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.”

When the lights go out, Gazans look for generators to switch on. And, they find people to talk to. With so many power cuts over so long now, people are giving themselves the somewhat dubious comfort that human relations may have improved as a result of these power cuts.

Mohammed Aljamal, like many Gazans, is discovering that improved communication with friends and family are the brighter side of life in the dark when there isn’t much work he can do.

Mohammed says he visits his family members far more often now than he otherwise might have. And it isn’t only because of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. He needs to get away from the “24/7 sauna”, he says. Happily – under the circumstances – power cuts are coordinated, and there just might be light at a relative’s home that has electricity.

In any case, he says, “when the power is out, what else can you do?”

Umm Mohammed, who sells vegetables in Rafah market south of Gaza Strip, says she and her husband make their social plans timed to power cuts. “We prefer to arrange visits from our extended family for when we have electricty—it’s no fun to sit with guests in the dark and the unbearable heat, unable to hear each other above the noise of the electricity generators.”

Noise is not the only problem with these generators. They have caused fires that have killed 17 Palestinians and burnt down 85 houses in the past two years, according to the Gaza Fire Department. Many residents are not trained to handle generators safely. Handling fuel that is summgled in through tunnels from Egypt or through the Israeli-controlled crossings is trickier.

Sitting outside for fresh air “is not a pleasant option either, with our eardrums bombarded by the noise of neighbours’ generators,” Umm Mohammed says. “The unhealthy fumes from the fuel bring headaches.”

But despite all this generators feel like a lifeline. In the past, says Umm Mohammed, a Palestinian bride would ask for a husband with a steady job and income, and a separate apartment. “But now some girls are also demanding an electricity generator with the apartment.”

The power cuts are harder for the children, she says. “My grandchildren are afraid of the dark, and start to cry when the power goes out.”

When people do sit down to talk, the power cuts are one thing they do talk about. A taxi driver has hung a small note under his rear-view mirror: ‘Please don’t talk about electricity or the fuel crisis’. He has too much of that at home, he says.

“We are stuck, we have no way to stop this,” says Mohammed. “We have appealed to the world many times, but those with the power to change things are not listening, they’re too focused on the Arab Spring.”

Demand for electricity in Gaza can reach 360 megawatts (MW) a day, the equivalent of 1 MW per square km. At its current operating capacity, the Gaza power plant can produce only 80 MW. This is supplemented by 120 MW from Israel and 22 MW from Egypt. The amount available only meets about two-thirds of demand.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) the Gaza power plant has been operating at best at a third of its capacity, or has been completely shut down by severe fuel shortages since February 2012. This has led to scheduled blackouts in homes of 6-18 hours a day, besides the random unscheduled cuts.

UNOCHA says the generating capacity of this plant has been significantly impaired after the destruction of six transformers in an Israeli airstrike in 2006, restrictions on the import of parts and equipment to repair the transformers, lack of fuel as a result of Israel’s blockade, and a dispute between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the authorities in Gaza over funding of the plant’s operations.

The power cuts are a price about 1.7 million Gazans pay for the Israeli blockade, which was imposed when Hamas was democratically elected in Gaza in 2006.

Ahmed Abuel Amareen from the Palestinian Energy Authority says the main reason Gaza cannot get more fuel is “arbitrariness from Israel and Egypt, and their failure to permit entry of fuel from Qatar.”

Qatar has donated fuel to alleviate the electricity crisis in Gaza but, according to Abuel Amareen, 90 percent of that fuel has been sitting in tankers in the Suez canal for the past two months, awaiting approval from Egypt’s military.

The insufficient and irregular power supply impacts Gaza hospitals, with outages having tripled since the beginning of 2012, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). UN statistics show that the average waiting time for orthopaedic surgery at Shifa Hospital increased from three to six months during the first half of 2012.

The Gaza Strip (360 sq.km) is one of the most densely populated areas of the world (at over 4,500 people per sq. km) according to United Nations statistics.

Ayman Siam, 41, is not growing carnations as usual this year. It’s limonium and statice flowers instead because they are hardier. Given the risks of an Israeli blockade, it’s a political decision.

Earlier this week Israel allowed four trucks of strawberries and flowers out of Gaza, in a slight easing of a stranglehold on exports. But as an exporter who has suffered heavy losses over the past five years through the Israeli blockade, Siam needs to cut his risks.

"The business loss I suffered from growing carnations comes close to a million dollars, including the cost of the plants and fertilisers," Siam tells IPS. Service suppliers have taken legal action against him for an inability to settle payments due since 2006.

All this is besides the loss of income for his workers.

Siam, like others growing flowers in Palestinian areas, is hoping for better relations ahead with the government in the Netherlands and the European Flower Exchange Market there that he supplies to, for further export into European countries. The Netherlands has begun to provide some financial support to Gaza’s farmers.

Siam produces far less than his capacity. "I had to reduce from eight dunums (a dunum is 1,000 square metres) of flowers, to only three dunums for the mid-November to mid-May 2012 season. The supply was good. The demand was good. But Israel’s blockade stood in between."

Now Siam hopes his new flowers will "tolerate longer delays at the Israeli crossing points." He is cultivating about 15,000 flowers, so a lot is at stake.

Siam is also happy that this year his flowers are not being labeled an Israeli product. In the past, the Israeli company Agrexco used to buy the flowers and sell them to European markets as its own.

Now, with more international groups boycotting Israeli products, the boxes and plastic bags he uses for packing are marked ‘Palestine Crops’. "I am thrilled to see my product is being sold as our own. So far, it is a good start as we have received more demands for the red and white carnations."

There seems hope of support. "Gaza growers have a lot of potential and I hope they can expand the business in the future," Ada Cohen, area manager of the company Floral Holland tells IPS.

It’s looking brighter for some workers too. Mohammed Dahlez, 32, has got his old job back. He is one of the few lucky ones; Siam has had to lay off most of his workers.

"Our lives are so dependent on the Israeli crossings, we hope we get our own independent sea port to export our goods straight from Rafah to the Netherlands," he says, carrying a collection of white carnations to be packed.

Mahmoud Khalil, head of the Flower and Berry Growers' Association in Gaza, hopes that Gaza growers are gradually able to transport flowers outside of Gaza. "Before 2005, Gaza Strip used to export 50-60 million flowers to the Netherlands…this year; we were down only to 15-16 million."

Many have not recovered from the loss. At the peak of the blockade in 2008, millions of Majed Hadaeid’s blossoms were served as food for goats, donkeys, camels and sheep. The "loss was too big to compensate," he says. He laid off 200 workers. "I am broke, all I have is this house for my children."

Hadaeid does not benefit from the Netherlands grant, since that two million dollar fund aims to support smaller farmers.

Most business that survives is down. Khalil says the flower business in the Gaza Strip used to feed 4,000 workers before 2005. The number has fallen to about 500.

"The challenge facing the farmers is the small quantity of flowers produced when the cost of transportation is fixed," says Khalil. For the past two months his organisation has been encouraging farmers to plant more flowers. "One hopes that we succeed in selling all our products abroad, this will give an optimistic start for farmers in the coming seasons."

Siam is keen to expand his business, and "get back to the old days when we were present in the market not only as flower farmers, but as Gaza’s ambassadors of love to the global market of flowers."

But, he adds, "this all depends on how much pressure The Netherlands can exert on the Israeli government to allow us to continue exporting our flowers."

Access to education for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is getting worse as international organisations remain unwilling or unable to intervene. Secondary- school students here completed their exams in June, and received their results by end of July. However, the 1,800 Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to complete their exams were not permitted to do so by the Israeli Prison Service.

In the early morning hours, Fatima Abu Jayyab, mother of Palestinian prisoner Eyad Khalid Abu Jayyab, gets ready for morning prayers. For the past nine years, every Monday morning this 57-year-old mother has stood outside the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) office in Gaza City with a poster displaying her son. The Israeli authorities have prevented her from seeing him for the last five years.

Israeli authorities imprisoned Eyad Khalid Abu Jayyab for what Fatima calls affiliation to a political party. "I think of him every moment," she told IPS.

"I have lost faith in the International Red Cross. They are not doing what a neutral organisation should be doing to meet the needs of prisoners in conflict areas," she says.

Fatima’s worries have increased since hearing about her son’s hunger strike. "There is nothing that I can do to stop him from doing this. I can’t get to him."

Palestinian Authority (PA) Major General Tawfiq Al Tirawi issued a press release last week, following the release of 770 Palestinian prisoners, stating: "The Israeli occupation has launched an unusual and unprecedented war against the prisoners." Having spoken to the released prisoners Al Tirawi accused Israel of barring the prisoners from applying for their exams, continuing their university studies or obtaining medical care.

Last June, angry families of Palestinian prisoners in Gaza City pelted the ICRC building with eggs. The protest came following a statement from the ICRC demanding Hamas provide evidence that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is still alive five years after his capture. "The total absence of information concerning Mr. Shalit is completely unacceptable," ICRC Director-General Yvest Daccord told the press.

Saber Abu Karsh, spokesman for Wa'ed, a Gaza-based organisation defending Palestinian prisoners said, "The ICRC statements are illegal and inhuman. Israel has been preventing 750 Gaza prisoners from family visits for five years now."

Abu Karsh adds, "There are 1,500 prisoners, including 36 female prisoners and 350 children in need of health care which is denied them. The ICRC needs to mention, just once, about the 7,000 Palestinian prisoners, and should intervene to ensure that medicine, food parcels, clothes and blankets get to the prisoners."

Hamas, however, has declined to answer the request of ICRC, according to Ismail Radwan, the movement’s spokesman in Gaza. In October 2009, Hamas released a short video of Shalit, in exchange for the release of 20 Palestinian women.

PA Minister of Prisoners and Ex-Detainees Issa Qaraqi slammed Israel’s decision of not allowing prisoners to complete their scholastic exams inside the Israeli prisons. "There has been no justification given for the denial of education," Qaraqi told IPS.

"The Israeli Prison Service agreed recently to conduct the high secondary-school exams for all prisoners according to commitments and procedures whereby the ministry of prisoners, and ministry of education and higher education, conduct the exams in a transparent manner," Qaraqi said

This year 88,768 students took their secondary school exams across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The prisoners however, were excluded for the third year - since 2009.

In 2009, Qaraqi appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice to reverse the decision not to allow the exams. "This session has been postponed and has not been discussed ever since," Qaraqi said.

According to the ministry of prisoners and ex-detainees in Ramallah, Abu Jayyab, currently imprisoned in Negev prison, is one of the 1,800 Palestinian prisoners who have been denied access to secondary- school exams.

"The security prisoners are held by law in Israel Prison Service facilities," Lieutenant-Colonel Ian H. Domnitz told IPS. He refused to comment further. "We don’t deal with such matters through the media," he said.

Qaraqi himself in his official capacity as minister of prisoners has never been allowed to visit the prisoners, or to observe their conditions.

Maria Cecilia Goin, ICRC spokesperson in Jerusalem, acknowledges the problem. "We are aware about the situation that they cannot complete their high secondary-school exams and we are following it with the Israeli prison authorities."

However, the ICRC maintains a dialogue with Israeli authorities "which is bilateral and confidential," Goin told IPS. "Our recommendations regarding this problem or any other detention issue are discussed only with the authorities and thus, we do not share publicly the content of this dialogue."

In March 2010, imprisoned Fatah official Marwan Barghouti managed to complete his doctorate in political science. The University of Cairo and the Arab Academy for Research had accepted Barghouti in 1999 - three years before he was arrested by Israel. Qaraqi, said that Barghouti’s success was due to "personal efforts and study in secret" without facilitation from his jailers.

The Israel Prison Service had earlier allowed some Palestinian prisoners to enrol in the Open University of Israel. This is no longer the case, according to the Ministry of Prisoners.

Sitting by the hospital bed of freelance photographer Mohammed Othman, Ashraf Abu Amrah knows that nobody owns a freelance journalist from Gaza who gets injured, or dies.

"When a news agency crew is injured, the world reacts with anger, and human rights groups send letters of protests," Abu Amrah, 29, himself a freelance photographer, tells IPS. A Palestinian free-lance journalist in Gaza is on his own, he says.

Othman suffered with injury to his chest, and damage to his spinal cord in an Israeli attack. His right arm and hand suffer due to neurological damage. His attending doctor at Al-Wafa Hospital says Gaza’s ill-equipped hospitals are not equipped to provide the care he needs.

Doctors at Al-Shifa hospital were able to get shrapnel out of his spinal cord, but not much more can be done in Gaza. He has since been moved to a hospital in Jordan.

Niman Shtawi, head of a local photo-website which promotes photographs of Palestinian freelance journalists, says he and his colleagues are marginalised by international groups, and have no protection in conflict or peace, unlike journalists working for local and international news agencies, or those working for factional media.

An international group recently donated bulletproof vests, helmets and safety equipment to journalists in the region. "Freelance photojournalists were not given any," says Shtawi. Most of the new equipment, he says, was given to the wealthier news agencies, which can afford such equipment anyway.

When opportunities arise for advanced photography training in European countries supposedly to develop local media skills, "most of those invited are the big news agencies that already have the budget and means for their staff without any help from international aid groups." And this when local freelancers are usually first there on the frontline where the violence happens.

It isn’t great for Gaza’s freelancers at the best of times. Freelance journalism brings Abu Amrah neither enough food on the table, nor health insurance for him, his wife or his two children. International news agencies, he says, are reluctant and to sign contracts with local journalists.

Shtawi has "no budget to use in case of emergency" though many of these photographers are internationally recognized. Many pictures they have taken have been published in the world’s largest newspapers, magazines and photo engines.

Eyad Al Baba has worked six years as a freelance photographer selling images to foreign news agencies. "Freelance media should be recognised in hot spots like Palestine by an organisation that protects them," he tells IPS. "It is a dangerous job, you risk your life, but when you are in crisis, nobody stands by you."

"This injury to Othman has made me think a thousand times about the future of freelance journalists like myself," says Ashraf Abu Amrah. "We ask for protection, no more."

The picture is less than rosy for local journalists employed by international agencies. There is clear discrimination between local staff and foreign staff, says a local journalist employed by an international news agency. "In times of war, armed vehicles are given to European staff - locals must take their normal car and manage by themselves." He spoke of huge gaps in payment to local and to foreign journalists.

Othman looks ahead to an unsure future. Apart from his injuries, his equipment was damaged, including two cameras he had bought to practice a profession for which he studied four years.

"A bullet-proof vest which is expensive and must be ordered from abroad is not affordable, so it’s not available to me," he says. And yet nobody wants to give up either.

Not Samar Abu Elouf, among the few female freelance photographers around in Gaza. She wants to carry on documenting photo stories of cases the bigger news agencies know little about. "This is a challenge, I will not leave despite all dangers," she tells IPS.