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.”

One of the forgotten political casualties of the Arab Spring in the past two years has been Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He is still in power in Ramallah, but his political fortunes have been dwindling ever since he lost control of Gaza Strip to Hamas in 2007.

Abbas presides over an almost bankrupt Palestinian Authority, while his influence in Washington is all but gone. He is frequently attacked and rebuffed by Israel and his attempts to revive the peace process, especially in the early months of Barack Obama’s first term at the White House, have been met with failure.

The right-wing Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu has stifled shy US initiatives to restart the ailing process. The PA barely governs in areas of the West Bank where Israel allows it to.

Washington has shown little interest in re-engaging the parties and resume negotiations. It is believed that the Obama administration has put this issue on the back burner until the end of the US elections.

Abbas will have to wait until Israel holds its own elections next January. Last week he stunned supporters and fellow Palestinians by telling a major Israeli TV that he has no right to live in his hometown of Safad, which is now part of Israel. He was quickly attacked by Hamas and even members of his own movement, Fateh, for relinquishing the right of return, which affects between four to six million Palestinian refugees.

The problem of refugees, whose right to return is guaranteed under Resolution 194, was to be among the main issues left by the Oslo Accords for the final status negotiations. Others include borders, East Jerusalem and settlements. Progress on some of these issues was made at Camp David in 2000, but a final deal fell through. Abbas and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert also failed to reach a deal in 2008.

Abbas’ recent statements were shrugged by Netanyahu while his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, accused him of meddling in Israel’s politics and attempting to tilt the results of the January 22 elections.

If anything, Abbas managed to put the peace process back in Israeli public debate ahead of the Knesset elections. His call for a resumption of negotiations was welcomed by President Shimon Peres. Defence Minister Ehud Barak told reporters that Abbas has expressed willingness to forfeit the “right of return” in closed talks. Olmert issued a harsh statement accusing Netanyahu of missing a critical opportunity to pursue peace.

Abbas has since defended his statements and denied that he has forfeited the right of return for millions of Palestinians. He made these statements few days before he was to head to the UN to pursue Palestine’s application to be admitted as a non-member state with observer status.

In the view of some Palestinians, this could be Abbas’ final gesture as leader. Others have warned of a possible political vacuum in the West Bank in the wake of Abbas’ imminent departure from politics.

In recent weeks, there were signs that a new approach to the Palestinian issue could also be developing. Abbas was angered by “a state visit” to the Gaza Strip paid by the Qatari emir via Egypt. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hinted again that he was planning to visit the beleaguered strip.

Al Jazeera news website quoted unnamed senior Jordanian sources as expressing concern over the development of a new political axis comprising Turkey, Qatar, Hamas and Arab Spring countries with growing Muslim Brotherhood influence. According to pundits, bypassing the PA has given the Gaza government an important political lift.

Hamas has witnessed a major leadership structural overhaul with the departure of Khaled Mishaal and the movement’s disengagement from the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. And with the collapse of Palestinian reconciliation initiatives — Abbas blames Hamas for failing to implement a Cairo agreement signed last year — the reality today is that Gaza and the West Bank have become two separate entities with two distinct sets of allies and political backers.

Abbas may have sensed that the terrain has changed. He has been repeatedly attacked by Netanyahu and Lieberman and ignored by key Gulf countries. He lost one of his strongest Arab allies, president Hosni Mubarak, to the Egyptian revolution. Relations with Cairo are frigid and Amman has a critical view of him.

If Abbas withdraws from political life, chances are that the PA will soon collapse. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad enjoys US and European support, but he is not a popular leader who can take over.

Against this backdrop, pundits believe that a new approach may take shape in the coming months.

Jordanians were surprised by senior PLO official Farouq Kadoumi, who said that he had no problem with the West Bank returning to Jordan within a federated or confederated arrangement.

Kadoumi, a critic of Oslo, said the two-state solution is dead and if Jordan can save the West Bank, it should be encouraged to do so. There was no official reaction to this from Amman, while PA officials said the objective now is to end occupation, not to discuss relations with Jordan.

The suggestion revives old plans and initiatives, including Israeli ones.

For now, the current Israeli government is bent on ignoring Abbas. Netanyahu and his right-wing partners are likely to form the next government.

Could the pieces fall in their place afterwards?

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas finds himself in an unenviable position as he prepares to fly to New York to pursue the difficult goal of upgrading Palestine’s status from observer status to a non-member observer state.

According to close aides, the 77-year-old official is angry, frustrated and disillusioned. He is reported to have told heads of Palestinian factions at a Ramallah meeting held on September 15 that they will have to choose between his immediate resignation and convening presidential and legislative elections without him.

Al Hayat Arabic daily said Abbas was also ready to drop the 1993 Oslo Accords, in addition to the Paris economic protocol between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, and suspend security coordination.

It is not the first time that the “father of the Oslo agreement”, as Abbas is sometimes called, has threatened to walk away. But the mass protests that broke out in the West Bank last week, first against Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and then against him, revealed Palestinian frustration not only with rising living costs, but also with the PA and the paralysis in the peace process.

Abbas has accused factions loyal to him of orchestrating the protests during which angry Palestinians burned his picture.

Abbas has plenty of reasons to feel isolated and weak. The PA is suffering financially and the United States and Israel are showing little sympathy. They are keeping the PA alive but make sure that Abbas has little authority. Since Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Israel’s prime minister three years ago, attempts to revive direct negotiations were met with failure.

Meanwhile, PA’s objections to continued Israeli settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and the West Bank were snubbed by Israel. Washington has opted to place the peace process on the back burner for now, after failing to persuade Netanyahu to suspend settlement building.

Abbas does not hide his frustration with the Obama administration, which backed down from earlier promises and positions.

The US administration does not approve of Abbas’ UN initiative and has vowed to veto Palestine’s membership application.

The Arab Spring has had incongruous effects on the Palestinian cause. It had deflected regional and global attention from the central problem in the Middle East.

Abbas lost one of his key Arab allies when Hosni Mubarak was removed from power in Egypt last year. Instead, his political foes in Gaza, Hamas, the Islamist movement, became more intransigent when the Muslim Brotherhood assumed power in Cairo.

The prospects of a Palestinian reconciliation, the terms of which were agreed upon last year, appear dismal. A power struggle within Hamas has given the upper hand to the more radical Gaza wing. The movement’s political chief, Khaled Mishaal, announced that he, too, will resign his post. It is another blow to Abbas who has never recovered from the loss of Gaza in 2007.

With his increased isolation, Abbas is now facing an onslaught from the radical right wing in Israel as well.

Recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman launched a scathing attack on Abbas and called for his dismissal for waging “state terror”.

While Netanyahu swiftly distanced himself from Lieberman’s comments, political observers started asking if what is happening to Abbas today resembles the sidelining of president Yasser Arafat almost a decade ago.

Today the Palestinians find themselves cornered on all fronts. Abbas’ four-year term in office ended in January 2009 and yet, with Gaza under Hamas rule, it is impossible to hold new elections. An agreement with Mishaal earlier this year would have appointed Abbas as prime minister of a national unity government, but that compromise was rejected by Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Abbas’ options are limited. He has vowed to leave, but that would only exacerbate the plight of Palestinians who will be unable to agree on a new leader. His inner circle is also divided on other paths, such as abrogating the Oslo Accords or holding immediate elections in the West Bank only. Some have called for a Palestinian Spring directed at Israeli occupation, but others have warned that this would invite back Israeli soldiers to autonomous areas.

Abbas will have to make up his mind soon. Dropping Oslo now will mean that the Palestinians have wasted more than 20 years on fruitless negotiations. There are no guarantees that the alternative will be better for the future of the Palestinians.

He probably has one realistic option: to wait for the results of the US elections in November and then decide his big move.

If Obama is re-elected, there is chance that the accords and the peace process can still be saved. If Mitt Romney wins the White House, then Abbas will have strong justifications to pronounce the peace process dead and withdraw from political life. Overall, it is a grim outlook.

The decision to launch a deadly strike against Iran’s nuclear sites has been taken. It now rests with two men, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hawkish Defence Minister Ehud Barak.

According to Western and Israeli press reports, quoting informed intelligence sources, the attack will take place in the coming 12 weeks, most likely before the US presidential elections in November. The threat of an outbreak of a regional war as a result of a possible Israeli strike became more prominent in the wake of the failure of the latest round of negotiations between the Tehran government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In an analytical piece published in Foreign Policy magazine this week, Israeli writer Oren Kessler quoted Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn as saying that “Netanyahu wants to attack in the coming weeks” while the paper’s former intelligence reporter, Yossi Melman, estimated the “window of opportunity” for a strike at 80 days. Kessler also quoted Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad and an outspoken opponent of a strike, as saying: “If I were an Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks.”

Kessler wrote that it is Barak and not Netanyahu who has emerged as the champion of a military action and that in his view, he will be the decider of when to launch the strike against Iran.

But Kessler, and other Israeli and Western observers, agree that both Netanyahu and Barak realise that they must prepare the home front “for the inevitably messy aftermath of any such action”.

Iran, which played host to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) conference in Tehran this week, has issued repeated warnings that it will not tolerate an Israeli attack on its “peaceful” nuclear facilities.

Over the past months it has demonstrated its medium- and long-range missile capabilities and held naval exercises in the Arabian Gulf.

It had threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz if its national security is threatened.

At the NAM meeting, its Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called on summit attendees to reject international sanctions and confront the UN Security Council.

Iran has repeatedly called for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, but insisted that it has the right to acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

The West has imposed economic sanctions on Iran, including an oil embargo, in a bid to put pressure on the Iranians to accept IAEA supervision and stop uranium enrichment activities.

Israel views the Iranian nuclear programme as an existential threat. Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said this week that “the intelligence information makes it clear: Israel cannot live with a nuclear Iran”.

It is a view shared by the majority of Israelis, even though there are vociferous opponents of a military strike within the political and intelligence establishment.

Such concerns and warnings have been amplified in recent weeks.

The issue of Israel’s home front readiness to deal with Iranian retaliation and protect its public has emerged lately.

A TV report has revealed that more than two million Israelis have no bomb shelters available — almost a quarter of the national populace — and that two-and-a-half million are without gas masks.

Another contrarian view casts doubt over the effectiveness of an Israeli air strike, which at best will delay rather than destroy Iran’s nuclear programme.

Even worse for Israel, the strike would probably compel Iran’s leaders to go ahead and militarise their programme — there are no indications that they have done that until now — using the Israeli aggression as a pretext.

In that sense, they would be adopting the Israeli position of describing their nuclear warheads as “a deterrent” against future attacks.

The US position so far has been calculated: focusing on diplomacy and economic sanctions as ways to coerce the Iranians to submit to international demands.

The Obama administration has not wavered from its commitment to protecting Israeli interests, but has not supported threats to launch air attacks against Iran. All that is has done is to say that all options are on the table, including a military one.

In recent weeks, Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, said that when it comes to Iranian nuclear threats, they can only rely on themselves.

Kessler quoted Shabtai Shavit, a former head of the Mossad, who told Israel’s Channel 2 that he does not trust American assurances of keeping Tehran in check.

“When we’re talking about my fate, my existence, my survival, I don’t let any outside actor to handle it.”

The question is how the US will react if Israel launches air strikes and is then attacked by Iran and/or Hizbollah in retaliation.

In an election year, President Barack Obama cannot afford to appear as if he were abandoning America’s closest ally. An American involvement will almost guarantee transforming this crisis into an open regional war.

An unnamed Israeli “decision maker”, believed by most Israelis to be Barak, cast doubt on Obama’s repeated promises to prevent Iran from going nuclear.

He told Haaretz last week that “even a cruel reality must be looked at with total clarity. Israel is strong and Israel is responsible, and Israel will do what it has to do”.

It is a dangerous approach that threatens the stability of the entire region.

Egypt is going to war in a bid to reclaim sovereignty over Sinai. Its armed forces will fight to stop arms dealing, overcome rebellious bedouin tribes and chase out foreign jihadist infiltrators.

Sunday’s terrorist attack on a checkpoint along the Sinai-Israel border in which 16 Egyptian soldiers and officers were killed has triggered the biggest security operation by the Cairo government in years to end the state of lawlessness in the peninsula.

It is not known where the attackers came from, but Egyptian and Israeli sources blamed Sinai bedouins and foreign individuals belonging to jihadist groups as well as Palestinian infiltrators from the nearby Gaza Strip. Nine attackers were killed but not before they commandeered two armoured vehicles and crashed into Israel. One vehicle blew up, the other was hit by an Israeli helicopter after crossing the border.

It was a daring operation whose purpose, it appears, was to kidnap or kill Israeli soldiers. A top Israeli commander said a major disaster was averted.

The attack underscored the fact that Sinai had become something of an Achilles’ heel for Egypt. Since the January 25 uprising that unseated president Hosni Mubarak, a state of lawlessness had prevailed in the Sinai, with many reports speaking of huge arms caches reaching Salafist jihadists who have established presence in the desert peninsula. These groups were blamed for the repeated blowing up of the gas pipeline extending from Al Arish to Israel and Jordan. They were also thought to be responsible for missile attacks against southern Israel originating from Sinai.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that Sunday’s attack should act as a “wake-up” call for Egyptian authorities. Israel had called on Egypt to take measures to crack down on terrorist cells in Sinai, which it said were associated with Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran.

Egypt’s newly elected President Mohamed Morsi ordered the army to take control of the Sinai and said those responsible will pay dearly. Egypt closed the Rafah border point into Gaza for an indefinite period, and Egyptian commentators called on Hamas to shut down illegal tunnels and cooperate in the investigation.

Hamas has rejected claims that Islamic Jihad members infiltrated from Gaza and said it was bound to protect Egypt’s security.

The repercussions of this attack will be felt for weeks. Egyptian troops have been bolstered in Sinai and by Monday had encircled the Egyptian border town of Rafah. The closing of the only border access point into Egypt from Gaza will add pressure on the Hamas government and is likely to electrify relations with Cairo. Hamas had hoped that Morsi’s election will reflect positively on the besieged Gaza Strip.

On Monday, Egyptian commentators were showing hostility towards Hamas, which they blame for failing to control its side of the borders. But others warned of an Israeli plot to isolate Gaza from the Egyptian side and sour relations between Hamas and the new government in Cairo.

The fact remains that Egypt needs to find ways to reassert it authority in Sinai. Members of Al Gama’a Al Islamiya in Cairo accused Israel of standing behind the Rafah attack. Other military experts argued that Israel will use the attack to amend the Camp David peace treaty, which limits the presence of the Egyptian army in Sinai, allowing Tel Aviv to establish a security corridor along its border with Egypt.

Hamas senior official Musa Abu Marzouq said Israel had prior knowledge of the terror attack and its intelligence had penetrated the group. But this does not exclude the fact that Sinai has become a security risk for both Israel and Egypt.

For the former, the possibility of fundamentalist groups establishing bases in the peninsula and threatening Israel’s southern borders, along with Palestinian groups in Gaza, is real. Along with South Lebanon and the Golan, if the Assad regime loses control there or allows fighters to move into this strategic area, a lawless Sinai will present Israel with an unprecedented challenge.

The choices for Morsi are tough. He will be forced to coordinate with Israel if the Egyptian army is to have a free hand in Sinai. But closing the Rafah border crossing for too long will be seen as unpopular and un-Islamic. It will put him in a tight spot as someone who had promised to offer unlimited backing to the people of Gaza and ended collective punishment of its inhabitants.

Strategically, Egypt cannot afford to lose control of Sinai. It has to move now to end arms dealing and confront the global jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda, that are now active there. These arms may find their way to the Nile Valley and threaten the stability of Egypt in these troubled times.

Morsi has now asked the army to launch a wide-ranging operation to end the mutiny in Sinai and control the territory. The military council had promised a quick reaction. It has sealed off Sinai and dispatched huge reinforcements.

Israel will have to yield, but it will be watching nervously as the Egyptian military bolsters its presence close to its borders.

There are no easy choices. Hamas will have to prove that no fighters will be crossing from its end. It will have to shut all illegal tunnels to prove its goodwill. There is a heavy political price tag to anything it does now, but Egypt’s battle for Sinai will change the geopolitical balance in that region.