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 2000 the UN General Assembly declared 20 June "World Refugee Day," a day during which the world can focus on the experience and plight of refugees. It is a day that not only recognizes Palestinian refugees but also other unfortunate people whose lives have been disrupted by war and injustice.

I am a Palestinian refugee; my parents as well as my grandparents are refugees too, who fled from our village al-Majdal and settled in one of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. My grandparents passed away 15 years ago, without any chance for them to see their homeland again. My parents are old and sick now, and probably will face the same destiny as their parents and die without any chance of having a look to what was once their homeland. Looking at the hard lives of my grandparents and my parents brings me nothing but a bleak vision of my future and the future of my children as refugees for life.

Sixty years have passed since the Nakba -- our forced displacement -- and we, the Palestinians, are still called refugees. Knowing this fact -- and recognizing the lack of privileges and denial of rights that a refugee must endure -- being identified as a refugee in general, and as a Palestinian refugee in particular, means that there is no open horizons, no path for the future. There are only limited images that flow around one's head. From the lives of one's ancestors, where they lived and died in the same refugee camp, under the same circumstances, and how they face the same sufferings and injustice by Israel and the indifference of the world at large.

Expecting to have the same life as one's parents or grandparents is very disappointing. Not only because their lives were hard, but because the parameters of one's life become predictable: limited to the camp, to the same schools, the same universities, the same streets, and to the same Israeli obstacles, and reactions to any action taken by your people in self-defense of their dignity and their right to live normally.

In these circumstances, in which one can predict how one's life will be and what one's next step is before one take it, it is not worth it to plan, to dream, or even to feel happy when one achieves a spectacular success in school, work, or anything. The end result will always be the same: a life trapped in the same refugee camp where there is not much of a difference between day and night. It is very difficult to experience such feelings, that one's life will be wasted for nothing. That one's efforts will not make a change in one's life and in the lives of others, and one's dreams will be an attempt to escape form the reality that one has.

From one generation to the next, nothing has changed. Being educated, or having a career is nothing if one is still only a refugee living in the same borders of a refugee camp, stranded as a refugee forever. Therefore, a refugee should be added to the list of different citizenships of the world, and the word "refugee" should be used in our passports as a definition of the stateless, restless, and endless journey we must live.

Najwa Sheikh is a Palestinian refugee from al-Majdal located just north of the Gaza Strip. Shiekh has lived in refugee camps in Gaza her entire life. She is married with three children.

In their simple house made of metal sheets, Myassar Abu Me'teq was sitting next to three of her children having breakfast and holding her one-year-old baby in her arms. She listened to their daily complaints and loving quarrels, trying to comfort them and keep them away from the sound of the Israeli shelling close to their home in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.

This mother did not know that their clock would soon stop ticking, not by their creator but by their enemy. She did not know that it was the last breakfast she would prepare for her children. She did not know that it was the last time she would hold her baby. She did not know that she would no longer know her children and their future as they also would never know their mother as an old woman. Like any mother, she refused to leave her children alone on their trip. She did not want to let go of her baby and insisted on accompanying them as one family in life and in death.

But like many others before her who were killed by Israel, she did not know that she would be the hero of a horror movie, and that she would be leaving this world with her four children, leaving behind two other girls with the bitter taste of loss and images of their mother and little sisters pigmented in blood and pieces of their bodies. An artillery shell -- "accidentally" as Israel officials said -- hit the family's house and shattered the dreams of the little kids during their peaceful breakfast, ahead of a joyful afternoon. The shell killed them in a brutal way without any mercy for their tiny bodies or their baffled eyes.

Talking again and again about what the Palestinians have to face in Gaza, their suffering and the deliberate killing of their families has become a banal topic that moves nobody, especially with the pervasive silence of fellow Palestinians, the Arab world and the larger international community towards such devastating events. That each Israeli operation will bring a new catastrophic event that talking about it, draws its pain and expresses the deep hatred and inhumanity that our enemy adopts towards us, forces me to write about these families and their tragedy with one hope that my words will make a difference and help in preventing such events in the future.

We, the Palestinians, must begin to realize that the rules of Israel's killing game have changed. There is no respect for Palestinian lives, that they don't see as human and don't give a second thought about the innocent children, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters it has killed and entire families that it has destroyed.

As I have written before about al-Athamna family in Beit Hanoun, Abu Ghalya family in Jabaliya, and Abu Me'teq family also in Beit Hanoun, a question is left without having an answer, not about those who were killed and rest forever, but about those who left behind and who have to live with the memories of their experience every moment for the rest of their lives. Day and night, even when time passes so quickly that things sounds fine to them, but deep down in their subconscious they will always keep these bad memories and force themselves to believe, as we all do in such experiences, the big lie that things will be ok and life will go on. But, the truth that we must accept is that these individuals will never be the same and can never live a normal life. We have to be prepared when the time will come when the monster that the Israelis have created, and that lives in the details of each of these stories is freed, and we the Palestinians must face its consequences.

Najwa Sheikh is a Palestinian refugee from al-Majdal located just north of the Gaza Strip. Shiekh has lived in refugee camps in Gaza her entire life. She is married with three children.

In a few weeks, Palestinians the world over will commemorate their Nakba (catastrophe) -- the loss of their homelands, their identity, dignity and their life.

Many countries and organizations that are interested in the Palestinian dilemma will help in this commemoration. The Nakba for them is to speak about the sufferings and loss of a nation, to tell stories from those who witnessed the real event and fled from their homeland with one hope -- that one day they will return.

As a third-generation Palestinian refugee, the Nakba to me is different in terms of the pain and suffering it holds. I am totally aware of the great loss that my grandparents and my parents experienced when they fled from their homeland in 1948. I know how devastating it is to lose the place that gives you all the feelings of security, and the identity that tells who you really are. The pain that my grandparents held during the years of their life in the camp until they died with their only wish to see their home again is heart-breaking. The dreams that my father holds on behalf of his parents, and his own dreams of returning back home, is also heart-breaking.

But for me, the Nabka is more than fleeing the homeland, and losing your identity. It is not having a single memory of the homeland that once was for your grandparents, and your parents. It is not having anything to tell your children, like the taste of your land's fruits, the smell of its sand, about stories and experiences with your people.

My grandparents and their generation, my parents and their generation too are lucky, simply because every one of them still has a story to tell, a story of their own, even their story about their journey of fleeing with all its painful experiences. Their shared memories of the place that once was theirs helped them to continue in their life, and gave them the courage to struggle against the bad conditions they have to live.

I still remember the stories of my grandparents about their homeland, about their traditions, their neighbors, weddings, giving birth, even about death. With every word they narrate, a stream of feelings breaks the pain and loss and brings back their homeland again, fresh and alive, as if they never left it once.

These stories were the sparkle of hope that strengthened their conviction and will, and give them a reason to live, to continue. Sharing these stories with their children and their grandchildren was the revival of their homeland.

I am a refugee who has lived her entire life in a camp, wondering what stories to tell my children, what stories to keep. The stories I have are limited to the camp, to the narrow alleyways, to the sewage canals that overflowed in winter, to the crowded classrooms.

My stories do not have a grove -- to describe its fruits and its taste. In my stories, there is no natural scenes, and simple people who live their day. Stories that my children will never live, because they too will live the same life that their parents have -- the life of the camp. They will walk in the same narrow alleyways, they will jump over the same sewage canals to cross the street, and they will experience the same crowded, painful life that their parents lived.

The experience of fleeing was terrible for my parents and my grandparents, but the memories they hold over the years alleviate the taste of their loss and pain. The memories help when they are lost in their sadness to bring something sweet back to their life, a privilege that I and my children, and maybe my grandchildren, will not have.

Najwa Sheikh is a Palestinian refugee from al-Majdal located just north of the Gaza Strip. Shiekh has lived in refugee camps in Gaza her entire life. She is married with three children. This article was originally published by Palestine Chronicle and is republished with permission.

In a few weeks, Palestinians the world over will commemorate their Nakba (catastrophe) -- the loss of their homelands, their identity, dignity and their life.

Many countries and organizations that are interested in the Palestinian dilemma will help in this commemoration. The Nakba for them is to speak about the sufferings and loss of a nation, to tell stories from those who witnessed the real event and fled from their homeland with one hope -- that one day they will return.

As a third generation Palestinian, the Nakba to me is different in terms of the pain and suffering it holds. I am totally aware of the great loss that my grandparents, my parents have to experience when they fled from their homeland in 1948. I know how devastating it is to lose the place that gives you all the feelings of security, and the identity that tells who you really are. The pain that my grandparents held during the years of their life in the camp until they died with their only wish to see their home again is heart breaking. The dreams that my father holds on behalf of his parents, and his own dreams of returning back home, is also heart breaking.

But for me, the Nabka is more than fleeing the homeland, and losing your identity. It is not having a single memory of the homeland that once was for your grandparents, and your parents. It is not having anything to tell your children, like the taste of your lands’ fruits, the smell of its sand, about stories and experiences with your people.

My grandparents and their generation, my parents and their generation too are lucky, simply because every one of them still has a story to tell, a story of their own, even their story about their journey of fleeing with all its painful experiences. Their shared memories of the place that once was theirs helped them to continue in their life, and gave them the courage to struggle against the bad conditions they have to live.

I still remember the stories of my grandparents about their homeland, about their traditions, their neighbors, weddings, giving birth, even about death. With every word they narrate, a stream of feelings breaks the pain and loss and brings back their homeland again, fresh and alive, as if they never left it once.

These stories were the sparkle of hope that strengthened their conviction and will, and give them a reason to live, to continue. Sharing these stories with their children and their grandchildren was the revival of their homeland.

I am a refugee who has lived her entire life in a camp, wondering what stories to tell my children, what stories to keep. The stories I have are limited to the camp, to the narrow alleyways, to the sewage canals that overflowed in winter, to the crowded classrooms.

My stories do not have a grove -- to describe its fruits and its taste. In my stories, there is no natural scenes, and simple people who live their day. Stories that my children will never live, because they too will live the same life that their parents have -- the life of the camp. They will walk in the same narrow alleyways, they will jump over the same sewage canals to cross the street, and they will experience the same crowded, painful life that their parents lived.

The experience of fleeing was terrible for my parents and my grandparents, but the memories they hold over the years alleviate the taste of their loss and pain. The memories help when they are lost in their sadness to bring something sweet back to their life, a privilege that I and my children, and maybe my grandchildren, will not have.

Najwa Sheikh is a Palestinian refugee from al-Majdal located just north of the Gaza Strip. Shiekh has lived in refugee camps in Gaza her entire life. She is married with three children. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.