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.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas joined U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Ramallah Monday to express optimism that progress towards a Palestinian state could be made in the upcoming talks sponsored by the George W. Bush administration between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Annapolis, Maryland.

But many critics fear that the hastily thrown-together meeting has greater inherent risks than the participants are willing to acknowledge.

"The failure of this gathering, which will be the last effort of [the Bush] administration on this issue, will have serious consequences," said Rita Hauser, the former head of Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the current chair of the International Peace Academy, at a think-tank conference about the upcoming meetings.

Citing the start of heavy violence associated with the Second Intifada -- touched off after the failure of then-president Bill Clinton's 2000 Camp David summit -- many fear that the collapse of the talks, or even frustration with a mere token gesture towards some progress towards peace, will reignite large-scale violence both between Israel and Palestine and within the two warring factions that split the two Palestinian territories.

Rice twice referred to the upcoming negotiations as a "launch pad" for future negotiations in her press appearance with Mahmoud Abbas in the centre of power in the West Bank on Monday morning.

"They will define whatever happens in Annapolis -- a photo-op, statement, or kisses on both cheeks -- a success," said Hauser. "We in the real world will know it is a failure."

The tentative scheduling of the conference -- planned for late November, though increasingly looking like early December, with Rice only committing to having the talks by the end of 2007 -- is emblematic of the criticisms that it is poorly organised and bound to fail.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas -- also known as Abu Mazan -- will both attend the meeting, which is aimed at hashing out some of the preliminary details of agreements working towards a Palestinian state.

But both sides have already expressed concerns about the specifics of any agreement. Last week, Palestinian negotiators stated that they were seeking a timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state, with a specific plan of implementation towards that end. That announcement prompted a response from Israeli officials that they would conduct negotiations behind closed doors and not in the press.

Israel is reported to be seeking only a vague statement that shows a joint desire of taking the initial steps towards establishing a process, rather than making concrete commitments on any of the issues that have thus far held up talks and the "final status" agreement that would shore up the existence of a Palestinian State.

Some analysts thought that negotiations would fail before they started when Olmert announced publicly last week that he has prostate cancer, but Olmert has reportedly spoken to both Rice and Abbas and assured them that he plans to attend the Annapolis conference before undergoing surgery.

"Nothing will happen now between the two parties," Hauser said about the lack of broad-based participation in the conference by neighbouring Arab countries with considerable interest in the negotiations. "You have to engage the bigger picture."

Not one of neighbouring Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt are scheduled to attend the conference. Jordan, Syria and Lebanon host a combined 2.5 million Palestinian refugees for which the "right-of-return" to a future Palestinian state has been a major point of contention between the two central negotiating parties.

"You can't disaggregate these problems anymore," said Hauser, also citing the recent mysterious Israel Defence Forces incursion into Syria and last summer's war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah faction.

Another notable player that was not invited by the U.S. is the Islamic movement Hamas. Deemed a terrorist organisation by the U.S. and others, the group's political wing gained power in January 2006 elections, but took up arms against Abbas' Fatah faction after a period of heightened tensions culminated in failure to reach an agreement for shared power.

The resulting conflict between the two factions culminated in June when Hamas used force to seize control of the Gaza Strip, effectively dividing the Palestinian Authority in two, with Hamas controlling Gaza and Fatah the West Bank.

Keeping Hamas away from the table only to have the talks fail could result in increased support for Hamas, as Abbas' conciliatory theme will have again failed to bear any significant fruit.

"If it collapses, the biggest loser will be Abu Mazan and Fatah," said Paul Scham, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and the former director of research at the Truman Institute for Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "They put forward a moderate agenda to gain concessions from Israel and the U.S. Hamas can then say that Israel is not going to give anything up through negotiations."

Scham was cautious to say that Hamas is still "bottled up in Gaza", and that a failure to hash out many of the specifics of a final status will not necessarily result in killing, observing that the situation is vastly different from 2000.

A group of women from both Israel and Palestine who had gathered at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, a Washington policy think tank, for a meeting about the upcoming summit also refrained from criticising the negotiations before they see what the results are.

This group and Scham both feel that although Olmert and Abbas are too politically weak to make serious concessions, and Bush is entering the lame duck stage of his presidency, there can still be a positive outcome based on the rekindling of a peace process that has been largely stalled for the past seven years.

"It is easy to be cynical and say it's not going to work," said Palestinian women's activist Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas, "There are great risks, but there are also opportunities."

Shamas lamented the international community's isolation of Hamas and said, "Hamas is starting to have a split in their ranks -- the pragmatists versus the idealogues." This split could prompt Hamas to acknowledge Israel and open the door to negotiations.

Asked by IPS if she felt that it could be beneficial to wait to organise a conference at a later time when some of the shortcomings of Annapolis can be better dealt with, she said, "I am losing my society. Any colonial group in control will first break down the social connections. These are classic colonial tactics. We can't sit on the sideline anymore. If the talks collapse we have to go back to square one."

"We are looking at a one or one-and-a-half year window before the two-state solution falls by the wayside," said Naomi Chazan, an Israeli professor and former deputy speaker of the Knesset. "This is not a time for pessimist or optimist. This is not a time to wallow in disbelief. This is a time to suspend disbelief."

The George W. Bush administration is badly losing the so-called "war of ideas" in the Middle East, a group of foreign policy experts suggested here Wednesday, by failing to grasp that persuasion is just as important as the more heavy-handed tactics of its "war on terror".

At the Brookings Institution event, "Opportunity '08: The Long War on Terrorism and Struggle Against Extremism", a panel of speakers representing the views of three U.S. presidential candidates and four of the institute's fellows laid out their thoughts on how to best address the long-term goals of the "war on terror".

"In this battle scholarships can be as important as smart bombs," said Randy Scheunemann, foreign policy aide to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and a board member of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, who argued that this was a struggle for the soul of Islam.

The focus on the war of ideas, or fighting for the hearts and minds of Arab and Muslim nations and their citizens, aims to curtail the recruitment abilities of extremist organisations by reducing hostility towards the United States.

In the six years since the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, the current administration has shown a marked inability to make any significant headway in this area -- according to a Pew Global Attitudes Survey, 80 percent of citizens of Muslim countries hold negative views of the U.S.

"That we are on the losing side of a PR campaign against a mass murderer is astonishing," said Anthony Blinken, an advisor to 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden and staff director of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, citing a poll in Pakistan that showed greater support for the reported al Qaeda founder and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks than for President Bush.

"Getting our message out to people is fundamentally different from state diplomacy," said Scheunemann, making reference to an important part of McCain's approach to filling the gap in understanding between Muslim nations and the U.S. -- the creation of something similar to the U.S. Information Agency, defunct since 1999, which was responsible for public diplomacy, charged with handling foreign broadcasts as well as cultural and educational exchanges such as the Fulbright Scholarship Programme.

The broadcasts, continuing under the independent authority of the Broadcast Board of Governors, which now include the Arabic-language television station Al Hurra and the Farsi Radio Farda, are a potent marker of the Bush administration's continuing failures.

"No credible study has found them to be influential among the populace," wrote Brookings fellows Hady Amr and P.W. Singer in their paper "Engaging the Muslim World: A Communication Strategy to Win the War of Ideas".

The low audience numbers are made up mostly of people already sympathetic to the U.S., and all but the fringes of that group are likely to be further alienated by the more ideologically rigid programming coming over the airwaves. Meanwhile, neoconservatives have been working to co-opt the already-fledgling public diplomacy apparatus, forcing out an experienced producer working towards a broader audience share, Larry Register, by means of a smear campaign via the domestic neoconservative media.

Amr suggests abandoning the idea of better communications through these information resources, as what the people of the region really want is a dialogue with the U.S.

Despite widespread agreement about the importance of the war of ideas, there continues to be some disagreement as to exactly how this should be carried out in terms of both particular countries and practices of engaging the Middle Eastern and Muslim citizenry.

The largest rifts come in the Iraq discussion. Blinken, for example, argues that in order to restore global faith in the U.S., Washington must "end the war in Iraq responsibly", while Scheunemann warned that if the U.S. were to "choose" defeat in Iraq, "there will be another surge -- a surge in al Qaeda".

Tamara Cofman Wittes, another Brookings fellow, bolsters the Biden and Blinken view by suggesting that the negative effect of the ongoing Iraq conflict goes beyond diminishing U.S. influence into actively helping the rise of Iranian influence. This raises another major gap in the various strategies to gain the trust of Muslim countries -- how to deal with Iran.

The major theme with Iran is containment of Tehran's influence in the region. Wittes suggests that the U.S. use the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as an opportunity to build a coalition to counter Iranian clout that would include Israel and moderate Arab states allied or friendly with the U.S. Again, the current administration's bumbling efforts to hastily set up a meeting for mid-November between Israel and some Arab states is already mired in doubt about what specific progress will be made, dimming hopes for a lasting and effective coalition.

"There is no better way to alienate people than by not inviting them to the dialogue," Amr notes generally, and as a result the U.S. may need to evaluate its tough standards for partnerships in the region -- perhaps it is time to engage some of the more conservative elements.

"If our goals are democratic processes," said Amr, "then we need to encourage those processes. We need to encourage and engage groups no matter how conservative they are -- if they are willing to play by the rules in a war of ideas, not a war of arms."

However, a focus on beefing up relations with countries that are already allied to Washington -- some of which, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are autocracies -- may stifle growth of the democratic process in the region. Wittes insists that there is still value in the "freedom agenda" and that coalitions can be built while simultaneously the needs of the "domestic radical opposition in these countries with some governance reforms".

Scheunemann referenced the lack of commitment to the war of ideas by noting that only three U.S. institutions were involved in the "long war" on terror -- the Defence Department, the State Department, and limited involvement by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. He called for the further involvement of the Department of Commerce, Department of Education and other institutions.

This increased and more varied involvement, contended Blinken, can benefit predominantly Muslim nations, by "building up democratic institutions, not just holding elections". Republican member of the House of Representatives Pete Hoekstra said that an important part of reaching citizens in the target countries was to stress that "in nation-building the key ingredient is local involvement".

Naturally, the Bush administration appears to be falling short of these standards as well -- Brookings senior fellow Phillip H. Gordon noted that of all of the U.S.'s substantial foreign assistance to Pakistan since 9/11, only 10 percent has made it to civilian hands.

Also notably, the budget of USAID -- a potentially useful entity with ground-level implementation experience -- has been slashed by 27 percent for foreign aid and a staggering 15 percent of its operational budget.

"If we don't dedicate significantly higher resources to this hearts and minds thing, we're going to fail," Amr concluded.