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.”

With their fishermen at risk of being shot at by the Israeli navy, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are finding new ways to supply the blockaded territory with a staple that is in short supply.

Seafood is coming into the Mediterranean enclave through tunnels from Egypt and fish farms are starting to fill a supply gap resulting from restrictions that stop fishermen from venturing more than 3.4 miles (5.5 km) from the coast.

The emergence of new ways of supplying seafood highlights the ever deepening impact of a blockade that controls land, air and sea access to Gaza, ruled by the Hamas Islamist group.

Israel says the blockade aims to prevent Hamas, which is hostile to the Jewish state, acquiring weapons or materials that could be used for military purposes.

For the majority of Gaza's population of 1.5 million, the result has been increasingly miserable living conditions, while Hamas's grip on power since 2007 shows no sign of weakening.

The group controls the tunnelling businesses which have for more than three years been a supply route for everything from cement to electrical goods and now, fish.

Gaza's fishermen, once allowed to sail up to 12 miles from the coast, risk having their boats confiscated if they go too far out. Several have suffered bullet wounds in confrontations with Israeli patrol vessels enforcing the embargo.

The current fishing limit has been in place since January, 2009, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

FISH FARMS

In Rafah, at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, a masked man emerged from the mouth of a tunnel carrying a box of fish packed in ice. Anxious not to be identified, he would not speak to the media because of the dangers associated with an increasingly risky business.

The Israeli military launches regular airstrikes on areas where it believes Hamas is using the tunnels to bring weapons into Gaza. Egypt, which has a strained relationship with Hamas and a peace treaty with Israel, is building an underground barricade on its side of the border to thwart the tunnelers.

Bringing fish through the tunnels from Egypt is not as profitable as supplying other goods, said Suleiman Itta, a fish monger who has started buying fish that come to Gaza that way.

Quality can also be a problem.

"Sometimes the fish arrives almost two-thirds fresh," he told Reuters. "We bring it from Egypt because of the lack of fish here," added the father of eight.

With their own catches becoming ever more meagre, Gaza's fishermen have found another way of bringing fish ashore. They rendezvous at sea with their Egyptian counterparts and buy from them, sometimes venturing further than allowed by Israel.

"We cross the line. Most if not all fishing boats do that, and yes, it is risky but we go to buy," fisherman Ashraf Assaeedi said.

In Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Zeyad Al-Attar is farming fish in tanks. "We have resorted to this kind of work because of the lethal siege. We produce 70 tonnes every six months," he said.

But restaurant owner Ahmed Abu Haseera does not buy from the farms. His clients prefer fish supplied the traditional way.

"Clients do not like it. But what can we do? Things are difficult. One day we have fish and the next we don't," he said.

Israel will free 20 Palestinian women from jail as early as Friday in exchange for a videotape from Hamas proving an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip since 2006 is alive, officials on both sides said on Wednesday.

Egyptian and German mediators are continuing to work on a final deal to swap the soldier, Gilad Shalit, for hundreds of Hamas prisoners. The negotiations are part of international efforts to ease Israel's blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

"It is important for the entire world to know that Gilad Shalit is alive and well and that Hamas is responsible for his well-being and his fate," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

Shalit, now 23, was spirited into the Gaza Strip by Islamist militants who tunneled into Israel three years ago in a raid in which two Israeli soldiers and two of the attackers were killed.

An Israeli official said the handover of the 20 women and the tape should take place on Friday, at the end of a two-day period when Israeli citizens can appeal in court against their release, an Israeli official said.

He added that a German mediator had already seen the video and believed it genuinely showed Shalit during recent weeks -- and certainly after Israel's offensive in Gaza in December and January in which some 1,400 Palestinians were reported killed.

The video lasts about a minute, said a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the Hamas allies that took part in the raid in which Shalit was captured.

"It shows Shalit alive and moving," the spokesman, Abu Mujahed, said.

Announcement of the pending exchange was the first major sign of progress in efforts to put together a deal between Israel and Hamas Islamists.

"This is a humanitarian gesture," said an Egyptian security source close to the mediation efforts Cairo has been pursuing.

But an Israeli official cautioned that "lengthy and difficult negotiations" were still ahead before a final deal could be reached.

Public pressure has been mounting on Netanyahu to win freedom for the bespectacled soldier, who also holds French citizenship, in a deal that could involve the release of Hamas militants behind attacks that have killed Israelis.

Palestinians view brethren held in Israeli jails as heroes and a widescale release of prisoners in exchange for Shalit would be a boost for Hamas, an Islamist group opposed to peace with Israel.

Only one of the women, who was to be released along with her child, was from Gaza, Hamas officials said. The other 19 were from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Hamas's secular rivals from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party hold sway.

Israeli officials said none of the women had been directly involved in killings and none was serving a sentence of longer than two years.

A spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, Abu Ubeida, told a news conference in Gaza that four of the women to be released were members of Hamas, while five were members of Fatah. Three more were members of Islamic Jihad and the rest from other groups.

Shalit has not been visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross and only a few letters and an audio cassette from him have been sent to his family, which has waged a vocal campaign to get him freed.

Israel holds more than 10,000 Palestinians in its jails. Hamas is negotiating for the release of hundreds of its members. (Writing by Alastair Macdonald and Jeffrey Heller, Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Explosions at two sensitive sites in the Gaza Strip [ID:nLU529969] have prompted speculation on Sunday that they were the work of al Qaeda-aligned radicals opposed to the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers Hamas.

Here are comments on key questions about the incidents:

WHO WAS BEHIND THE BOMBINGS?

No credible claim of responsibility has been made.

Since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 by routing secular forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Islamists have tended to blame occasional bombings and other attacks on Hamas targets on Abbas's Fatah party. This time, however, suspicion has fallen on fundamentalist Muslims, or Salafis, whose agenda of global jihad, or holy war, against the West is at odds with Hamas's nationalist goals.

Hamas forces attacked a mosque in Rafah on Aug. 14 [ID:nLF47066] after the leader of a group calling itself Jund Ansar Allah (Warriors of God) declared Islamic rule in the town on the border with Egypt. Up to 28 people, including the leader, were killed. That sparked warnings of a reaction [ID:nLI78639] and speculation that conflict with Salafis could both complicate and foster Hamas's contact with the West [ID:nLH515758].

WHO ARE THESE SALAFIS?

Click here [ID:nLH515758] for details of known groups.

Most share an agenda with al Qaeda and believe Hamas broke with Islam by taking part in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election -- an election which it won, sparking international sanctions. Since Hamas [ID:nLF53592] seized control of Gaza in 2007 from secular President Abbas, Salafis have criticised the Islamist movement for failing to implement Islamic law.

Though they may not have a clear hierarchical connection to al Qaeda, they admire its leaders, Osama Ben Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. Reliable data is scant but various groups may gather hundreds of fighters, including some trained and blooded in the ranks of Hamas but now disillusioned with the ruling movement. For a full study of Salafi groups in Gaza, view this report from the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo here

WHAT MAY BE THE AIM OF THE BOMBINGS?

The attackers hit two heavily guarded Hamas security compounds, one known to include a prison. The second, a residence of President Abbas, is also believed to be used now for detentions and interrogations. If Salafis were behind the bombing, they may be showing both their capabilities and a demand for dozens of imprisoned radicals to be freed.

IS ISRAEL ALSO A TARGET OF RADICALS?

Israel has always been a target for them. The Army of Islam joined Hamas in a border raid in 2006 in which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured. Shalit is still held and is at the centre of efforts to broker a swap for hundreds of Hamas prisoners. The same group, associated with Gaza's powerful Doghmush clan, has also launched rockets into Israel and fired on troops.

Another group, the Army of the Nation or Jaish al-Ummah, has claimed several rocket attacks against Israel.

Three members of Jund Ansar Allah were killed in an attack in June on an Israeli army position on the border. Some of the attackers rode on horseback.

IS HAMAS AT RISK?

Hamas has thousands of men under arms and easily outnumbers any of these radical groups. Nonetheless, radical ideology and an ability to blend into the population make the Salafis a difficult opponent when they avoid direct confrontation.

Another degree of irritation for Hamas is the Salafis' ability to attack Israel, provoking an Israeli reaction at times when Hamas may be trying to observe a truce.

Hamas officials say they are concentrating on "re-educating" captured radicals, hoping to win them over to a brand of political Islam more in line with Hamas's own principles.

The audience in the Gaza Strip clapped and cheered as the actor delivered the movie's most memorable line – "To kill Israeli soldiers is to worship God".

Imad Aqel, which premiered at the weekend, is the first feature film produced by the Islamist Hamas movement and the title is the name of a Palestinian militant whom Israel held accountable for the deaths of 13 soldiers and settlers.

In accordance with strict Muslim tradition, men and women sat in separate sections of the theatre to view what Hamas officials termed the "Cinema of Resistance", referring to what it describes as a fight against Israeli occupation.

The movie is Hamas's latest foray into the mass media – it owns a satellite TV channel, a radio station and several newspapers.

Imad Aqel was filmed on a set built inside the former Jewish settlement of Ganei Tal in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

It depicts Hamas's founding in the 1980s, attacks Mr Aqel mounted on the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the signing of the Oslo peace accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993.

The film cost $120,000 (£70,000) and was written by Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior leader of Hamas, which the West regards as a terrorist group and shuns because of its refusal to renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept existing interim peace deals.

Mr Aqel was killed at the age of 22 by Israeli soldiers who surrounded his hideout in Gaza in 1993.

Four of the actors in the film, which took several months to make, were later killed in the 22-day offensive Israel launched in the Gaza Strip last December with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

Majed Jendeya, the movie's German-trained director, said he hoped to screen the film at the Cannes film festival in France.