[WCUSP] Poverty in Palestine

[Kate Zaidan]

The need to reinstate aid is still incredibly relevant...


Poverty threatens to blight new Palestinian school year

By Djallal Malti

Agence France PResse
23 August 2006

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip, Aug 23 2006

"I don't have the money to send my children to school,"
broods father-of-four Mohammed Abu Mur in depressed south
Gaza. A Palestinian civil servant, he has not been paid
for six months.

Like many other Palestinian parents facing the grim
reality of worsening financial crisis in the Gaza Strip,
he cannot afford books or uniforms to send his children
back to the classroom after the long summer holidays.

"I don't know what to do. This year I can't buy anything
for my children, not uniforms, books or school equipment,"
for the new term due to begin on September 2, says Abu Mur
in the Khan Yunis refugee camp.

"I haven't been paid since March and I don't have any
money to send my four children to school. Uniform and
shoe-wise they could still use those from last year, but
the books," he trails off.

It is not just Abu Mur who has gone unpaid. His children's
teachers have also been without their salaries. Staff in
state-run schools make up around a quarter of the 160,000
civil servants on the Palestinian Authority payroll who
have received pratically no money since late February.

In protest, the teachers' union has announced that its
members will not return to their classes in the
Palestinian territories on September 2.

The European Union and United States suspended direct aid
to the Palestinian Authority when Islamist party Hamas
took office following an upset election win, citing its
refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence.

"I fear for my children as well as the others," said Abu
Mur. "I'm frightened that they'll end up in the street."

Palestinians are currently among the most educated in the
Middle East with literacy estimated at around 92.3 percent
and an education drop-out rate of only 0.9 percent.

At the Abdullah Abu Sitta school in the depressed south
Gaza town of Khan Yunis, teacher Hamam al-Faqawi is braced
for a difficult start to the new academic year.

"Parents have to spend around 100 shekels (23 dollars) for
their children's uniforms and shoes, and 100 shekels for
books and school supplies. No one can do that," admits
Faqawi, who teaches English.

"We are going to have to organise collections for those
who cannot afford the uniforms, and for the books students
can share."

In order to ease the parental burden, prime minister
Ismail Haniya has reduced fees in state schools from the
previous 60 shekels (14 dollars) to 20 shekels (4.5
dollars), although for many that is still too expensive.

Ziad Salman is the father of seven. "The school fees, plus
expenses comes to more than 1,500 shekels (340 dollars)
this year," he calculates.

"Therefore I've had to make do with last year's uniforms
and then I borrowed money." A civil servant himself, he
has only received one and a half month's salary since
March -- around 680 dollars.

"There's cause for alarm. The situation has deteriorated
seriously since last year," said Ali al-Farra, headmaster
of Khan Yunis's Kamel Nasser Bey school and a member of
the main teacher's union.

"People come and see me and complain about not being able
to meet the costs of going back to school this year," he
said.

"One pupil in two will experience difficulties in buying
books, supplies and uniforms this year."

Israeli troops arrested education minister Nasseredine
al-Shaer, who is also deputy premier, at the weekend, as
part of a crackdown on the Hamas-led government after a
deadly militant raid from Gaza on June 25.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third captured by
the gunmen, who included members of Hamas's armed wing,
triggering a massive two-month offensive against the
Palestinian territory.

"The worst thing," says Faqawi, is the effect on
children's education and the risk that many parents will
keep their children at home.

"Last year, pupils without uniforms were ordered out of
class. This year I can't do that," he said.

-- 

Kate Zaidan
Program Coordinator
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section
1213 Race Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-563-7110
www.wilpf.org

The Israeli prime minister in a live speech has just said that they are fighting the enemies of peace of Lebanon. I see. So those children that have been incinerated in Lebanon by Israeli bombing must have been enemies of peace. I will try to inform their parents.

As'ad'Abukhalil
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/