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.”

It was the first official meeting that a dozen leaders of four leading Arab-American organisations and other personalities had with US President Barack Obama. They spent more than 30 minutes at the White House last Monday ahead of Obama’s first trip to Israel, the Occupied Territories, and Jordan.

It came days after the tumultuous conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) in Washington where Vice-President Joe Biden, the keynote speaker, was described in the US media as “pandering” to this influential American Jewish group. Obama followed by reiterating his “unshakeable support” for Israel when he met with American Jewish leaders at the White House last Thursday.

The session with the Arab-Americans left Warren David, president of the largest Arab-American organisation, the Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), elated. As per custom, participants are not permitted to quote the president, but David revealed that he had submitted to the White House a memo calling for an end to Israeli occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state with occupied Jerusalem as its capital.

According to David, Obama was primarily advised at the meeting that the Arab-American community was disappointed with US policy towards Israel, citing issues such as unconditional US aid to Israel to the tune of $3.1 billion (Dh11.37 billion), the absence of any movement towards regional peace, the need for an international investigation of the recent death of a Palestinian activist in an Israeli jail who is believed to have been tortured, and Israeli restrictions on Arab-Americans visitors.

In an announcement on its website, the ADC said the meeting was “an important opportunity for Arab Americans to share our views, and continue to serve as a bridge between the US and the Arab World,” adding that it also “underscored the President’s recognition of the importance of our community’s contributions to discussions of policy in the region”.

David said they were assured that a follow-up meeting will take place after Obama returns from his trip, which will include a visit to the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, which has just been recognised by the UN as a Palestinian World Heritage site soon after Palestine was recognised as a member state last September.

No one expects Obama to be carrying a “grand peace plan” when he goes to the Middle East, as he reportedly told the American Jewish group last week. And, on the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who still has to form a cabinet, has to date avoided any serious talk about Palestinian-Israeli relations. The situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories remains formidable. Here, the US president ought to try and observe the Palestinians-only buses that have been recently introduced by Israel for Palestinian workers travelling from the West Bank to Israel.

It would also be noteworthy if Obama and his entourage would visit the all-Palestinian town of Nazareth to witness the treatment of Palestinians there. A recent report in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz featured a study by the Bank of Israel which said local authorities have improved their performances over the past 15 years, but this was not the case for Arab councils. “Arab councils are poorer and less well-managed,” the paper reported, pointing out that “their [Arab] inhabitants receive far fewer municipal services than the inhabitants of the Jewish local authorities”. In other words, it declared: “Being an Arab citizen in the state of Israel just isn’t all that fun.”

The conclusion of this study, the paper revealed, is that “Israel must increase its support for the Arab local councils — by upping the income supplements, introducing differential education and welfare budgets and returning [usurped] lands to the Arab local authorities that will enable them to grow and develop.”

The paper concluded: “In other words, it is possible to spur the Arab councils to improve their administration — if they are given reasonable and attainable incentives and help in getting there, by means of land and budgetary resources and administrative help. The only thing that is necessary is the desire to help them.”

Here is but another example where Obama ought to realise why Israel, recipient of huge US humanitarian assistance, still faces continued rejection in the Middle East.

My niece, Irene, called me a few days ago indignant that some of her American friends, including some Jews, keep describing typical Arab foods such as falafel, hummus and shawarma, among others, as Israeli.

She wanted to know how she can convince them this is not the case.

I am quite familiar with this problem since many Americans have been aware of this undeclared war at many unsuspecting restaurants specialising in Mediterranean cuisine, or coverage in the media. My first confrontation with this issue came in 1969 when the late Leah Rabin, wife of the assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who was then his country's ambassador in Washington, discussed in a New York Times interview Israeli cuisine, and praising labneh (strained yogurt) as healthful food.

My first impulse was to tell my niece that Israel was almost 60 year old and these food items have obviously existed long before then. My curiosity prompted me to "google" Israeli foods. The internet yielded tens of references, including the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website which carried a feature on Israeli foods.

I couldn't believe my eyes and wished the Arab governments would do the same, but knowing their ineptitude at explaining more life-and-death issues I doubted they will tackle this quiet Israeli attempt at usurping Arab foods. So I did not bother to check but I would like to be proven wrong.

As a matter of fact, Arab-Americans are used to reading sometimes the wildest of statements made against Arabs or Muslims. Two such items appeared in the press this week.

In an Op-Ed column published in The Washington Post, Nina Shea complains about the alleged "cleansing campaign" now underway against non-Muslim minorities in Iraq. Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Centre for Religious Freedom and a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, saw this action as similar to what happened "sixty years ago (to) Iraq's flourishing Jewish population, a third of Baghdad, (that) fled in the wake of coordinated bombing and violence against them". Of the 125,000 only 6,000 remained in Iraq and the remainder settled in Israel.

You would think that Shea would have checked her facts before making these outrageous and disputed allegations.

Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew who fled to Israel and later settled in the US, maintains in an article that appeared in The Link (April - May 1998) and his book, Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews that "the terrible truth is that the grenades that killed and maimed Iraqi Jews and damaged their property were thrown by Zionist Jews". He also pointed out that Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), wrote in his book, Ropes of Sand, published in 1980, that "in attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorise the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the US Information Service library and in synagogues (and) soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel."

The second incident this week involved New York's newest public school in memory of a world-famous Lebanese-American philosopher and poet, Gibran Khalil Gibran, a Christian, and the city's first to offer instruction in Arabic and on Arab culture. Consequently, it has been has been targeted by critics who alleged that the school will serve as "a potential radical-Islam training ground".

The school's original principal, Debbie Al Montaser, an Arab-American, had to quit for her failure to condemn the use of the word "intifada", a term used by Palestinian Arabs to describe their uprising against Israeli occupation. Danielle Salzberg, a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic, has been named her interim successor.

Distortions

To cite but one of many distortions and claims about the authenticity of Israeli cuisine, Joan Nathan, author of The Foods of Israel and whose writings and recipes appear on MyJewishLearning.com, maintains that falafel is "the ultimate Israeli food".

On the other hand, Daniel Rogov, the restaurant and wine critics of Haaretz, the leading Israeli newspaper, acknowledges that "despite these longstanding myths, there is nothing Israeli about falafel, shawarma, borekas or hummus ...." and added that "in order to set the culinary record straight, let it be known that falafel .... outdates the existence of the State of Israel by several thousand years, archeologists having discovered the remains of ground chickpeas in the tombs of several of the Pharaohs. Shawarma ... (is) Turkish in origin, as are borekas ... As for hummus, most food historians agree the dish originated some 4,000 years ago, probably in North Africa." Interestingly, his lengthy review titled The International Israeli Table which appears on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was written three years ago.

Now that the record is hopefully set straight, I am just leaving to have a falafel sandwich at the best falafel and shawarma sandwich in the Washington, D.C. area, prepared by two Palestinian Arab cooks from Israel and working at a neighbourhood Jewish (kosher) restaurant.