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UN: Thousands of children without school in Israeli-blockaded Gaza
The United Nations refugee agency in Gaza Strip has not built any schools in the past three years because the Israeli blockade prevented the importation of construction materials, a UN official said Thursday.
As a consequence, tens of thousands of Palestinian children have had no opportunity to attend school, said John Ging, the director of the UN refugee work agency operation in the territory. He said there are about 50,000 new born Palestinians a year in the Gaza's 1.5- million population.
The Israeli blockade of Gaza, which began in 2006, tightened during and after the Hamas-Israel conflict in the winter of 2009. In response to repeated UN demands, Israel relaxed the blockade last year with some crossings into Gaza opened for trucks carrying mostly humanitarian and medical supplies.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called the limited number of trucks entering Gaza a 'drop in a bucket.' Ging said the description was correct because of the constant huge scale of needs by the Palestinian population, whose living conditions remained dire.