UN: Gaza students lack textbooks due to border crossing closures - Haaretz

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Wed., September 05, 2007 Elul 22, 5767

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		Palestinian Hamas supporters chanting slogans during a rally calling for the re-opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in southern Gaza Saturday. (AP)

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Last update - 06:44 04/09/2007

UN: Gaza students lack textbooks due to border crossing closures

By The Associated Press

Three days into the new school year, Gaza students have to make do without 30 percent of their new academic textbooks because of the closure of commercial crossings, a UN official said Monday.

John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency, said restrictions on importing raw materials into the territory have held up paper, ink, and binding materials.

Israel and Egypt closed their crossings with Gaza to all but humanitarian aid after the Islamic militant Hamas seized power in June. The closures have exacerbated poverty among the 1.4 million residents of the territory.

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About 200,000 students attend UNRWA schools in Gaza, almost half of the student population in the overcrowded strip. The official WAFA news agency quoted an Education Ministry official as saying that 27 percent of government school textbooks have also not been printed yet.

Last year was the first for a fully Palestinian curriculum, replacing the Egyptian school lineup, and most of the textbooks were printed in Gaza.

"Food can come in easily. Anything other than food and medicine require a lot of extra coordination," Ging said.

Ging said his agency is struggling to keep education from collapsing in Gaza. A recent normative testing survey conducted in UNRWA schools showed failure rating in mathematics test ranging between 66 percent and 90 percent.

School has been disrupted often in the last 18 months because of Israeli military operations, including an attack on the power plant serving almost 50 percent of the population, and internal fighting that left hundreds of Palestinians dead.

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1.	Education is paramount	06:53	\|	* BEN JABO	04/09/07

2.	Deliver Them By Rocket	06:55	\|	Mr.Von Braun	04/09/07

3.	to bad they choose rockets over food education statehood	07:31	\|	ralph	04/09/07

4.	they chose rockets over books now comes the consequence stupid un	07:32	\|	ralph	04/09/07

5.	No schoolbooks needed: these children are cannon fodder	07:33	\|	Wolf	04/09/07

6.	What education?	07:42	\|	Hen	04/09/07

7.	Crying for them - not	08:08	\|	Tricia	04/09/07

8.	Stupid UN	08:13	\|	S	04/09/07

9.	Where is the UN concern for the students of Sderot?!!!	08:33	\|	Sallyz	04/09/07

10.	textbooks are full of incitement, so this is good	08:40	\|	matt	04/09/07

11.	Supporters of Israel or pawns of Hamas?	08:45	\|	Natallie Durson	04/09/07

12.	Their text books contain lies anyway, who needs them?	08:52	\|	Aaron	04/09/07

13.	UN = 0	09:02	\|	isaac	04/09/07

14.	BOOKS	09:06	\|	KNOE	04/09/07

15.	SDEROT students lack classrooms in bombed schools& kindergartens.	10:00	\|	PETERSM	04/09/07

16.	The IDF will just kill them anyway	11:18	\|	H50	04/09/07

17.	Israel helping to build up broad support for Hamas	11:31	\|	Ben Alofs	04/09/07

18.	Sure, Sallyz	17:18	\|	Murray	04/09/07

19.	television murder mouse is not enough?	17:27	\|	frenz	04/09/07

20.	What is more important to Gazans, books or guns?	08:11	\|	Nurit	05/09/07

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