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.”

Today is Palestinian Prisoners' Day, when Palestinians remember the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The issue of prisoner treatment has been hotly debated in recent months, prompted by the death of two Palestinian men while in Israeli custody, both of which have been blamed on Israel. Here, the Monitor explains the complicated issue.

How many Palestinian prisoners are there?

There are currently 4,998 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails, 13 of them women. That is roughly half the number of Palestinian security prisoners held six years ago, according to an Israel Prison Service (IPS) briefing for journalists held on April 14.

Sixty-four percent of Palestinian security prisoners have been convicted, 33 percent are detainees who have not yet been sentenced, and 3 percent are being held in administrative detention, one of the most criticized aspects of Israel’s treatment of prisoners.

In addition, there are about 2,000 Palestinians being held on criminal charges, including illegal entry into Israel. Ten of them are women.

As of the end of February, 235 of Palestinian prisoners were minors, ranging in age from 14 to 18, and 552 of the prisoners were serving life terms.

In the past year, as many as 27 members of the suspended Palestinian parliament have been held by Israel.

What are prison conditions like?

Some 700 Palestinian prisoners are held at Ofer Prison, the sole facility in the West Bank, while the rest are spread between 9 facilities in Israel. IPS runs 33 facilities in total.

At Ofer, where foreign journalists were recently afforded a rare tour, prisoners are kept in wings according to their age and political classification.

Each wing has a courtyard hemmed in by opaque walls and a latticework of metal bars overhead. In a Hamas wing, men were kneeling and pressing their foreheads to the red cement floor in prayer, while others washed their clothes in a small room that doubled as laundromat and library, featuring tattered Muslim Brotherhood books. In a wing with 120 Fatah and Islamic Jihad members, young men with bulging biceps and sport pants were using the pull-up bars, while others smoked, milled around, or sat dejectedly in a corner.

There are three roll calls a day, with the first at 6 a.m. Two medics make daily rounds and a doctor is on site five days a week, says the head of the prison, Yaakov Shalom. Those needing further attention are transferred either to an IPS facility in Ramle or a regular hospital, though Shalom acknowledges there are often delays – but says civilians also have to wait as well.

The Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association in Ramallah, known as Addameer, accuses Israel of a “systematic policy of medical negligence.” In addition to long delays, Addameer cites substandard care, language barriers, and the “dual loyalty” of medical staff whose primary obligation is to the IPS, not the patient. The Palestinian Maan News Agency wrote last week that “207 Palestinians have died in Israeli jails since 1967, including 54 who died from medical negligence, the Palestinian Authority says.”

The IPS says that when a prisoner dies, investigations are carried out by the police, court officials, and internal staff. The IPS has its own internal monitoring system, as well as visitors from outside organizations, such as the Red Cross. The Israeli Ministry of Justice also has a team of monitors, which visit each facility twice a year.

Yifat Raveh, a monitor who has been with the justice ministry for 17 years, says that conditions have improved over her tenure but more can be done. “I always feel that we have to improve,” she says.

What privileges do prisoners have?

Security prisoners receive the exact same privileges as other prisoners, says Naftali Shmulevitz of IPS. That includes unlimited mail, TV, and library access; up to 1,700 NIS ($470) per month in spending money for food and toiletries sent by the Palestinian Authority and family members or friends; and a say in electing representatives from among their fellow inmates. No cell phones are allowed.

Security prisoners are also eligible for unlimited visits from religious leaders and lawyers, biweekly visits from close relatives, and meetings with diplomats and members of Israeli parliament. However, for those prisoners being held inside Israel, their relatives often cannot get permission to travel in the country to visit them. In addition, IPS can restrict family visits at its discretion.

Mohammed Ghazal, a civil engineering professor held in administrative detainee at Ofer, told visiting journalists he has only seen his wife twice during his 17-month detention, which had just been extended by another five months. He said the only reason for his arrest that he was aware of was that he was a member of Hamas.

What is administrative detention?

Administrative detention is intended to be a preventive security measure for those who are suspected of posing a future threat when no other means are available. While it is permissible under international law in such circumstances, human rights activists criticize Israel for using it too widely and depriving prisoners of the right to due process.

Administrative detainees do not have a court hearing or trial, but they are brought before a judge. The detainee and his lawyer(s) are generally given very limited information about the reason for his arrest, such as membership in an extremist group. Israel says the evidence must be kept secret for security reasons, including the need to protect informants who provided the evidence. Most administrative detainees in Israel are imprisoned for less than a year, but in rare cases they are held for up to five years.

The number of administrative detainees has generally declined since the height of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2002. Then, 1,119 of 5,272 prisoners were kept in administrative detention, or about 22 percent. Today the number has fallen to 160 of 4,998 prisoners, or about 3 percent.

Why has the prisoner issue heated up?

Two prisoners have died in Israeli prisons this year, sparking riots across the West Bank and even talk of a third intifada, or uprising.

The first was Arafat Jaradat, a 30-year-old from Hebron who died less than a week after being arrested for throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Israel said he died of a heart attack. Palestinians, citing preliminary results of the autopsy, alleged he had been tortured. The final autopsy results have not yet been released.

The second prisoner to die was Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who passed on in a hospital shortly after being diagnosed with cancer. Palestinians allege that the medical diagnosis and treatment came months after his initial complaints of symptoms.

In addition to the two deaths, four high-profile hunger strikers have heightened attention on the prisoner issue. Most prominent is Samer Issawi, who was convicted of firing on civilian vehicles and providing a pipe bomb for a planned attack on Hebrew University security personnel in Jerusalem during the second intifada.

He was released in October 2011 as one of 1,027 prisoners exchanged for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. But like at least 14 others of those released, he was rearrested, allegedly for leaving Jerusalem, where he was supposed to remain as a condition of his release. He is being held in administrative detention, and has carried on an intermittent hunger strike of more than 200 days.

In a March 2013 commentary for the Guardian newspaper, he wrote, “… I will continue my hunger strike until victory or martyrdom. This is my last remaining stone to throw at the tyrants and jailers in the face of the racist occupation that humiliates our people.”

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has called on the international community to help resolve the situation, warning that Palestinian anger and unrest could spin out of control if one of the hunger strikers dies. He also told US Secretary of State John Kerry during a recent visit that releasing prisoners was a “top priority” for resuming peace talks with Israel.

In particular, the PA is seeking the release of 123 prisoners that have been held since before the 1993 Oslo Accords were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

How has Israel responded?

Israel has contested claims of negligence or abuse, and the IPS says there are ongoing investigations into the deaths of both Mr. Jaradat and Mr. Hamdiyeh in accord with standard policy.

Amid an uptick in negative press coverage over recent months, Israel’s Government Press Office organized a rare tour of Ofer Prison on April 14 for foreign journalists. “As you saw, we have nothing to hide here,” said Shalom, the prison head, at the end of the visit.

As for releasing prisoners, Israel reportedly offered to release 125 prisoners – including 25 who had killed Israelis – last year, but Mr. Abbas declined. Earlier this month, the Israeli press reported that Israeli intelligence had advised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that pre-Oslo prisoners did not pose a security risk and could be released.

The death of a Palestinian prisoner today – the second in just over a month – sparked a rare protest by Hamas's armed wing, rocket fire into Israel, and an outbreak of prisoner riots at several Israeli jails.

The incidents highlight not only mounting frustration over Israeli treatment of Palestinian prisoners but also the frailty of a November cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

"This is the result of Israeli actions," says Sahar, a veiled mother of six carrying a Kalashnikov at the Hamas-organized protest in Gaza tonight. "We will leave our children to defend our country against the occupation."

Maisara Abu Hamdiyeh, a Hamas supporter from the West Bank city of Hebron, was serving a life sentence after being convicted by Israel of attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization when he died this morning. Palestinian officials blame Israel for medical neglect of Hamdiyeh, who was diagnosed with cancer.

"The death of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh shows the Israeli government's arrogance and intransigence over the prisoners," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters in Ramallah. "We tried to get him released for treatment but the Israeli government refused to let him out, which led to his death."

Israeli prison authorities said that a process to secure Mr. Abu Hamdiyeh's release on compassionate grounds was initiated after his diagnosis in February but not completed in time.

The death of fellow Hebron local Arafat Jaradat last month, which Palestinian officials blamed on Israeli torture, brought thousands to the streets of Hebron vowing a third intifada. Israel denied any mistreatment.

Today several hundred Palestinians reportedly protested in Hebron, while prisoners rioted at four Israeli jails and declared a three-day hunger strike. In the northern Gaza Strip this afternoon, Hamas drove a large van through the streets with loudspeakers announcing the protest tonight.

Supporters gathered at a local mosque at dusk, armed gunmen from the Qassam Brigades spilling out of at least five pick-up trucks to kick off the march in a rare public appearance since the November cease-fire.

They were followed by several thousand supporters on foot, from elderly men limping along to bands of rowdy children. With the death of Hamdiyeh and Jaradat and several prominent Palestinian prisoners on very prolonged hunger strikes, the prisoner issue has garnered the attention of both Fatah and Hamas officials in recent months.

Supporters of both factions are particularly irritated that Israel has rearrested prisoners like Jaradat who were released as part of the prisoner swap to secure the release in 2011 of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped and held in Gaza for several years.

"They're destroying all their agreements they already agreed upon," said Abu Fais, a middle-aged man in a dress shirt and slacks at the Hamas protest tonight, before he rejoined the chanting crowd as it made its way through Gaza's streets.

Herod the Great may be best known among Christians as the cruel ruler who sought to kill Jesus as an infant, and whose son book-ended Jesus’ earthly travails, mocking him en route to his crucifixion.

But this shrewd politician, appointed by Rome, left a far broader imprint on history.

From Corinthian columns to lavish frescoes, Herod etched the latest fashions of the Roman world into the Holy Land in rare and costly colors such as cinnabar. Even rabbinic literature of his day recognized Herod as the greatest builder of the land, though he was controversial among some Jewish subjects who doubted his Judaism and saw him as a puppet of Rome.

Among the monuments to Herod’s terrific construction are the imposing mountain fortress of Masada, perched on a desert plateau with cliffs on all sides; Caesarea, the largest artificial port of its day, complete with an amphitheater for 10,000 spectators of chariot races; and Herodian, an artificial mountain that punctuates the skyline just south of Jerusalem, a palatial complex which he is believed to have built as his final resting place.

After decades of excavation at these sites by the late Israeli archeologist Ehud Netzer, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem recently launched a nine-month exhibit, “Herod the Great: The King’s Last Journey.” The exhibit includes more than 30 tons of material, a massive undertaking that required the museum to shore up its foundations and heighten its ceilings.

While packed with eager visitors during the Passover holiday this week, the Herod exhibit has also received a fair amount of negative attention. Much of the material for the exhibit was taken from Herodian, which is located in an Israeli-controlled part of the West Bank, drawing Palestinian accusations that Israel is using archeology to expand its occupation.

And Prof. Netzer's excavations and subsequent conclusions are not universally accepted; Herod's presumed sarcophagus, for example, has no inscription proving it was indeed his. Many details of the exhibit have been pieced together based on the writings of 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.

It is perhaps noteworthy that the exhibit is not controversial among Israelis themselves. But why would the Jewish people seek to honor such a leader, who murdered his own wife and children and was seen by more than a few Jews as a Roman sellout?

“He was the last great Jewish king here,” responds Ilya Burda, an employee at Herodian.

As for his more savage exploits, well, that was par for the course in his day, Mr. Burda suggests.

“He was a great builder, a great administrator, and a great killer, and all these things came together,” he says, taking a break from the busy cash register where crowds of Israelis are waiting for a ticket. “In the ancient world, you could not be the great something without killing someone.”

Striving to be a son of Rome

Herod, who also built a magnificent theater at Herodian before changing his mind and filling it all in, was a key figure in the drama of Roman rule in ancient Israel.

The son of a Nabatean mother and a father from an influential Idumean family who had converted to Judaism, he was born in 73 BC and was appointed by the Roman senate in 40 BC to be “king of the Jews.” His original patron was Marc Antony, who ruled Syria, Egypt, and Judea, with Herod as his man. But after Antony’s demise with his Egyptian lover Cleopatra, Herod deftly switched his alliance to the victorious Octavian.

Octavian, later known as Augustus Caesar, accepted Herod’s continued rule and even expanded the borders of his kingdom, which eventually stretched from Gaza up the coast to Caesarea, which Herod named after his new patron. Herod also showed his strong connection to Rome in other ways, such as sending two sons to be educated in Rome.

Ever conscious of the importance of banquets to forge social and political ties, he sought to reveal to his high-ranking Roman guests “not only his fondness for Roman culture but also that he had good taste and was ‘one of them,’” explains one plaque at The Israel Museum exhibit.

But there were clear tensions between Herod’s loyalty to Rome and his Jewish subjects, perhaps seen most clearly after 10,000 laborers and 1,000 priests completed Herod’s rebuilding of the Second Temple – a huge feat of ancient stonework, with one stone weighing more than 500 tons.

“Torn between his desire to show respect for Jewish tradition and an equally compelling desire to please his Roman overlords, he dedicated [the temple] to the God of the Jews but later placed a golden eagle, a symbol of the might of Rome, above the temple gate,” according to the exhibit.

A lasting impression

While the temple was considered the pinnacle of Herod’s architectural achievement, Herodian was the largest and most lavish of his palaces. Set atop a cone-like mountain with the top shaved off, it commands a 360-degree view of Jerusalem and the Judean hills.

Herod is believed to have created the complex, complete with a large pool with boats and a mausoleum for his burial, as a memorial to himself.

Today the small peak is surrounded by Palestinian villages and the Israeli settlements of Tekoa and Nokdim, home to former Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Local Palestinians say they used to frequent the site before the second intifada broke out in 2000, but today there is heightened security.

“People from [surrounding] neighborhoods could go and sell ice cream and chocolate,” says Eyad Ali, a local whose father and grandfather worked on the archeological excavations. “It’s become more difficult for them to go there now…. It’s like a military zone, because it protects the settlements.”

The site lies within Area C, which covers 62 percent of the West Bank and has remained under full Israeli control according to the 1993 Oslo Accords. Meant to be merely an interim division of land, the accords are but the latest in a long history of shifting political boundaries in this ancient land.

After Herod’s death, his kingdom was divided between four of his children. Herod Antipas, who conferred with Roman prefect Pontius Pilate ahead of Jesus’ crucifixion, reigned the longest, until 39 AD. But by then the Herodian kingdom had been overtaken by direct Roman rulers, who destroyed the Second Temple in 70 AD, though much of Herod's stamp on the land can still be seen today.

It's a rainy day in the West Bank village of Ajoul, and when the kids get out of school a few dart into Myassar Issa's mini-market to buy sweets before running home up the muddy hills leading out of the valley.

They're part of the steady stream of customers that have helped Mrs. Issa grow her shop since opening it with a micro-finance loan of $1,400 two years ago. Today she has repaid that loan and gotten another, doubled her merchandise, and gained a new sense of independence as the family breadwinner. Her husband has two other wives and can't provide for her and her three sons, who are eager to marry but don't have the financial means to do so.

"I could either sit and say, 'He has to pay, he has to pay,' and starve and let my children starve, or act. I had to act," says Issa, surrounded by stacks of Pringles, diapers, and a TV playing Egyptian soap operas. "I don't care what my in-laws say, all I care about is saving money so my sons can get married. When a person has an objective, nothing can break that person."

The West Bank economy is even more gloomy than the weather here; government workers recently went two months without getting salaries until Saudi Arabia kicked in $100 million to help ease what has been described as the worst financial crisis since the Palestinian Authority was founded in the 1990s. But despite the structural problems and widespread despair, female entrepreneurs such as Issa are finding creative ways to carve out a niche for themselves in the marketplace, boosting the economy as well as their confidence and independence.

"You cannot sit around and wait for the government to give you business," says Issa, who also has a side business raising 1,500 chickens. "No one is going to give you anything when you just sit around."

Growing numbers

Samir Barghouthi of the Arab Center for Agricultural Development in Ramallah says statistics of female participation in business are hard to come by, but estimates that women entrepreneurs are increasing in number and today represent 5 to 10 percent of business owners in the formal sector and 30 percent in the informal sector

There is significant cultural resistance to women entrepreneurs, however – and not only from men. Sawsan Dweik, an interior designer and wife of a wealthy Palestinian business executive, says women are often the most critical.

"'Look at her, she's out of the house all day, not taking care of her husband and her kids,' they will say," Ms. Dweik says bitterly. But there is stiff resistance from men, as well, she adds. "The men feel that she is coming not only to challenge but to take what is theirs – to work, to earn money. She is trespassing."

Mr. Barghouthi sees it somewhat differently. "Of course, maybe they're not comfortable to see their women going outside the home for business," he says, "but they have no alternative."

A gym of their own

Such social strife finds no place at My First Gym, however. Girls who burst in after school have a full set of mini-gym equipment at their disposal, designed specially for kids. There's also a room of kid-sized stationary bikes from London for spin classes, a play area with huge squishy exercise balls and hula hoops, and a huge bowl of green apples in the fridge.

"I think that it is a good place for children ... to [develop] good habits, a new lifestyle," says owner Amani Harhash, one of nine sisters from East Jerusalem who are all professional women, including a lawyer, dentist, and interior designer. My First Gym is one of a number of opportunities in Ramallah, says Ms. Harhash, for children to "vent out all the negativism" of their society.

The gym, which opened in May 2012, employs four people – all women – and has 60 members who pay 200 shekels ($55) a month for access to all the equipment and the various classes, including yoga, aerobics, and ballet.

This is Harhash's third business; she started with a shop that sells maternity clothes and then opened a day care center, which employs five people, with the help of a bank loan.

"Not all women can stay at home with their kids, so we have to give them a place where they can depend on other people that their children are in a safe place while they are working," says Harhash, who studied business administration in Jordan. "It's a must."

Ballet business

Shyrine Ziadeh is a young woman who had dreamed of going to study abroad – her passion was ballet – but her parents encouraged her to finish her degree at Birzeit University near Ramallah first.

But she found there was a demand for her skills here at home, so she opened a ballet studio in downtown Ramallah in December 2011. "I think business is common sense," says Ms. Ziadeh, who especially loves the advertising and marketing side.

She has anywhere from 10-20 girls in her three classes, ranging from toddlers to young adults. The tuition is 200 shekels ($55) a month, but not all families can pay.

At first her family financed everything, and her brother helped arrange the rental of her top-floor studio space from the Orthodox Church nearby. Now she is able to cover the rent, although the church allows her to pay late when necessary, and she is paying back the money her family lent her. She wants to develop the business further, however, and is disappointed that no Palestinians have expressed interest in helping. (For more on the ballet center, read today's blog post here.)

But Ziadeh is undaunted, and puts her whole heart into her work, inspired by her late father.

"I'm doing this for him," she says. "He always wanted me to do something special."