Tens of thousands of Palestinian students living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip began their new school year on Saturday after a miserable summer holiday owing to bloody infighting between Hamas and rival Fatah in June.
But in the Fatah-controlled West Bank, students unexpectedly had their summer holiday extended for anther day since their teachers were staging a Saturday strike.
In the morning, Tawfiq Abdel Rahman, a 14-year-old Palestinian student based in Gaza City, woke up early as usual.
Abdel Rahman had been used to waking up early every day, even in the summer holiday, during which he went fishing with his pals on the shores of the coastal Gaza Strip. Tawfiq sold the fish to help support his family.
Wearing in a blue long-sleeved shirt, dark blue trousers and black shoes, instead of short colorful cloths in the summer, Abdel Rahman was heading for school, which was run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in Beit Lahiya town.
"The vacation was not joyful for most children this year due to the circumstances that Gaza had gone through," Tawfiq told Xinhua.
Hamas and rival Fatah militants fought a bitter internal war in the Strip in June, leaving over 100 people dead, which prompted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the Hamas-led government and appoint a new one in the West Bank city Ramallah.
As a result, the geographically-divided Palestinian territories has been politically split into two parts with two government.
But Tawfiq said he enjoyed his own three-month holiday by going to fish in the sea and selling what he had caught. "This helped me overcome the financial situation by saving some money to buy the school stuff," he said.
Tawfiq father, who has five children, has been unemployed for three years as the economy in the Gaza Strip has been getting closer and closer to a total collapse due to a financial siege by Israel and major Western donors.
In early 2006 when Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections and came onto power, the U.S. and EU cut off financial aid to the Palestinians. In June when Hamas took control of the Strip, Western donors decided to resume aid to the Palestinian caretaker government based in Ramallah while the sacked Hamas-led government based in Gaza was still left in the cold.
This year, schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip, totalling about 250,000, will attend six days of school every week, which will be different from that of 2006. Last year, the Hamas-led government introduced a five-day week, setting both Friday and Saturday as vacation days.
But on Friday, deposed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haneya announced in Gaza that his government would limit the vacation day to Friday only. Haneya also said his government would hire another 500 teachers and pay them 2,000 Israeli Shekels (about 466 U.S. dollars) every month.
Teachers in the Gaza Strip accepted Hamas' decision, which ensured a smooth opening of the new school year. But in the West Bank, teachers said they would strike each Saturday to protest a similar decision by the Ramallah-based government, which also stipulated that Friday was the only day off for teachers.
The strike gave the Palestinian schoolchildren in the West Bank, totalling around 760,000, an extra day of vacation.
Students and teachers in both the Gaza Strip and West Bank fear that the political crisis on the Palestinian territories, where people have traditionally valued highly of education, would affect the schools again.
"The student will certainly be the victim of any new confrontation between the two governments," said Ahed Samir, a secondary school learner.
He explained that some teachers would abide by Hamas decisions while others might stick to orders from Ramallah. "It will be really confusing," he said.
Yet for the Palestinians, especially those living in the Hamas- ruled Gaza Strip, their worries included not only the political crisis, but also the unabated economic crisis.
Hamdiya Nassar, 37, wife of a jobless Gaza worker, found that she needed at least 2,000 Shekels to buy new school stuff for her five children. So she had no choice but to sell her wedding gold to solve the problem.
"My husband has been unemployed since the uprising started (in 2000); I have asked him to sell my wedding gold to help alleviate our deteriorated situation, but he always refused. But now I think we have to," Hamdiya, bitterly smiling.
Like thousands of Gazans, Hamdiya's husband, 45-year-old Abu Muhammed Nassar, used to work as a construction worker in Israel and earned thousands of Shekels every month.
But since the second uprising started in 2000, he lost
Source: Xinhua
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