Palestinian children sit in a classroom at a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, on the first day of a new school year, in the southern Gaza Strip City of Rafah, on Aug. 29, 2018. (Xinhua/Khaled Omar)
RAMALLAH, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) started on Wednesday the new school year for more than 300,000 students at the primary and middle school levels in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, amid a tight financial crisis.
At the opening ceremony for the new school year at Al-Jalazon refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner general of UNRWA, said the school year starting on time represents "a message of hope that the UNRWA stands for."
"We are very determined to keep the schools open. I told the students they should focus and concentrate on their studies and we will concentrate on getting the money to ensure that they continue their studies," said Krahenbuhl, referring to the current funding shortage of the UN refugee agency.
Schools in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will start as planned early next week, he added.
The UNRWA has over 700 schools serving almost 525,000 children and offers healthcare for some 3.5 million refugees through a network of 150 clinics.
In addition, the agency's food and cash assistance program offers some 1.7 million U.S. dollars to the extremely vulnerable refugees.
However, the United States cut down its contribution to the UNRWA from 125 million dollars to 65 million dollars at the beginning of the year.
Hussein Elayyan, deputy head of the Al-Jalazon Refugee Camp Popular Committee, told Xinhua that education is what Palestinian refugees value most as part of the struggle against displacement that started 70 years ago.
"As refugees, we have nothing but education, and so we are determined on our education ... Our main gain is the education of our children so that they are at least educated and not ignorant," said Elayyan.
Meanwhile, he urged donor countries to step up their contributions, as the UNRWA opened schools this year amid an unprecedented 200-million-dollar deficit.