"I am Mr. Nobody" he said, after dousing himself in petrol . . .

JABALYA, Gaza Strip: Officially, Mahmoud Jnaid does not exist. The 25-year-old Palestinian almost made that a reality earlier this month when he doused himself with petrol and tried to set himself alight.

Jnaid is one of about 54,000 displaced Palestinians who returned to Gaza and the West Bank from abroad after an interim peace accord in 1993, but still have no identity cards because Israel refuses to approve them.

Following years of silence, they recently started holding weekly protests in Hamas-run Gaza to demand the documents, which they need to travel as well as for daily basics like opening a bank account or getting a driving licence.

"I am Mr Nobody," said Jnaid, who, at one of the protests, doused himself in petrol and tried to set himself alight before onlookers overpowered him.

"When I poured the petrol on my body I felt life was the same as death," he said as he sat next to his wife and children.

Jnaid was born in Jordan after his family fled their home in the coastal strip after the 1967 war with Israel. He returned to Gaza in 1995 at the age of 13 but still has no ID card.

In a stroke of bitter irony, Jnaid's brother was finally granted identity papers two weeks after he was killed in a protest against Israeli soldiers in Gaza. "It was worthless, they recognised him only when he died," Jnaid said.

Israel has closed Gaza's borders to everything but humanitarian supplies since Islamist group Hamas seized control of the territory, home to 1.5 million people, in June and ousted its Fatah rivals.

"I have to take care of six children now and I am out of a job for three months," said Jnaid, an unemployed carpenter.

Under the 1993 peace accords, Israel must approve all Palestinian personal documents, including ID cards.

Jnaid said he feels like a ghost. "Not only a ghost, I do not exist. Everywhere I go people ask for an identification card and I do not have one."

l Half of Israel's 120 members of parliament have signed an opposition petition opposing any division of Jerusalem with the Palestinians, the privately owned Channel 10 television said.

Among the signatories to the petition circulated by right-wing Likud party MP Israel Katz are 15 members of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's centrist Kadima party, the television added. Under Israeli law, any territorial concession on Jerusalem must be approved by an absolute majority of MPs.