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.”

I felt rather apprehensive upon receiving an invitation to attend the meeting in Cairo held on February 8-9 for the purpose of unifying and vitalising the functions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

I was reluctant as to whether I should attend, since the previous top leadership meetings failed to bring about long-anticipated Palestinian unity and reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, which all Palestinians demand, especially at a time when the Palestinian cause is facing its severest test at the local, regional and international levels.

Along this line, Palestinian reconciliation becomes an absolute must. It should be our first priority to unify the Palestinian movement that is literally facing the colonial/apartheid Israeli bulldozer to eradicate it from existence. Palestinians have absolutely no choice.

It was a self-destructive choice to stay disunited all this time. Indeed, my feeling of apprehension stemmed from my past experience of two leadership meetings where participants faced external as well as internal pressures that opposed any reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

Such pressures consequently keep the Palestinian situation in limbo and allow Israel all the time it needs to complete its Judaisation of all of historical Palestine while also manipulating the state of disunity between the ‘two authorities’ (in the West Bank and in Gaza Strip) to avoid pressures to reach a just settlement with the Palestinians.

Israel is naturally willing to keep ‘the two authorities’ in place, forever, in order to confine the Palestinian aspiration for a viable independent state within the narrow boundaries of two ‘municipalities’ whose normal tasks are to manage the general non-political affairs of its citizens.

Again, the outside forces were bound to succeed with each of the factions acting with narrow-mindedness to protect its ‘tribal’ privileges and self interest above the Palestinian national interest.

Thus, ending the Palestinian division and opting for the national unity took another turn in a process where a ‘tribal’ resolution was sought to enable each party to maintain its independence regardless of the prohibitive cost to the national Palestinian security and interest.

This is how things turned out after the two previous meetings, in spite of great efforts made by independents along with conscientious individuals from other Palestinian organisations including the main factions in conflict.

Immediately after the third meeting, Dr Maher Al Taher of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) stressed the basic demand for an end to division and disunity by singling out the need for “more face-to-face meetings, listening directly to each other, contributing to achievement of more understanding which brings us closer to one another to attain a final resolution”. President Mahmoud Abbas was in full agreement and promised “to call for more meetings in which the various factions of the Palestinian leadership can gather to address all the issues in details”. It is important to note the positive contribution to the meeting made by very able Palestinian personalities of high intellect including Bassam Al Salhi on behalf of the Palestinian People Party and Dr Mustafa Al Barghouti, secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, who both concentrated on the national Palestinian struggle whose only agenda is the national Palestinian security.

The contribution by Shaikh Ramadan Abdullah Shalah of the Islamic Jihad Movement was a significant factor in the ongoing process to reach a permanent resolution to the disunity between Fatah and Hamas.

Indeed, the much warmer atmosphere among the various factions in this third meeting managed to allay my feelings of concern as we witnessed a semi-fertile soil being created to plant seeds of conciliation and eventually an end to the divisions. The meeting’s final declaration stressed “the necessity to hold on time Palestinian presidential, legislative and National Council elections according to specific dates to be set after careful preparation to ensure their success”, but as the saying goes: The devil lies in the details! We have witnessed in the past many agreements dishonoured with endless meetings discussing irrelevant issues such as ‘the gender of angels’ while the colonial Zionist occupation builds more and more colonies in the Occupied Territories with impunity.

A second assertion made during the meeting was the need for “consultations to form a government of Palestinian technocrats endorsed by all and presided over by the Palestinian President”. Another call was issued “supporting the popular national struggle and resistance in all the Occupied Territories”. If such words are not turned into deeds, our dreams and national aspirations would be shattered in such a way that will surely please our enemies and sadden our friends and allies. This is why it is our hope that this Palestinian meeting will set the very foundation for a new Palestinian movement capable of standing up to severe storms unleashed by a cruel colonial/apartheid occupation that views historical Palestine as a land without a single Palestinian on its soil. This Palestinian movement can only be strengthened by empowering the Palestinian people through solid ties among their civil society groups and labour unions holding on to the Palestinian citizenship regardless of tribal or ethnic origins, party association or creed.

Finally, it is worthy to note the extraordinary support extended by Egypt which showed keen interest to see an end for good of all aspects contributing to the disunity of Palestinians at a time when their very unity is urgently needed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being isolated by internal and international forces. Public relation campaigns launched worldwide by Israel’s foreign ministry to create a positive image have all failed despite enormous efforts expended by Zionist lobbies that also spent enormous amounts of money.

The ugly image of Israel created by the racist/colonial policy imposed by colonists and Israeli military forces on the Palestinians cannot be hidden anymore.

The Israeli Institute for Democracy recently issued a report stating that “the bad image of Israel in Europe persists inspite of the huge amount of money spent in campaigns to project a positive image. We have to ask why it is so”.

Researchers in the same institute believe that the bad image was precipitated by an international campaign to strip Israel of its legitimacy, thus greatly increasing the “enemies of the Zionist state around the world” due to Israel’s labels against these “anti-Semites”!

The most revealing example of Israel’s isolation is the deteriorating relationship between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama. Jeffery Goldberg, a Jewish American journalist, who is very close to the White House, said in an article in Haaretz that “the minute President Obama heard Netanyahu’s declaration to build new settlements [colonies] in Area E1 near [occupied] Jerusalem, the president did not even comment and told his aides that he has become used to Netanyahu’s self-destructive behaviour”.

Obama, Goldberg said “considers that every decision to build new settlements [colonies] on Palestinian lands leads to the ultimate complete isolation of Israel”. In words attributed to the American president: “Israel will shortly find itself, when votes are counted in the United Nations, very alone, isolated and hated by the world community”.

In line with the same pattern of thought, General Danny Rothschild, the former chief of the Israeli National Council, wrote in a study published by Israel’s Jerusalem Centre for Studies: “We cannot but notice the present impression that is held in US that Israel now has become a liability endangering America rather than a strategic ally”.

He, however, said “not all the criticisms levied against the government are all true all the time, the government, nevertheless, has failed in its task to project a positive image for Israel around the world”.

An internal report by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, predicted that the European countries will put tremendous pressure on the upcoming Israeli government to force it to resume negotiations to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

According to the report, “the Europeans’ opposition to Israeli settlements [colonies] will greatly increase and shall go beyond verbal condemnation. Diplomatic European sources confirm the intention of the European Union to push for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories of 1967 with [occupied] east Jerusalem as its capital including mutual exchange of territories between the two states”.

Echoing the same note, Yediot Ahronot wrote that “the Europeans are considering convening a regional peace conference inviting Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states to attend which will put a great pressure on Israel to attend and if Israel refuses, it will prove that Israel is rejecting peace in the Middle East”.

The Israeli newspaper underlined the foreign ministry’s assessment in the same report pertaining to the European Union’s condemnation of building new colonies by noting that “the unbalanced tone of this declaration has been illuminated by the fact that the report has lacked, this time, the previous notation that has always completely ignored the issue of settlements focusing only on “direct talks as the only way to achieve peace”.

2013 is slated to be the year of the final decision to be reached as regards the Iranian nuclear issue. It is also the time when the Obama-Netanyahu relationship is expected to be severely tested.

David Makovsky, a fellow researcher in the Washington Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, thinks that it is impossible to form a strictly right-wing government in Israel as this would cause extreme problems for Obama. But this, he says, may usher in an opportunity for better US-Israel understanding. Yet, he says, “it will not be easy because of the past. Obama’s dealings with Netanyahu were filled with mutual mistrust, extreme dislike and complete disregard to what the other cares for”.

Israeli political analyst Sima Kadmon, in his article titled ‘Israel after the Election: Isolation’ said the Europeans know very well that American support for Israel has been greatly weakened and that the Egyptian officials who are closely attached to the US, will also get the same message.

He perceives an imminent consequence awaiting Netanyahu: “A world that has lost patience with him.”

Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is seen as being spineless because he “fears the settlers [colonists] and became a prisoner of their agenda to annex the West Bank and transfer the Palestinian population to Jordan”. This opinion was shared by most of the European leaders. This flawed thinking is preventing Netanyahu from finalising a peace plan with Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution, which has become the very foundation of western policy. He is either unable or not willing to face the colonists who are carving out their “religious kingdom” on stolen Palestinian lands.

Netanyahu, has grown very weak after the January 2013 election, even in his own party, facing an avalanche of criticism from party members who consider him “a complete failure, especially in the way he conducted the recent election that is being viewed as “the biggest catastrophe in the history of Israeli elections”. Haaretz declared that “the elections proved that Netanyahu is a man of the past”. The Atlas Institute of Israeli Strategic Studies said “it is true that Netanyahu is the only one able to form a government, but he is going to be like a sultan without real powers”, or a “naked king”, according to Israeli writer Gideon Levi,

The surprise victory of the Israeli There is a Future party, which is now the second major party in Israel, proved that a great number of Israelis had rejected the agenda of the far-right and chose the middle road party to enhance Israel’s image in the international arena, despite the continuous strong political influence of the far right. Ari Shavit wrote in Haaretz: “Netanyahu and his partner Avigdor Lieberman: the two drunken with absolute power along with their settlers’ [colonists’] backers drove the people who were fed up with them to go and support a TV star without any experience in politics to snap five seats from the far right”.

Boaz Bismuth editor of the widely read Israel Hayom said: “Netanyahu is a very tragic personality who attained two terms in governing Israel. Yet, the voters have decided to end his last tenure with a humiliating defeat not only because he is a very bad prime minister, but also because his behaviour drives people away from him.”

Netanyahu, as seen by other Israeli commentators, has a very tough job ahead to end the privileges enjoyed by the religious right parties who refuse to share the burden to support the Hebrew state by providing the taxes needed and the soldiers to protect it like all secular Israelis. He will face enormous pressure from the international community to stop building colonies in West Bank in order to revive the dead peace process with the Palestinians. Netanyahu, weak now as he is, has no longer the option to attack Iran — whether he really had this intention before or not. His proposed alliance with the leader of There is a Future party, Yair Lapid — who has won 19 seats and whose agenda is to end all the privileges enjoyed by the religious right parties who are bankrupting the economy, as well as his desire to start negotiations with the Palestinians — is going to enrage the political right parties who are going to wreck this alliance sooner or later.

Shmuel Sandler, a fellow researcher at the Begin-Sadat Research Institute at Bar Ilan University thinks that “Netanyahu needs to work with Lapid to create a positive and a moderate image for Israel to show the world”. But he says that it is going to be very difficult for him to build the coalition he wants because “it is not easy to build consensus on the Palestine question”.

Forming a broad government with a “moderate agenda” and “moderate” Lapid is also next to impossible. Indeed, the two religious parties, Shas and the United Torah Judaism, have established an alliance to confront and destroy any understanding between Netanyahu and Lapid — the latter now being viewed as the new “King of Israel”. Therefore, a large coalition government, a “purely” right-wing government or a government grouping the Likud and the moderate parties, may be impossible to form or last long. If Netanyahu forms a right-wing government, he will render Israel alone to face international condemnation and isolation. If he opts for moderates, he, then, has to face the wrath of the religious parties. Should he choose to form a coalition government with both the extreme right and the moderates, inner fighting is bound to bring it to a collapse.

In summation, it is apparent that Netanyahu has become spineless. President Obama considered him to be “more dangerous to Israel’s security than Iran” as reported by Haaretz. Israeli political commentator Sima Kadmon speaks of Netanyahu as a person “who can never keep his word” predicting he will “fail to bring about an Israeli government that can survive for long”. Indeed, a spineless Netanyahu can neither support himself internally nor internationally and is going to open the door wide for the Europeans and the White House, if they choose to do so, to strike him where it hurts the most in order to change his policies. If he refuses to accept the reality, that will eventually spell his end politically.

Every passing day brings us proof that the great powers that support Israel use double standards when dealing with the Palestinian situation. Their alleged commitment to protect human rights and civilians under occupation become muddled and even forgotten when it comes to Palestinians in the occupied territories. The right to resist foreign occupation, which is a universal principle, becomes an act of terrorism in the Palestinian case. Israel has frozen the peace process and instead activated policies to annex more Palestinian land to build additional colonies as part of plans to annex the entire area of the occupied territories as a final solution.

A purely Jewish state without any Palestinian presence in it, especially in occupied Jerusalem, is now the ultimate agenda in Israel. The Judaisation of historic Palestine is the only scenario adhered to by the expansionist far-right in Israel and everything else is stalling to gain time in order to build more colonies, thus making it impossible to establish a Palestinian state. The world is only watching while Israel is doing all it can with impunity in its ethnic cleansing process in historical Palestine. For their part, the Palestinians are aiding the Zionist agenda with persisting inner divisions and conflicts, thus, strengthening the Israeli colonial occupation by their disunity.

Israel’s main concern is to protect internal tranquillity and security, which must be maintained by all means, allowing its government time to build more colonies and thus creating new facts on the ground that could eliminate the very possibility of an independent and viable state of Palestine. Such tranquillity can only be maintained by keeping the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) involved in futile political arguments going nowhere, with Palestinian police and security forces used to prevent any actions against the ongoing building of colonies and actual annexation of Palestinian land. Maintaining the status quo — which usually involves construction or expansion of colonies — is what the Israeli government desires most and the only thing that is being offered to the Palestinians, while Israel is fully engaged in other scenarios that only lead to the same result — the complete Judaisation of historical Palestine with occupied Jerusalem topping the list. To enhance this scenario, Israel is trying to use the PNA to guard the Zionist colonies. The only choice left to the PNA is to quit playing this Israeli game and return to its roots as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation it was — dedicated to national liberation and not a security firm standing guard watching the theft of Palestinian land and the gradual eradication of the Palestinian identity of historical Palestine.

A second circulating Israeli scenario calls for a temporary Palestinian state with temporary borders, i.e. creating a mini-Palestinian state encompassing the majority of the Palestinian population in occupied West Bank and dividing them into small pockets, thus “officially” relieving Israel of being an occupying power and helping it create a semblance of a two-state solution desired by the international community. In this scenario, the PNA has to play the role of a security guard employed by Israel to protect the colonial Israeli presence in the annexed Palestinian territories. It also gives Israel the opportunity to annex the large colonies a move that will consequently define Israeli borders without negotiations with the Palestinians. If the PNA does not agree to this temporary political settlement, Israel is ready to declare a unilateral separation/disengagement, which will save it from a ‘demographic catastrophe’ where the Palestinian population will exceed the number of the Jewish population in the near future in historic Palestine — a development that is bound to usher in the only viable solution of one state with Hebrew and Arab Palestinian populations.

Three out of four Israelis chose, in a national poll, to be separated from the Palestinians with separate roads for each, in addition to the completion of the Apartheid Wall to make it permanent. The Judaisation of Historic Palestine is a work in progress. Some analysts are also convinced that Israel has a very tempting scenario up its sleeve that suggests turning Gaza into a Dubai-like free trade zone under the Hamas government and connected to Egypt, thus, making its separation from the West Bank a permanent one. This scenario reflects financial expediency rather than preventing a unity of the Palestinians, thus, keeping Israel fully in charge of the West Bank while carrying on its Judaisation process.

At a recent seminar that focused on Israel’s unilateral steps, the Palestinian Institute for Strategic Political Studies discussed at a meeting in the city of Bireh in Palestine ways and means to form a strategic Palestinian policy “to prevent the occupying Zionist state from gaining from the advantages resulting from the status quo. On the table appeared the need to immediately forge a unity among the Palestinian factions to be based on the goals of attaining Palestinian national rights, an end to the Israeli colonial occupation, the right of return and the right to self-determination.

The only choice left for the Palestinians to stop the Judaisation of occupied Jerusalem and the rest of Historic Palestine is to achieve national unity and get rid of all the restrictive strings of the Oslo Accords. A Palestinian national strategy should return the Palestinian cause to the global arena where the United Nations in 1947 gave birth to two states; Hebrew and Palestinian states, but only the former was established. The question that has now to be answered is: Are we, the Arabs, especially the Palestinians, still alive to listen and heed?