to pressure them. This is especially the case when it comes to what they consider a foundation of their national security, by considering Jerusalem their “united capital” and that they can build there wherever they please.

In the face of this, the US president could only remind us of previous positions. The Israelis have heard these stances many times from Washington and elsewhere, and have come to pay them no attention: such as, new settlements do not provide Israel with more security, and make peace much more difficult to achieve. Even though we know that Israel’s view of its security and conditions for peace are radically different than those of most countries in the world, not to mention the Palestinians and the Arabs. However, the question arises constantly amid this dispute: what is the path to imposing this view upon the Israelis, to make them more receptive to peace? If the US cannot play this role, then who will be able to? Is it President Obama, who could not find anything to say (in an interview with Fox News) to criticize the Israeli decision? “I’ve said repeatedly and I’ll say again, Israel’s security is a vital national interest to the United States,” he remarked. What if Netanyahu responded by saying that new settlement at Gilo is vital to “Israel’s security”?

This is one of the few times in the history of US-Israeli relations that we can remember Israel venturing to openly challenge the US, the country that funds the Israeli treasury with $3 billion a year, not to speak of the unlimited military support. The danger in this challenge to American interests is that it destroys the foundation that Obama set down for his strategy of new relations with the crises of the region, which are based on removing the volatile Palestinian fuse from America’s problems with the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The Israeli challenge is not the only precedent that we should remember. A similar confrontation took place between President George W Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. However, at the time, the Bush administration was able to force Shamir to take part in the Madrid Conference, by threatening to halt loan guarantees for building settlements.

Can Obama, or does he dare, do such a thing?

I read a comment made by a reporter for an American Catholic newspaper about the visit of Pope Benedict XVI's to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, saying: "If he simply manages to get back to Rome without starting a war, some might declare the trip a success!"

It may seem strange for such discourse to come from a Catholic writer, but the truth is that the pope is visiting a region filled with tension and sentiments of religious extremism, which can start a war with or without a visit from the pope. However, Pope Benedict carries the baggage of the blunders that have occurred during the four years for which he has led the Catholic Church, through which he managed to anger everyone at different degrees. The Muslims were angered by his famous speech at that German university, which required a great deal of apologizing and remodeling. The Jews were angered because he returned British Bishop Richard Williamson to the bosom of the Church despite the latter's statements denying the Nazi Holocaust (although the pope later retracted his decision), and also because of constant Jewish accusations over the "collusion" of his predecessor Pius XII with the Nazis during World War II, such that they have even nicknamed him "Pope Hitler". Benedict also angered a substantial portion of Catholics because of the Church's strict traditional positions on the issues of abortion, contraception and gay marriage, issues which a great many of them now consider to be disconnected from the developments of the modern age and the new life conditions it brings.

In a region such as this, inflamed with religious sentiments, it will require a miracle for a religious leader, even one with the weight that the pope has, to act as mediator in what political leaders and previous mediators have failed to achieve. Hence the pope was realistic when he indirectly made it clear that this was not the purpose of his visit, which he describes as a 'pilgrimage' in the region rather than a political visit.

But how can politics be absent when the German pope visits the memorial to the victims of Nazism in Jerusalem (Yad Vashem), and refuses to visit the Holocaust Museum or to read a letter placed inside in which the Jews affront his predecessor, the 'Nazi' pope? How can politics be absent when there is a controversy over the podium from which he is supposed to give a speech in a refugee camp near Bethlehem, as it is close to the separation wall built by Israel? And how can politics be absent from the pope's visit, when we still hear Islamic voices demanding an apology for his university speech and calling on him to announce a clear stance towards Israeli aggressions, for his trip not to turn into a mere visit to the stones - as someone said - instead of looking to the state of human beings?

And because the pope's visit is non-political, as the Vatican media sought to describe it, it becomes illogical to wait for the messages he might have sent, to the Israelis inviting them to make the compromises necessary for peace, and to the Palestinians inviting some of their movements and factions to renounce extremism and to commit to policies tending more towards moderation and tolerance. Because any message of this kind, considering the background that Pope Benedict brings with him, will be understood as the opposite of what is intended, whether on the Jewish side or on that of the Palestinian factions, whose support for peace and the two-state solution is considered a necessary condition.

Even the declining numbers of Christians in the Palestinian territories, which have regressed from 20 percent under the British Mandate to less than 2 percent today, is not expected to meet with a solution after this visit. Indeed, it is unlikely for those who have emigrated to Europe, Canada and Australia, to escape the rise of violence and strictness on every side, to hear of the pope's visit and decide to pack their bags and return home. They too realize that this "pilgrimage" will only be a matter of a few days… and then everything will return to its previous state!