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.”

For years, Sarit, a 48-year-old Israeli Jew from Tel Aviv, took part in state-backed Memorial Day events grieving the deaths of Israeli soldiers in conflicts with Israel's Arab neighbours.

On Sunday night, the eve of Memorial Day, she did something different. She attended a ceremony, along with more than 2,000 other Israeli Jews, held by an Israeli-Palestinian group that mourned the loss of not only Israeli lives but also those of Palestinians.

"I wanted to hear the Palestinian side - it's difficult to hear them speak of their losses. It makes me think of how stupid it is to continue this conflict for so long," said Sarit, who would only provide her first name, as she left the packed auditorium.

She said that none of her friends or colleagues at a financial company with a staff of some 13,000 would participate in such an event.

"Most Israelis say they need to glorify soldiers and they pat themselves on the back and say that we are the good guys and the Arabs are the bad ones."

With Sunday's event, Combatants for Peace, an organisation founded in 2005 by former Israeli soldiers and ex-Palestinian militants, aimed its sights on persuading mainstream Israeli Jews like Sarit to question Israel's near-sacred view of its army and wide approval of its actions against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Most Israelis observed Memorial Day yesterday in the more traditional way, with the usual ceremonies at military cemeteries, a nationwide pause for a two-minute siren in honour of fallen soldiers during which even cars on the road come to halt, as radio stations play songs that mourn those who were killed.

Ceremonies today to mark Independence Day, which falls a day after Memorial Day, glorify Israel's resilience in the face of its enemies.

However, the Israeli-Palestinian group's bid to break the consensus on the military has faced controversy.

On Friday, the Israeli defence ministry imposed a ban on West Bank Palestinians entering Israeli territory to attend the event.

It was the first such prohibition encountered by the ceremony's organisers since they launched the annual function eight years ago.

After rights lawyers filed a petition to the Israeli state attorney's office, the defence ministry cancelled the ban and allowed the entry of 44 Palestinians out of a total of 109 requested by the group.

The ceremony also has drawn opposition from the far right. In the past week, an online petition demanded that the Tel Aviv municipality cancel the event.

On Sunday, as it took place, about two dozen ultranationalist youths demonstrated outside the auditorium.

Wrapping themselves in Israeli flags, the protesters chanted "Shame on you for desecrating the fallen" and "You have no place in Israel".

Despite such calls, the leaders of Combatants for Peace said they were encouraged by the hundreds of people who stood in line to enter the two-hour-long ceremony, in which several Israelis and Palestinians spoke of how losing family members in the conflict moved them to reach out to the other side.

Bassam Aramin, whose 10-year-old daughter, Abir, was shot dead by an Israeli border policeman in January 2007 as she walked down a street with her sister and two friends in the West Bank village of Anata, told the audience that both sides are losers in the long-simmering dispute.

Mr Aramin, 45, a co-founder of Combatants for Peace, said after the ceremony: "It was amazing to see the 44 Palestinians standing together with the Israelis on the stage. It really drove home that we feel the same pain."

Mr Aramin, who works at the Palestinian Authority's higher council for sports and youths, said signs such as dozens of Palestinian youths becoming members of the group in the past year or an encounter on Sunday with an Israeli soldier who expressed interest in joining, made him optimistic about drawing both sides together to end the conflict.

"We don't want to invest another 50 years in competing on who is right and who is wrong. We have killed Israelis because we are under occupation and Israelis killed us because they are the occupiers. Both sides have an interest to stop this," he said.

Ben Kfir, whose 22-year-old soldier daughter, Yael, was killed in 2003 at a bus stop by the entrance to a military training camp in a suicide bombing by a Palestinian, told participants: "We've paid a terrible price and we keep on paying it every day. A stubborn and consistent bid to advance peace will be our comfort and a tremendous way to commemorate those who fell."

The Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has suspended moves to upgrade Palestine's status at the UN for at least eight weeks in a bid to restart peace talks with Israel.

But prospects for talks appeared dim yesterday as Mr Abbas accused Israel of trying to "provoke chaos" in the West Bank after the killing of two Palestinian teenagers by troops in the territory.

"The Israeli government is behind this escalation," he said. "The Israeli government is responsible for the impact on US and international efforts to restart negotiations."

Israel said the youths threw firebombs at a military checkpoint in northern West Bank on Wednesday during a wave of protests over the death this week of a Palestinian prisoner, Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, from throat cancer.

Palestinians have claimed Israel did not provide enough medical care for Abu Hamdiyeh. His funeral and those of the two youths were held yesterday.

Mr Abbas's suspension of moves at the UN, reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz yesterday, comes as the US makes fresh attempts to resume negotiations on Palestinian statehood.

John Kerry, US secretary of state, is to meet Mr Abbas in Jordan on Sunday and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, in his second visit to the region in two weeks.

Mr Abbas's decision appears to be a major concession.

He has tried to bolster his plunging popularity at home by advancing moves to gain recognition for Palestine after two decades of a failed peace process.

In November, he led a successful bid to win a status upgrade at the UN to "non-member state" from "observer entity", despite US and Israeli opposition.

Palestinian analysts yesterday said pressure from the US and European countries spurred Mr Abbas to suspend further moves at the UN.

But they said the Palestinian leadership would probably resume the plans if peace talks remained at a stalemate by the summer.

"There is pressure on the Palestinians from the US and European countries and clear threats from Israel to suspend UN moves as a goodwill gesture toward peace talks," said George Giacaman, a professor of democracy and human rights at Birzeit University near Ramallah.

Mr Giacaman said Palestinians were sceptical of US efforts to resume the negotiations, but eventually "the internal pressure from the Palestinian public opinion will force them to resume such steps if there is no credible process".

The Palestinian leader's decision, made at a meeting of his secular Fatah party in Ramallah this week, called for a suspension of unilateral moves at the UN for eight to 12 weeks starting from March 22, Haaretz said.

That was the day when Barack Obama, the US president, made his first presidential visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah.

The suspension also includes efforts to gain membership at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The ICC prosecutes charges of genocide, war crimes and other major human-rights breaches, and Israel has been concerned that the Palestinians would refer it for investigation over its settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Analysts said Mr Abbas could also renew his bid to gain full UN membership by obtaining support from the Security Council, the UN's top body. A similar attempt failed in 2011.

Palestinian officials declined to comment on the Haaretz report yesterday.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr Netanyahu, said the premier's office "was not aware" of Mr Abbas's decisions.

"In the framework of the peace process that is moving forward, Israel is ready for reciprocal confidence-building measures," Mr Regev added.

Some experts expressed scepticism that Mr Abbas would follow on his threat to resume unilateral moves at the UN within months even without a peace process, given the Palestinian Authority's financial and diplomatic reliance on the US and the Israelis' control of the West Bank.

Abdul Satter Kassem, a political science professor at Al Najah University in Nablus, said: "It's not that he is pressured by the Americans - he is owned by them.

"As long as we receive our loaf of bread from the Americans and the Israelis, he can't do anything. That's why Israel will continue building settlements and we will continue condoning its actions."

Thousands lined the streets of East Jerusalem yesterday amid growing anger over the death of a Palestinian serving a life sentence in an Israeli jail.

Crowds greeted the body of Mai-sara Abu Hamdiyeh, who died on Tuesday after a battle with throat cancer, in a silent show of respect as it arrived in the city for a post-mortem examination.

Palestinian leaders including Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, have accused Israel of failing to provide the sick inmate with adequate medical treatment.

As many as 4,600 Palestinians are in Israeli jails and their imprisonment is a grievance that galvanises Palestinians as few others connected to the Israeli occupation do.

That anger was on show yesterday as thousands took part in a general strike to protest over the death of Abu Hamdiyeh, 63.

Shops, offices and schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip closed, and most Palestinians in at least four Israeli jails refused to accept food, the Israel Prison Service said.

Youths and Israeli security forces clashed for the second day in Abu Hamdiyeh's hometown of Hebron, where he is expected to be buried today, the Israeli army said.

The day of protest came after the heaviest exchange of fire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza since they agreed to an internationally brokered ceasefire in November last year.

Several rockets were launched into southern Israel and Israeli aircraft responded by bombing targets in the Gaza Strip.

The general strike was observed in West Bank cities and towns including Hebron and Nablus, as well as in East Jerusalem and in parts of the Gaza Strip.

After Abu Hamdiyeh's death early on Tuesday the prisoners called for a three-day hunger strike and protested by slamming on the doors, scattering trash in several security blocks and throwing objects at guards, who responded with tear gas.

As an ambulance brought his body to Al Quds University in annexed East Jerusalem, thousands watched silently, some waving Palestinian flags, others holding up the yellow flag of Mr Abbas's Fatah movement. His body was taken out of the ambulance wrapped in the red, white, black and green of the Palestinian flag.

The fury over Abu Hamdiyeh's death is expected to add further friction between Israel and the Palestinians, and cloud US efforts to reignite the deadlocked peace process days before the second visit in two weeks to the region by John Kerry, US secretary of state.

Mr Kerry is due in Israel on Saturday and is expected to hold talks in Jerusalem with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and in Jordan with Mr Abbas.

The protests may also increase ahead of the Palestinian Prisoners Day on April 17, which was last year marked by hunger strikes and demonstrations.

Some analysts said yesterday that anger over the imprisonment of Palestinians in Israel was one of the only issues uniting Palestinians and might spur further unrest in the West Bank.

"The prisoner question is the consciousness of society," said Mahdi Abdel Hadi, director of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs in Jerusalem.

"There is no Palestinian family that doesn't have even indirect involvement with the prisoner question, whether through family members, relatives or neighbours. This could shake the Israeli military occupation over certain areas of the West Bank."

Mr Abdel Hadi said Mr Abbas would probably increase his bid to rally Palestinians around anger over prisoners' jail conditions to try to bolster popular support for his leadership.

That support has plunged amid discontent over his inability to deliver statehood and persuade Israel to significantly ease its restrictions in the West Bank.

Israel has rejected claims of medical negligence tied to the death of Abu Hamdiyeh, who was arrested in 2002 and later sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in a foiled suicide bombing attempt at a Jerusalem cafe.

Prison officials this week also said they had started the process of granting him an early release but had failed to approve the move before he died.

Abu Hamdiyeh was the second Palestinian inmate to die in Israeli jails in less than two months. In February, the death of Arafat Jaradat, 30, in Israel's Megiddo prison, also sparked outrage.

While Israel claimed Jaradat appeared to have died of cardiac arrest, Palestinian officials had charged that he may have died of complications from torture after an interrogation and had called for an international inquiry.

Abu Hamdiyeh, a father of four, had been diagnosed with cancer at least two months ago but Israel did not provide him with proper treatment, the Palestinian Authority's prisoner ministry said on Tuesday.

It said he had been transferred to a hospital only three days before he died, after it was concluded that his condition was terminal, and that he had been chained to his hospital bed when he had died.

Yesterday, an initial examination of Abu Hamdiyeh's body in Israel's Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, in the presence of a Palestinian observer, showed he had died of cancer complications, Israeli media reported.

The reports, which cited unidentified Israeli officials, also said he had been a "heavy smoker".

The swearing-in today of Benjamin Netanyahu's new government, in which key posts are dominated by pro-settler figures, inspires little hope that the Israeli prime minister's tensions with the US president over the settlements issue may soon disappear.

After all, the administration of Barack Obama has long expressed frustration at the Israeli premier's refusal to renew a 2009 partial construction halt in Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in an attempt to reignite deadlocked talks on Palestinian statehood.

The two leaders have also disagreed on how to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and Mr Netanyahu had openly shown support for Mr Obama's Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, during the US presidential election last year.

Nevertheless, analysts say Mr Netanyahu and Mr Obama - both fresh off re-election campaigns - appear set on mitigating their strained ties during the US leader's first presidential trip to Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday. Their interests, however, seem to conflict.

Yaron Ezrahi, an Israeli political analyst, said Mr Netanyahu wanted the US to stop pressuring Israel on settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and instead focus on the security threats posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions and by the war in Syria.

Mr Obama, he added, aimed to persuade the Israeli leader and public that leaving the dispute with the Palestinians unresolved may lead to a "major conflagration" in the region.

He said: "Obama's major task will be to persuade the Israeli public to pressure the government on making serious moves in the peace process. But Netanyahu will tell him that his hands are tied because settlers now directly control the government."

Mr Obama may not find a very attentive Israeli public. The US president has faced some hostility in Israel for not travelling to the country since his first presidential term started in 2009, even when he visited neighbouring countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

A poll last week by the right-leaning Israeli news website NRG indicated that 51 per cent of Israelis disliked Mr Obama or were suspicious of his intentions to protect Israeli interests.

Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, said: "Obama is viewed by many Israelis as a weak president who is misguided on the Palestinian issue and who allowed Iran to gain an additional four years to develop their nuclear programme. He doesn't strike Israelis as a guy who understands the Middle East."

Mr Obama, in an apparent effort to woo Israelis, on Thursday gave an exclusive 25-minute interview to Israeli television's Channel 2 in which he referred to Mr Netanyahu at least seven times by his popular childhood nickname of Bibi.

He said in the interview: "What this trip allows me to do is once again to connect to the Israeli people … the bonds between our two countries are so strong, not just shared values but shared families, shared businesses."

Mr Obama will also deliver his visit's key speech to Israeli university students at a Jerusalem convention centre instead of addressing the country's parliament, as his predecessor, George W Bush, did.

But few expect his visit to iron out differences with the right-wing Israeli government, which views Iran as the most urgent regional issue.

Mr Netanyahu is concerned that the US would be too reluctant to use force to stop Iran from developing nuclear arms, analysts said. That worry was compounded by Mr Obama's appointments of Chuck Hagel and John Kerry as defence secretary and secretary of state, respectively - both of whom are viewed by Israel as too conciliatory towards Tehran.

The main disagreement between Israel and the US on Iran centres on how long it would take for Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon. Mr Netanyahu said during his speech at the United Nations in September that it could be this spring or summer. Mr Obama, in Thursday's Israeli television interview, said it would "take over a year or so".

Mr Inbar said: "Netanyahu will pressure Obama to put a deadline on diplomatic negotiations with Iran and Obama will try to make sure Israel will not surprise him with a strike against Iran's nuclear sites."