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.”

In recent years, conservative evangelicals who claim a Biblical mandate to protect Israel have built a bulwark of support for the Jewish nation — sending donations, denouncing its critics and urging it not to evacuate settlements or forfeit territory.

Now more than 30 evangelical leaders are stepping forward to say these efforts have given the wrong impression about the stance of many, if not most, American evangelicals.

On Friday, these leaders sent a letter to President Bush saying that both Israelis and Palestinians have “legitimate rights stretching back for millennia to the lands of Israel/Palestine,” and that they support the creation of a Palestinian state “that includes the vast majority of the West Bank.”

They say that being a friend to Jews and to Israel “does not mean withholding criticism when it is warranted.” The letter adds, “Both Israelis and Palestinians have committed violence and injustice against each other.”

The letter is signed by 34 evangelical leaders, many of whom lead denominations, Christian charities, ministry organizations, seminaries and universities.

They include Gary M. Benedict, president of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, a denomination of 2,000 churches; Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary; Gordon MacDonald, chairman of World Relief; Richard E. Stearns, president of World Vision; David Neff, editor of Christianity Today; and Berten A. Waggoner, national director and president of The Vineyard USA, an association of 630 churches in the United States.

“This group is in no way anti-Israel, and we make it very clear we’re committed to the security of Israel,” said Ronald J. Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, which often takes liberal positions on issues. “But we want a solution that is viable. Obviously there would have to be compromises.”

They are clearly aiming their message not just at President Bush, but at the Muslim world and policy makers in the State Department.

Mr. Sider said he and three other evangelical leaders got the idea for the letter in February at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, where they met Muslim and American diplomats who were shocked to discover the existence of American evangelicals who favored a Palestinian state. Mr. Sider says they will translate the letter into Arabic and distribute it in the Middle East and Europe.

“We think it’s crucial that the Muslim world realize that there are evangelical Christians in the U.S. in large numbers that want a fair solution,” Mr. Sider said.

In the last year and half, liberal and moderate evangelicals have initiated two other efforts that demonstrated fissures in the evangelical movement. Last year, they parted with the conservative flank by campaigning against climate change and global warming. This year, they denounced the use of torture in the fight against terrorism. Some of the participants in those campaigns also signed this letter.

The Rev. Joel C. Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, Fla., said, “There is a part of the evangelical family which is what I call Christian Zionists, who are just so staunchly pro-Israel that Israel and their side can do no wrong, and it’s almost anti-Biblical to criticize Israel for anything. But there are many more evangelicals who are really open and seek justice for both parties.”

The loudest and best-organized voices in the evangelical movement have been sending a very different message: that the Palestinians have no legitimate claim to the land.

The Rev. John Hagee, who founded Christians United for Israel, was informed of the letter and read most of it. He responded: “Bible-believing evangelicals will scoff at that message.

“Christians United for Israel is opposed to America pressuring Israel to give up more land to anyone for any reason. What has the policy of appeasement ever produced for Israel that was beneficial?” Mr. Hagee said.

“God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob a covenant in the Book of Genesis for the land of Israel that is eternal and unbreakable, and that covenant is still intact,” he said. “The Palestinian people have never owned the land of Israel, never existed as an autonomous society. There is no Palestinian language. There is no Palestinian currency. And to say that Palestinians have a right to that land historically is an historical fraud.”

Christians United for Israel held a conference with 4,500 attendees in Washington this month, and Mr. Hagee sends e-mail action alerts on Israel every Monday to 55,000 pastors and leaders.

There is a crucial theological difference between Mr. Hagee’s views on Israel and those expressed by the letter writers, said Timothy P. Weber, a church historian, former seminary president and the author of “On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend.”

Mr. Hagee and others are dispensationalists, Mr. Weber said, who interpret the Bible as predicting that in order for Christ to return, the Jews must gather in Israel, the third temple must be built in Jerusalem and the Battle of Armageddon must be fought.

Mr. Weber said, “The dispensationalists have parlayed what is a distinctly minority position theologically within evangelicalism into a major political voice.”

NEW YORK: In recent years, conservative evangelicals who claimed a biblical mandate to protect Israel have built a bulwark of support for the Jewish state - sending donations, denouncing its critics and urging it not to evacuate settlements or forfeit territory.

Now more than 30 evangelical leaders have stepped forward to say these efforts have given the wrong impression about the stance of many, if not most, U.S. Christians.

On Friday, these leaders sent a letter to President George W. Bush saying that both Israelis and Palestinians had "legitimate rights stretching back for millennia to the lands of Israel/Palestine," and that they supported the creation of a Palestinian state "that includes the vast majority of the West Bank."

They said that being a friend to Jews and to Israel "does not mean withholding criticism when it is warranted." The letter added, "Both Israelis and Palestinians have committed violence and injustice against each other."

The letter was signed by 34 evangelical leaders, many of whom lead denominations, Christian charities, ministry organizations, seminaries and universities.

They include Gary Benedict, president of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, a denomination of 2,000 churches; Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary; Gordon MacDonald, chairman of World Relief; Richard Stearns, president of World Vision; David Neff, editor of Christianity Today; and Berten Waggoner, national director and president of The Vineyard USA, an association of 630 churches in the United States.

"This group is in no way anti-Israel, and we make it very clear we're committed to the security of Israel," said Ronald Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, which often takes liberal positions on issues. "But we want a solution that is viable."

"Obviously, there would have to be compromises," he added.

They are clearly aiming their message not just at Bush, but at the Muslim world and policy makers in the U.S. State Department.

Sider said he and three other evangelical leaders got the idea for the letter in February at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, where they met Muslim and U.S. diplomats who were shocked to discover the existence of American evangelicals who favored a Palestinian state. Sider said they would translate the letter into Arabic and distribute it in the Middle East and Europe.

"We think it's crucial that the Muslim world realize that there are evangelical Christians in the U.S. in large numbers that want a fair solution," Sider said.

In the past year and half, liberal and moderate evangelicals have initiated two other efforts that demonstrated fissures in the evangelical movement. Last year, they parted with the conservative flank by campaigning against climate change and global warming. This year, they denounced the use of torture in the fight against terrorism. Some of the participants in those campaigns also signed this letter.

The Reverend Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church in Longwood, Florida, said: "There is a part of the evangelical family which is what I call Christian Zionists, who are just so staunchly pro-Israel that Israel and their side can do no wrong, and it's almost anti-biblical to criticize Israel for anything. But there are many more evangelicals who are really open and seek justice for both parties."

The loudest and best-organized voices in the evangelical movement have been sending a very different message: that the Palestinians have no legitimate claim to the land.

The Reverend John Hagee, who founded Christians United for Israel, was informed of the letter and read most of it. He responded: "Bible-believing evangelicals will scoff at that message."

"Christians United for Israel is opposed to America pressuring Israel to give up more land to anyone for any reason," Hagee said.

"What has the policy of appeasement ever produced for Israel that was beneficial?" he added.

"God gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob a covenant in the Book of Genesis for the land of Israel that is eternal and unbreakable, and that covenant is still intact," he said. "The Palestinian people have never owned the land of Israel, never existed as an autonomous society. There is no Palestinian language. There is no Palestinian currency. And to say that Palestinians have a right to that land historically is an historical fraud."

Christians United for Israel held a conference with 4,500 attendees in Washington this month, and Hagee sends e-mail action alerts on Israel every Monday to 55,000 pastors and leaders.

There is a crucial theological difference between Hagee's views on Israel and those expressed by the letter writers, said Timothy Weber, a church historian, former seminary president and the author of "On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend."

Hagee and others are dispensationalists, Weber said, who interpret the Bible as predicting that in order for Christ to return, the Jews must gather in Israel, the third temple must be built in Jerusalem and the Battle of Armageddon must be fought.

Weber said, "The dispensationalists have parlayed what is a distinctly minority position theologically within evangelicalism into a major political voice."

With Israel at war again, American Jewish groups immediately swung into action, sending lobbyists to Washington, solidarity delegations to Jerusalem and millions of dollars for ambulances and trauma counseling, just as they always have.

Several days later in Los Angeles, supporters of Israel gathered outside a Jewish center in their own protest.

But this time there is a parallel mobilization going on in this country by Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans in support of Lebanese and Palestinian victims of the war. These Americans, too, are sending lobbyists to Washington, solidarity delegations to the Middle East and boxes of lentils, diapers and medicine to refugees.

Both sides are worried about friends and relatives under bombardment or driven from their homes. Both are moved to act by the scenes on television of their suffering kin. “The world in which I live is filled with people who are deeply connected to Israel,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, a New Yorker who is executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella group for 125 local councils and 13 national groups. “For almost everyone I know, there’s no distance. It’s hard for me to turn the TV off at night, and I wake up in the middle of the morning and turn the TV on to find out how things are going.” Although people in both diasporas are glued to their television screens, the parallel ends there. While the American Arab and Muslim groups say they are better organized than ever before, they say they have not made a dent in American foreign policy. Their calls for an immediate cease-fire by Israel have been rebuffed by the White House and most legislators on Capitol Hill. “I’m devastated,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, in Washington. “I thought we’d come further. We’re doing well, so far, in terms of our capacity to deal with everything from the humanitarian crisis to identifying families and working to get people out. What is distressing is the degree to which this neoconservative mindset has taken hold of the policy debate. It’s like everyone has drunk the Kool-Aid.” Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said, “This is probably the only issue in Washington where there’s no real debate.” Jewish leaders say there is surprisingly little debate even inside usually contentious American Jewish circles about Israel’s decision to bomb Lebanon and send in troops to rout the militants of Hezbollah, who are launching rockets into Israel.

The most coordinated dissent by American Jews so far is a campaign by the liberal Tikkun magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, both founded by Rabbi Michael Lerner in Berkeley, Calif., to raise money for newspaper advertisements calling for a cease-fire by both sides and an international peace conference.

Any criticism of Israel is “very marginal,” said William Daroff, vice president of public policy for United Jewish Communities, an umbrella organization of 155 Jewish federations in the United States. Mr. Daroff said he had also found an astounding degree of consensus among American politicians.

Last week he helped organize a Washington lobbying blitz by more than 40 Jewish leaders who, he said, spent the day essentially expressing their thanks to officials in the White House and the State Department and on Capitol Hill. “From Nancy Pelosi on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to Rick Santorum on the conservative wing of the Republican Party, I have literally heard unanimous approval and support for Israel’s right to defend itself,” Mr. Daroff said. “Certainly there are concerns by all parties about civilian deaths in Lebanon,” he said, “but there’s also great understanding on the Hill that when Hezbollah uses civilians as shields and folks have a rocket launcher next to their dining room table, it makes them a target in addition to it being a violation of international law by Hezbollah.” Arab and Muslim American leaders say they have tried to meet with the White House and many legislators but have been rebuffed.

Ahmed Younis, national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said he had finally succeeded in arranging a meeting with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, for next week. While Jewish groups field 40 lobbyists, Mr. Younis’s Muslim group is sending one Muslim leader, one rabbi and one Christian minister to meet the senator.

Jewish groups have also excelled at emergency fund-raising. United Jewish Communities, only one of several major Jewish groups, has raised $21 million in the past two weeks for its Israel Crisis Fund.

Another group, American Friends of Magen David Adom, which supplies ambulances and emergency medical care in Israel, initiated a fund-raising effort it calls Code Red.

The organization has raised $38,000 a day over the Internet for the past 10 days, said David Allen, the executive vice president, several hundred times more than it usually raises in a day. Mr. Allen said he was in talks with 10 donors who were considering giving enough for 10 ambulances in the next week, at a cost of $80,000 to $100,000 each.

Arab and Muslim groups have been raising money for humanitarian aid for Lebanese who were trapped in cities shelled by the Israelis and for those who fled.

The Council on American Islamic Relations is encouraging American Muslims to send boxes of lentils, powdered milk and diapers — rather than money — to Life for Relief and Development, a charity based in Southfield, Mich. It is discouraging direct financial contributions because many American Muslims fear they will be investigated by the American government if they donate to a Muslim charity.

Khalil Jassemm, chief executive of the organization, said the contributions had amounted to “a bit less than we had really hoped,” worth no more than $3 million. The reason, Mr. Jassemm said, could be “donor anxiety” about giving to Muslim charities. “We need to fully analyze what’s going on,” he said, “but we think that donors are asking themselves, ‘If I do help, am I going to be in trouble?’ ” Both sides are also working to sway public opinion. Jewish groups have held rallies in almost every major American city, Mr. Daroff said.

The Council on American Islamic Affairs has sponsored news conferences around the country in which Lebanese-Americans and others recount traumatic stories of escaping from Israeli bombardment. “People can’t believe what they’re seeing,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the council. “The United States is actively supporting the systematic destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, a friendly nation, using American weapons. Not only do they not seek to stop the destruction, they actually provide the bombs to accomplish the destruction.” The pro-Israel lobby has held sway over American policy, Mr. Hooper said, but that could be changing. “The American Muslim community has reached a point where it has a little more political maturity, a little more ability to speak out, to reach out to elected officials and to opinion leaders,’’ he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be that American politicians can get away with making speeches pledging allegiance to Israel and nobody’s going to challenge them. I think those days are over.”

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted yesterday to back off from a decision it made two years ago to pursue divestment from companies that profit from Israel's involvement in the Palestinian territories.

The resolution, passed overwhelmingly at the church's general assembly in Birmingham, Ala., responded to outcries by some church members and Jews who accused the church of insensitivity to Israel. The resolution apologized for "the pain that this has caused" among "many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion."

Church leaders said it still permitted divestment as a "last resort," but emphasized positive, not punitive, steps the church can take to support Middle East peace efforts.

The church also sought to reassure Palestinians by including in the resolution a call for an end to Israel's involvement in Gaza and the West Bank, along with criticism of the Israeli security wall where it encroaches on Palestinian territory and "fails to follow the legally recognized borders of Israel" before the 1967 war.

"The resolution makes clear that we're not targeting Israel, we're not abandoning our commitment to peacemaking, we're not abandoning the Palestinian Christians," said Jay Rock, coordinator for interfaith relations.

The Presbyterian Church never reached the point of divesting from companies that it said provided military equipment or technology for Israel to use in the territories. Church officials had begun to press four corporations — Caterpillar, ITT, Motorola and United Technologies. Divesting would have required a vote by the entire general assembly, which meets every two years.

Yesterday, the church's Peacemaking and International Issues Committee drafted the resolution after nearly 12 hours of testimony from church members and three invited guests, an American Jew, an American Muslim and a Palestinian Christian.

After a brief debate, the general assembly adopted the resolution, 483 to 28. The compromise mollified some Jewish leaders, who sent several representatives to lobby delegates.

"The divestment policy was a one-sided policy that focused only on the bad acts of Israel," said Mark J. Pelavin, director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism, a Jewish leader who spoke to the panel. "One of the criticisms last time was they didn't hear American Jewish voices at all. To their credit, they reached out this time."

The national director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Salam al-Marayati, invited to represent a Muslim viewpoint, said he was disappointed at the retreat from divestment, because it was a nonviolent strategy to put pressure on Israel.

But Mr. Marayati said of the Presbyterians, "There's still a commitment to opposing the occupation, and I think that's the most important thing."

Mr. Pelavin and Mr. Marayati said they were pleased over the support for a "politically viable and secure Palestinian state alongside an equally viable and secure Israeli state, both of which have a right to exist."

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), with 2.3 million members, has close ties to Palestinian Christians and has long used divestment to communicate foreign policy positions.

The divestment vote in 2004 hurt relationships with many Jewish organizations that had long been allies on causes like civil liberties and the separation of church and state.

"Our relationships with our Jewish friends were severely strained," said James D. Berkley, director of Presbyterian Action, a conservative group affiliated with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington. "We had congregations that had spent years making excellent relationships with local temples, and rabbis and pastors that were good friends. And suddenly, the rabbis were calling up and saying, 'What has the church done? I thought you were our friends.' " The action on divestment prompted other Protestant churches to consider similar steps. The World Council of Churches urged its member churches last year to give serious consideration to divesting funds from Israel. The Church of England voted for divestment in February. But few others have followed suit.

Two years ago, divestment was a sleeper issue at the Presbyterian general assembly, passing without much controversy.

This time, opponents mounted a campaign. They put up a billboard on the highway from the airport to the convention center saying, "Divestment is not the way to peace."

They invited a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, R. James Woolsey, a Presbyterian layman, to speak, and he said the divestment policy put the church "clearly on the side of theocratic, totalitarian, anti-Semitic, genocidal beliefs."

Advocates of divestment, including some American Jews and Israelis, worked the conference hallways. Jewish Voice for Peace, a liberal group, set up a table at the conference center and showed a documentary on Israeli military resisters, said a member, Judith Kolokoff of Seattle.

In the end, many delegates who spoke during the final debate said they saw the resolution as fair and even-handed.