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.”

It might be coincidental timing or just a really bad case of mean-spirited in-your-face aggressive Israeli diplomacy. In the same week that China announced a peace plan for the Arab-Israeli conflict, Russia and the United States announced agreement to hold an international conference to try to resolve the Syrian conflict peacefully, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he would return to the region later this month to attempt to resume Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Israeli government announced plans to build 300 new settler homes in the Beit-El colony near Ramallah. The Israeli settlement news is nothing new, but the actions of the three big powers are new and noteworthy. The American, Russian and Chinese initiatives to resolve the Arab-Israeli and Syrian conflicts are as laudatory as they are difficult to achieve, though efforts like this open up new possibilities for collaborative diplomacy through the United Nations Security Council, which is usually critical for success.

In response, the Israeli government – not a rogue group, but the government of the state that sees itself as the state for all the Jewish people – moves ahead on the settlements-colonies front. This captures the two worst aspects of the current situation: Israeli land annexations and settlements expansion are perhaps the single greatest reason the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has failed for 45 years, and they also reflect the heart of the continuing Palestinian condition of occupation, displacement, exile and refugee status.

The United States predictably responded by telling Israel Thursday that its West Bank settlement plans were “counterproductive,” which is the sharpest form of diplomatic rebuke next to “naughty, naughty, that is not a nice thing to do to your neighbors.”

So in the current circumstances of aggressive Zionist colonization coupled with a fractured Palestinian leadership, we probably should not expect anything serious to emerge from the American-led effort to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks, much as all of us would like those efforts to succeed. This raises the question of why the Chinese suddenly jumped into the Arab-Israeli peacemaking arena by announcing their “peace plan” during a week when the Palestinian and Israeli leaders visited China.

I personally welcome this move, regardless of how we measure its chances of success at the moment. Chinese diplomacy is the exact opposite of Israeli state behavior – it is discreet, unaggressive, and, well, that’s about all we know about Chinese diplomacy in the Middle East for now.

Yet I would rather have the Chinese and Russians involved in seeking some kind of breakthrough in peacemaking than merely sitting on the side and leaving the arena to the hapless Americans, who have proven during the past 45 years that they enjoy neither the political impartiality nor the law-based constructive rigor needed to be a successful mediator in this conflict.

When these three major powers all nibble at the issue from their respective angles, the chances increase that either common ground will emerge that will lead to something constructive, or that they will find common cause to push for Arab-Israeli agreements as part of a larger package of diplomatic action that could include issues related to Syria and Iran.

The four-point Chinese proposal revealed last Monday by Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and peaceful coexistence with Israel, noting that, “[t]o establish an independent state enjoying full sovereignty on the basis of the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and the key to the settlement of the Palestinian question. At the same time, Israel’s right to exist and its legitimate security concerns should be fully respected.”

The proposal also calls for negotiations as the only way to achieve a lasting peace. Importantly, it adds: “[T]he immediate priority is to take credible steps to stop settlement activities, end violence against innocent civilians, lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip and properly handle the issue of Palestinian prisoners, in order to create the necessary conditions for the resumption of peace talks. Comprehensive internal reconciliation on the part of the Palestinians will help restart and advance the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.”

The third point stresses the centrality of the principles of “land for peace,” relevant U.N. resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, and the fourth point calls on the international community to be engaged by offering guarantees for progress in the negotiations toward a permanent, comprehensive agreement.

It is noteworthy that the Chinese president told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the Palestinian issue was the core of the Middle East conflict. This was a fascinating variation on the American-Israeli focus on the fact that the key to success was Arab recognition of Israel’s Jewish and sovereign nature.

Only the Chinese government knows why it is moving ahead with this initiative, but we should welcome it and engage with it constructively.

There is good news and bad news on the Arab-Israeli peacemaking front this week. The good news is that the United States and the Arab League’s ministerial committee seem energized to restart Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. This culminated a few days ago in the Arab clarification that the 2002 Arab peace plan that offered Israel a comprehensive and permanent peace can include minor and mutually agreed land swaps around the 1967 borders. The bad news is that we seem to have returned to the failed old formula of the United States pressuring the Arab side to make concessions that in turn will entice Israel, usually unsuccessfully, to negotiate seriously. Much as I support any opportunity to restart peace negotiations, I doubt that we will make any progress on this front if we stick to an approach that has repeatedly failed and now seems to be replaying itself. This is captured in the Arabs unilaterally making a substantive gesture or concession, and the Israelis adding new demands that ensure that no progress will be made.

Just as soon as the Arab side signaled its willingness to make minor and mutual land swaps around the 1967 border, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came up with two new demands: He wanted any peace agreement sent to a referendum of the Israeli people (not such a bad idea, actually, given that the Palestinians also have said they want any agreement submitted to the Palestinians in a referendum); and he also said that the conflict was not about land but rather about “the lack of willingness of the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

Several problems in this exchange make it unlikely that this new American effort to reignite diplomatic negotiations among Israelis and Palestinians will succeed. The most serious is the continued emphasis on the Arab side making concession after concession in order to entice the Israelis to negotiate seriously, without ever getting the Israelis to negotiate seriously.

Sure, Israeli leaders speak often about their desire to negotiate unconditionally, anytime, anywhere, but the reality is different and contradictory. The reality is that Israel persists in the massive, continuing precondition of being allowed to expropriate Palestinian land and build Israeli settlements and colonies at will, and adds a new precondition that Palestinians must accept maximalist Zionist ideological demands before any serious talks can ever take place.

A second problem is that the latest concession by the Arab League occurs without any credible consultation of the Palestinian people whose land is the object of the negotiations and possible swaps. This perpetuates a problem that has long plagued the Palestinians: the absence of a credible national leadership and the total lack of consultations among the dispersed Palestinians throughout the world.

The absence of Palestinian institutions of state – especially the Palestine National Council, or parliament in exile, and a credible executive committee, or government – means that other methods must be used to canvass popular sentiments. Modern technology makes it very easy to organize a meaningful discussion of the issues at hand, but the lack of a unified, legitimate national leadership makes this option difficult to implement.

Difficult does not mean impossible, though, and this is a case where the Palestinians should use the referendum idea to pre-empt Israeli maneuvers and as a constructive tool in their continued quest to achieve their national rights and end their condition as refugees, their people dispersed and in exile.

It would not be difficult to organize a referendum among a large majority of Palestinians that asks the question: “Would you support minor and mutual land swaps to the 1967 borders if this were part of a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel that resulted in the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem alongside a recognized Israeli state, and resolved the refugee status of the Palestinians on the basis of the provisions of international law and U.N. resolutions that give both sides the right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders?”

My guess is that such an effort – which captures the essence of the 2002 Arab peace plan, and could be done on a pilot basis in one or two places, such as the West Bank-Gaza and refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries – would achieve several useful things. It would clarify the national position of the Palestinian people, strengthen the hand of negotiators who speak in their name, and perhaps – if the result is affirmative – prod a more dynamic peace movement in Israel, a more robust commitment to negotiate from the Israeli government, and more effective mediation by the U.S. and others.

These are ambitious ideas, I realize. But they strike me as a lot more sensible than merely replaying failed old attempts to make peace on the basis of continued Palestinian and Arab concessions without a reciprocal Israeli response.

I and many others applaud and are surprised by the speed and persistence of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s engagement in diplomatic efforts to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. I applaud his initiative because it can only result in something positive, whether it succeeds or fails. If the effort is successful, it could result in resumed formal peace negotiations that presumably would have a better chance of success than previous talks over the past 20 years, because they would only take place if both sides feel there is a serious will to make them succeed. The chances are slim, but we should never give up trying to resolve the conflict peacefully, on the basis of international law.

If, on the other hand, Kerry’s mission fails, all sides will have to adjust to the continued stalemate and the stultifying consequences of the long-term Israeli occupation, colonization, annexation and siege of Palestinian lands. A failure to restart negotiations would also finally lay to rest the notion that there is any credible chance of diplomatic breakthroughs under the current circumstances. This would force all concerned to explore other options. The current situation is not sustainable and in due course will certainly lead to a new explosion of some sort – as has happened with predictable regularity since 1947-1948 when the conflict began in its current form.

An intriguing third option that is particularly prevalent in Israel is the idea that in the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement we should focus on improving the socioeconomic conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. This complex and slippery idea comprises three elements that are, in fact, totally opposed to each other, making it hard to endorse or reject it with any clarity.

The first is that socioeconomic development is the right of the Palestinians and anything that promotes their improved well-being must be supported. The second, as manifested most emphatically in Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s development plan in recent years, is that economic development and the building of Palestinian institutions are prerequisites for eventual statehood. This compelling argument also should be supported unequivocally.

The third aspect of this idea reflects the Israeli government’s perception of economic development potentially as an alternative to ending its occupation, colonization, annexation and siege of the Palestinian areas and population. Though Israeli leaders often speak of promoting Palestinian development as a goal that would enhance conditions for a diplomatic agreement, many fear that they actually see Palestinian economic development primarily as a means of reducing the pain of occupation to an extent that would allow existing Israeli policies to continue in perpetuity.

In the meantime, the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation enjoy neither freedom and sovereignty nor socioeconomic well-being, making the status quo very fragile.

It is important to separate the three dimensions of the argument to make Palestinian socioeconomic development a priority, by supporting the right of the Palestinians to live a better life and prepare for statehood one day. This also involves opposing the cruel Israeli view that socioeconomic development can substitute for ending the Israeli occupation.

A new danger is that the United States may be lining up with the Israeli government view, which sadly would provide yet another reason why Washington has been an incompetent and failed mediator in this conflict.

A few days ago Kerry said initiatives to promote the Palestinian economy were a central aspect of his ongoing explorations for a new diplomatic initiative. He said, “We are going to engage in new efforts, very specific efforts, to promote economic development and to remove some of the bottlenecks and barriers that exist with respect to commerce in the West Bank.”

Kerry went on to say that economic growth “will help us be able to provide a climate, if you will, an atmosphere, within which people have greater confidence about moving forward.”

His nuanced view of economic growth as promoting the greater goal of peace negotiations is heartening, but it is also unclear. In such matters the modern historical record shows that where there are different perceptions, the Israeli view almost always prevails over the American view. This is a good moment for the U.S. government to clarify its position on this matter, so that all concerned can better grasp if Kerry is acting as a truly impartial mediator, with integrity, or whether he is really just surrogate for the Israeli government.

It is important for all concerned to note honestly the correct order of things: Palestinian socioeconomic conditions are bad mainly because of the prolonged Israeli occupation and restrictions. As the late Palestinian economist Yusif Sayegh said many years ago, socioeconomic development is an inherent Palestinian right that we should always seek to promote, but the antidote to long-term Israeli occupation is not economic development, it is liberation.

It is appropriate that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jerusalem this week, exactly 65 years to the day when pre-state Zionist troops massacred some 100 unarmed Palestinian men, women and children in the Palestinian Arab village of Deir Yassin, west of Jerusalem. That was five weeks before the formal end of the British Mandate, the declaration of a Zionist Israeli state on May 15, 1948, and subsequent all-out warfare.

The timing of Kerry’s visit is “appropriate” because of three pivotal factors that he should consider if he is at all serious about making a new diplomatic push for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations that could form the centerpiece of a broader Arab-Israeli peacemaking process.

These three factors are, first, that any successful American mediation must assign equal emotional validity and political weight to the sentiments of both Israelis and Palestinians, without favoritism.

Second, the heart and soul of the Palestinian national struggle does not revolve mainly around creating a state in the lands occupied in 1967, but rather on resolving the dominant issue of the refugee status, exile and dispersal of the Palestinians that started in 1947-48 and has continued ever since. A small West Bank-Gaza state is part of that larger resolution of the conflict that is mainly anchored in ending this refugee status politically, emotionally and territorially.

And third, the single most poignant and politically symbolic incident in our status as refugees and exiles is the massacre of Deir Yassin, which Palestinians remember and commemorate every year, because it captures the most important dimensions of their 65-year-old national trauma.

Historians from Israel, Palestine and other countries have documented the Deir Yassin massacre as meticulously as any historical incident can be documented. Both sides disagree on some key issues, especially the Zionist armed groups’ motivation for the massacre. Palestinians see Deir Yassin as part of a broader, deliberate and well-executed campaign of savage atrocities to forcibly evict Palestinians from the territory that would become Israel – an example of what the world now calls “ethnic cleansing.”

Zionists, on the other hand, say their forces were defending themselves, and if any atrocities occurred they were singular exceptions committed by local militants, and not part of an organized campaign.

Regardless of what Palestinians, Israelis or others feel, the important thing for Kerry to appreciate is that Deir Yassin and the trauma of the refugees and that of exile are as central to the Palestinian psyche as the idea of Israel’s “right to exist” as a “Jewish state and homeland” is to many Jews, and to all Zionists. Acknowledging both those historical narratives and psychological realities as having equal validity is absolutely central to any external mediator’s efforts to succeed in resolving this conflict.

Washington’s mediation has consistently failed for decades precisely because it did not give Palestinian and Israeli rights equal weight. As the U.S. embarks on yet another attempt to foster Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Kerry should take advantage of being in Jerusalem on the 65th anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre to ponder these issues more diligently.

He will echo his president’s moving commitment to securing the Jewish people’s state and homeland, and to feeling the pain of the Palestinians who yearn for a normal life. But that skewed dichotomy will only fail again, as it has many times in the past, because it equates the rock-solid certainty of Zionist statehood with only the soft perceptions of Palestinian yearning. It perpetuates the chronic imbalances in acknowledging the two sides’ needs and rights.

I hope one day Kerry will muster the moral courage and mediator’s acumen to actually visit – or even just drive by – the sites of Deir Yassin, or Lifta, or Maliha, or any of the other dozens of former Palestinian villages and West Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods whose 28,000 Palestinian inhabitants were largely displaced or expelled, mostly before Israel’s declaration of statehood in mid-May 1948. For Palestinians, the key to understanding the Palestinian psyche and the political realities shaping the contours of an acceptable permanent peace agreement with Israel rests firmly on resolving the wrongs and the crimes that resulted in our becoming refugees and exiles. These acts began in November 1947, and were committed by Zionist armed groups, militias, and ethnic-cleansing units.

Kerry or anyone else who wishes to understand this issue should take advantage of an offer by the Institute for Palestine Studies and the Journal of Palestine Studies to make available, free of charge for this week only, the compelling short article, “The De-Arabization of Jerusalem 1947-50,” by Nathan Krystall. The article describes the context surrounding the progressive depopulation of Arabs in Jerusalem in that pivotal period.

As we count another year, the Palestinian exile is now 65 years old, which is some seven years longer than the ancient Jewish exile in Babylon in the mid-sixth century B.C. We Palestinians remember Deir Yassin much like Zionists remember their forcible exile in Babylon. Mediators who recognize this pivotal reality can foster blessed justice and peace, and make history.