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.”

Overview:

Palestinian children have been the subject of much debate during the second intifada. Israeli government officials have falsely portrayed them as unwitting pawns of Palestinian gunmen who use them as human shields, and as the offspring of calculating parents who value their children's lives as an economic commodity that they are willing to sacrifice for money.

As the intifada has intensified, the image of Palestinian children in Israel has become progressively melded with the faceless image of the “Palestinian terrorist.’’ In the international media, children are depicted as either stone-throwing youth or as casualty statistics, lying on a stretcher or in a morgue. Palestinian children are either demonized or victimized. The reality of these children's lives is far more complex.

For the past 36 years, each generation of Palestinian children has grown up under Israeli occupation. The occupation not only impacts their immediate physical integrity and mental health, but also has a profound impact on their future. At present, children live in an environment of extreme instability and are exposed to violence on a daily basis. Vital factors necessary for their healthy development, including stability, security, recreation, and sound nutrition are frequently lacking. These conditions prematurely force children into adult roles and rob them of their childhood.

International Law:

Israel’s measures in the Occupied Territories result in gross violations of children's rights as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The CRC is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, with only two countries—the United States and Somalia—having failed to ratify it. As a state party to the CRC, Israel is legally bound to implement its provisions.

The overriding principle of children's rights is found in article 3, which states: ‘’In all actions concerning children…the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.’’ But documentation from human rights organizations and other institutions indicate that Israel has shown insufficient consideration for the impact of their policies on Palestinian children.

These children are routinely subjected to a variety of violations, including of the right to life (article 6), the right to education (article 28), the right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (article 37), and the right to health (article 24), among others.

Killings, Injuries, and Arrests:

As of January 2004, the Palestinian child rights organization Defense for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS) had documented the deaths of over 500 Palestinian children (under 18). These deaths were the result of Israeli occupation policies implemented in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since September 2000. DCI/PS reports that an estimated 10,000 children were wounded during that period.

The majority of these children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers.

In addition to children killed and injured, approximately 2,200 have been arrested. As of January 2004, between 360 and 370 children were being held in detention centers and prisons in the Occupied Territories and Israel. Testimonies gathered from child prisoners, and confirmed by local and international human rights organizations, demonstrate that from the moment of arrest through their incarceration these children are subjected to a systematic pattern of physical and psychological abuse, often amounting to torture. Such abuse includes being beaten, tied in contorted positions for extended periods of time, deprived of food and sleep, and being threatened and humiliated. Family and attorney visits are regularly obstructed or denied.

Virtually every convicted Palestinian child is sentenced to prison, where they are held in overcrowded, unsanitary facilities and face abuse from prison staff and Israeli inmates. In most facilities, Palestinian children have no access to formal education and the prison administrations fail to provide them with adequate supplies and medical care.

Health and Education:

Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian movement, such as curfews and closures, have resulted in skyrocketing unemployment and poverty rates. This has caused a drastic decline in children’s health as families are unable to adequately feed their children or access to food is restricted. A January 2003 report by CARE International noted that chronic malnutrition among children under five has reached emergency rates and over 40 percent of children in that age group are anemic.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, confirmed these trends in an October 2003 report. His report noted that the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is on the verge of a manmade ‘’humanitarian catastrophe.’’ Over 50 percent of Palestinians are completely dependent on food aid and severe malnutrition rates among children in the Gaza Strip have reached those found in sub-Saharan Africa.

Perhaps the gravest impact of Israel’s occupation policies has been to children's mental health. Since September 2000, Palestinian children have lived in an environment of continuous violence and uncertainty, which has led to a high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. An April 2003 survey by the Gaza Community Mental Health Program found that 33 percent of children surveyed require psychological intervention and 49 percent suffered from moderate level PTSD symptoms. Only 2.5 percent of the children surveyed had no symptoms of the disorder.

A March 2003 Save the Children Sweden and United Kingdom study noted that parents report that their children under five exhibit disturbing behavioural symptoms, including increased violence and aggression, lack of concentration, failure to eat properly and maintain good hygiene, bed-wetting and nightmares. According to a July 2003 joint study by Save the Children US and the Secretariat of the National Plan of Action for Palestinian Children, 90 percent of parents reported that their children exhibit similar, traumatic stress-related symptoms.

The educational process also has been severely disrupted. The poor economic situation has prompted some children to leave school in search of work. Those who remain enrolled face significant challenges. Maintaining a national educational standard has been extremely difficult given that each area of the West Bank and Gaza has been affected to a different extent by Israeli curfews, closures, and invasions.

On the way to school, children and teachers are routinely tear-gassed, harassed, or present when soldiers open fire—all of which affect the quality of instruction and a child’s ability to perform well once in the classroom. Additional factors such as increasingly stressful home environments and military raids on residential neighborhoods, as well as attacks on schools themselves, exacerbate the difficult situation.

Future Prospects:

The conditions of children’s lives during this intifada are not new; they are simply an intensification of those experienced by previous generations of Palestinian children who have grown up under occupation. The violations to which Palestinian children are subjected are not an arbitrary departure from otherwise good practice. They are part and parcel of Israel's occupation—a system of control that is backed by legal, political, and economic structures. This system is fundamentally aimed at regulating and restricting the lives of Palestinians and keeping over three million people under submission.

Despite the trying circumstances of their lives, Palestinian children express resilience. While only 15 percent of children surveyed in the Save US/Secretariat study believed that the political situation is likely to improve, 70 percent believe they have the ability to improve their personal situation. Ninety percent responded that personal and academic ‘’self-improvement’’ was their main way of coping with the current situation and preparing for the future.

However, the cumulative effects of more than three years of sustained rights abuses will take many years to mitigate. The children Israel targets today with its violence, repression, and policies of collective punishment are the future of Palestinian society. With children constituting over half the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories, the impact of Israel’s rights abuses during this intifada is cause for grave concern about the future.