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 OCCASION OF THE EU-ISRAEL ASSOCIATION COUNCIL,

On Monday 16th June in Luxembourg, in the margins of the EU GENERAL AFFAIRS and EXTERNAL RELATIONS COUNCIL

Rome 13th June 2008

“We strongly feel that without serious signs of good faith translated into tangible improvements on the ground, the time is not yet right to upgrade EU-Israel relations" was the final statement by a 14 MEPs ad hoc delegation, belonging to different political groups. The ad hoc delegation visited Israel and the Palestinian Territories from 31 May to 2 June. The delegation witnessed the wall, check points, the expansion of the Israeli settlements on Occupied Territories and the siege in Gaza.

“This is not to punish Israel, but to be coherent with our rules - firstly with the respect of human rights that are fundamental in all association agreements between European Union and third countries. Human rights that continue to be systematically violated by the ongoing Israeli policies towards the Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian Territory” added Luisa Morgantini, Vice President of the European Parliament, who was also part of the ad hoc delegation.

Regarding the EU-Israel Association Council meeting, scheduled to take place on Monday 16th June, within the margins of the EU General Affairs and External Relations Council, Luisa Morgantini reinforced the same reservations expressed by the delegation. "Urgent actions to counteract eroding confidence in the Palestinian- Israeli process are needed,” expressed MEP Morgantini.

The ad hoc delegation to Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territory, was co-chaired by Mrs Veronique DE KEYSER and Mrs Annemie NEYTS-UYTTEBROECK, and included fourteen MEPs belonging to different political groups. Attached below, is the official statement released by the delegation during a press conference in Jerusalem on 2nd June 2008.

More than 11,000 prisoners in Israeli jails. Among them, Marwan Barghouti, candidate to the PNA Presidency.

The last time that Widad hugged her son was eight years ago, in a prison in Ashkelon, Israel: for many years since she wasn’t allowed to see him, as the Israeli Authorities repeatedly denied her the permit for "security reasons".

Widad Naief Mohammad Atabeh lives in Nablus, is 78 years old, suffers from hypertension, diabetes and her sight has strongly worsen since the last time she saw Saed: « He hugged me and said that in that moment he was born again to life. Those minutes for us were the most precious, but the moment we had to depart from each other was the hardest and most disappointing». This is what she writes today in an appeal to all mothers in the world, in an effort to put pressure on the Israeli Authorities to allow her to see Saed for the last time making her dream come true.

Saed Wajih Saed Atabeh, arrested in July 29th 1977, is 52 years old and spent 32 years of his life in a prison cell.

He is the Palestinian prisoner to be detained for the longest time in an Israeli jail and –his mother adds - in the villages he is known as “the Mandela from Palestine”.

During all these years, Israeli Authorities have not allowed Widad to visit him. Thus, despite her physical illnesses, she continues to call for justice from her home in Nablus, a town under siege because of continuous Israeli raids: “While Yegal Amir, the killer of the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, receives regular visits from his family, has married and had a son in jail, Saed is not even given the opportunity of a last hug from his mother. How can this be?”

According to the last UN reports on human rights in the Occupied Territories, more than 11,000 Palestinians are prisoners in Israeli jails, including thousands with illnesses, 376 children, 118 women and 47 Parliamentarians.

Since 1967, more than 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested over a population of 3,5 millions: these data make Israel unique for the number of reprimands by the UN Council for Human Rights, a criticism that is ignored by the Israeli Government and forgotten by the International Community.

Nothing has been done to prevent the Israeli systematic use of administrative detentions, a practice that allows for many Palestinians – 813 at the end of January 2008- to be detained for renewable periods of up to six months and resulting in years of detention with no trial nor the possibility of legal support. We can't tolerate these violations of human rights: that is why a group of 46 Members of the European Parliament, belonging to different political forces, has promoted a parliamentary inquiry of the EU Council and EU Commission on the abuses of administrative detention. These include the hundreds of Palestinian children who are detained and subjected to inhuman treatments, harsh interrogations, deprived of food, sleep and exposed to illnesses which are hard to be treated in a jail, where they are kept together with adults, with no psychological support nor the opportunity to continue their studies. Additionally, they are often threatened and beaten, in explicit violation of the UN Convention on Child's Rights, adopted by Israel in 1991 but de facto never implemented. Further, during the years of this second Intifada, more than 6,000 have been put in jail. Palestinian children are also suffering heavy consequences since permits to visit detainees are denied to their mothers, wives, brothers or sisters. Because of these restrictions, children are the ones to visit their relatives, having to wake up in the middle of the night to travel alone on buses for hours with the fear of check points and of Israeli soldiers, and bearing the responsibility to be the only link between the family and their imprisoned brothers or fathers. They deliver bags full of medicines, food, cigarettes and the words that their mothers can't say directly. When they come back home, they are shocked, hardly speak, feel nervous, troubled, exhausted: this causes them to miss school, often a week of absences per month is caused by this avoidable, extraordinary adventure. As members of the European Parliament we call for justice and legality, waiting for clear answers by the EU Commission and Council in particular regarding the implementation of article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement (which includes a suspension of the agreement in case of Human Rights violations) on what kind of actions need to be undertaken to achieve the realization of International laws and Conventions ratified by the State of Israel.

Yet, the initiative should start within the same Israeli Government, which continues to ignore all peace commitments it has made: they should listen to the appeal launched by Marwan Barghouti, a parliamentary abducted in 2002 and condemned to 5 life sentences, who, from his cell, asks Israel to honor its 60 years by "signing a peace accord, recognizing the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, ending the military occupation and releasing the 11,000 prisoners". This would allow Widad and many other mothers to hug their beloved and would guarantee children’s right to a secure and peaceful childhood.

Yesterday was a day dedicated to Palestinian Political prisoners, thousands of Palestinians asked for their freedom: we should join them in this quest and don't leave them alone. We should endorse the call for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a leader who can represent the unity of the Palestinian people and Territory, fundamental for any peace negotiations, especially with the coming Presidential elections of January 2009 in which he could participate as a candidate, hopefully by then as a free man.

The European Parliament approved a resolution that calls once again, after a previous resolution already voted on 11th October 2007, for the lift of the Israeli blockade on Gaza Strip.

"Now, European Union has no more excuses - declared Luisa Morgantini- We must immediately take effective actions to implement these resolutions and stop the illegal and collective punishment of civilians in the Strip, where 98 Palestinian patients, including 17 children, already died for the lack of medicines and treatments due to the siege: the MEPs delegation visited the Shifa Hospital in Gaza and saw at least 30 premature babies still alive thanks to the incubators but that will die if generators would stop for the lack of fuel due to the cut off of refuelling supplies and to the closure decided by the Israeli Government. That’s unlawful and inhuman”.

“The resolution voted today, calling on Israel for an end to the blockade, for a controlled re-opening of the crossings in and out of Gaza, for guaranteeing the movement of people and goods at Rafah, Karni and other crossings, clearly affirms that “the policy of isolation of Gaza Strip has failed both at the political and at the humanitarian level"- she added. “Reminding that “civilian population should be exempt from any military action and any collective punishment” through this resolution, the EP strongly urges Israel to fulfil its international obligations, as an occupying power, guaranteeing “a continuous and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid, humanitarian assistance and essential goods and services, including fuel and power supplies” condemning at the same time the Israel's decision to introduce progressive five per cent per week cuts in power supplies to the Strip not enough for a minimum humanitarian needs and welcoming the petition from 10 Israeli human rights organisations against fuel and electricity cuts in the Gaza Strip”.

“Finally- concluded Luisa Morgantini- today resolution reminds to Europe that it must be able to be more effective not only in condemning all violence, all military actions killing and endangering civilians and extrajudicial targeted killings actuated by Israel, as well as all Qassam rockets fired on civilians of the Israeli town of Sderot, perpetrated by some extremist Palestinian groups, but also through its deeds and commitments. The time of empty words and of betrayed promises is ended: all the Palestinians and the Israelis who want the peace deserve our support and efforts to work concretely for guaranteeing the respect of the international humanitarian law, for the resumption of all inclusive peace negotiations, including also the Arab League, based on the freezing of all illegal Israeli settlements in West Bank and in East Jerusalem, the end of the military occupation and for the establishment of a free, sovereign, united Palestinian State, composed by the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on ‘67 borders in coexistence , security and peace with the Israeli State”.

Yesterday 20th February Luisa Morgantini, Vice President of the European Parliament (GUE/NGL), and General Philippe Morillon (ALDE) organized a press conference titled “Coming Back from Gaza and Sderot” with the participation of Members from different political groups of the European Parliament who took part to the fact finding mission to Israel and Palestine, 2-7 February 2008, in order to expose the results of their mission and report the situation found on the ground, in particular focusing on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza Strip. MEP Jill Evans (GREEN), who participated to the mission in Gaza and Sderot affirmed that "The situation in Palestine is reaching breaking point. The siege is an inhuman and illegal collective punishment of the people in Gaza and is causing huge suffering. It has to be stopped. There has to be international action to lift the siege, end the occupation and resume peace negotiations". MEP Richard Howitt, Vice-President of the European Parliament's Human Rights Sub-Committee and also in the delegation who went to Israel and Palestine added: "This is a state of siege imposing medieval conditions on the people of Gaza, and is today identified by the European Parliament as a clear breach of human rights. European countries should take the lead to secure support from all sides in their UN Human Rights Council to seek enforcement of international humanitarian law".

“In Gaza, there is a humanitarian crisis building and an economic breakdown happening which can only benefit the violent, the lawless and the zealots on all sides: we have to support those who want to live "normal", peaceful lives before that becomes impossible” - declared MEP Jean Lambert (GREEN) who also visited with the delegation Gaza and Sderot- “Both sides are hostages of their own extremists. That's why the International Community should enforce a sustainable peace both on Israel and Palestine: it's the basic interest of the peace-loving Israelis and Palestinians as well”- added MEP Gyula Hegyi (PSE) another participant to the mission.

"It is too late to stop the fire”. Three Palestinian children were killed last Tuesday as a result of shots by a military unit of the Israeli Army aiming at rocket launching stations near Beit Hanoun. They were 10 and 12 years old and they were playing when they were killed. Today, the Israeli Government admits to having made a mistake, but in the last two days it has accused Palestinian militants of using children as human shields to defend the Qassam launchers. This is not true: they are innocent victims. Like many others, they are victims of Israel’s occupation: since 2000 more than 800 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli Army. Nobody will be held responsible for their deaths: insult added to tragedy.

Abir, 11 years old, the daughter of Bassam Aramin, -ex political prisoner and now member of the Combatants for Peace (an association composed of ex Palestinian activists and ex Israeli soldiers) was murdered by a bullet to her head while she was leaving school in Anata, East Jerusalem. Denying evidence and medical examinations, Israeli authorities did not confirm the girl was killed by a bullet or a stone. Often, if conducted, enquiries are opposed by any means or buried under sand in order to assure the impunity of the Israeli Army: children are killed for a second time, inflicting more pain on mothers, fathers and all the Palestinian people, who, powerless, suffer the destruction of any sense of justice and of the hope to identify those who have committed crimes and still continue to.

Those bereaved families desperately retain the memory of their lost son, but poverty in Gaza is so deep that nobody has video footage or cameras. No videos filmed to document the first steps of Yahya Ramdan Abu Ghazala, 10 years old, nor of Mahmoud Abu Ghazala, 12 years old nor of her cousin Sara, 10 years old.

No pictures are taken and downloaded on pc or mobiles to soothe – if possible – a mothers’ despair. Often only pictures remain, those taken by photo journalists in Gaza, when the tragedy has taken place and the children are lifeless bodies, their faces covered with blood.

Gaza is not a prison – as we usually define it – because the million and a half people living there are not criminals waiting to serve a punishment, even if they are collectively and unfairly punished; Gaza is a cage without oxygen, no resources for the civil population, that is seldom opened to let food and aid in, just enough not to starve people.

I believe that the Olmert-Abbas meetings and the open dialogue for the creation of two autonomous and sovereign States are certainly positive and should be carried out. But Israeli policies do not show de facto the will to work for justice and peace. Rather they continue constructing the apartheid wall, targeted killing, closing the check-points, arbitrarily arresting, land confiscating and destroying all and everybody; a destruction which is provoked by the military occupation, while the Palestinian flag, symbol of the fight of a people for independence, is replaced by those of Hamas and Fatah, Palestinians at risk of becoming more and more divided.

Unfortunately, the International Community holds its silence. No efforts, nor a word about the death of civilians – especially the death of women and children – or action to encourage the Israeli Government to end its 40 year military occupation. No political will to ensure respect for international law and to end a nakba 60 years long.

Hesitating and submitting to the pressure, the European Union aligns itself with the silence of Israeli policies, making itself responsible.

The UN International Conference of civil society to support the Israeli-Palestinian peace held at the European Parliament August 30th - 31st, provoked controversy and a formal complaint by the Israeli Authorities and some members of parliament. At last, the Conference was held and it represented an important example of grass- roots democracy and participation: associations, deputies and many representatives of civil society repeated the demand for a common engagement for the respect of International law and sent a message to Europe and the International Community that respect for human rights cannot be meaningless and must be implemented.

Vice President of the European Parliament