GAZA, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Abdullah Abu Jamea, a 23-year-old Palestinian young man, works as a barber trying to escape the reality of the high unemployment rates in the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged by Israel since 2007.
Abu Jamea, who graduated from the Faculty of Nursing, was pushed to work as a barber and use tools that are quite different from what he had dreamed of for years, due to lack of job opportunities in the Gaza Strip.
Abu Jamea told Xinhua that for years he had been looking forward to working in the medical field and wearing white nursing uniforms, which encouraged him to study hard and got the highest grades.
He added that tens of thousands of graduates in the Gaza Strip suffered from the high unemployment rates, which pushed him to look for alternative work.
"I do not want to surrender to the unemployment reality, so I work in a career that is different from my field of study to earn money and get a decent life," he said, adding that his family had long worked to support him to graduate from university.
Abu Jamea has gained good experience after working as a barber for a year. But he still hopes that it will not take long to become a nurse and wear a nursing gown.
For years, many graduates in Gaza have been forced to look for jobs that will help them to continue their lives, even if their new jobs are far from their field of studying.
Jamil al-Sayyed, 36, graduated in 2005 from the public relations department, but was forced to work at a local cafe in Gaza for eight years.
The lack of job opportunities pushed him to accept his current work as a waiter, preparing the juice for his customers.
"Finding a job in the Gaza Strip looks like a miracle, especially if this opportunity is related to the field of university study," al-Sayyed told Xinhua.
"I am working in a field with no relation to my studying at the university. I am sad for this situation, especially when I am thinking about long years of effort without any result," he said to Xinhua.
Al-Sayyed is the head of a family of five. He considers that obtaining living expenses is more important than having a university degree that has only become a framed photograph kept at home.
Israel has imposed a tight siege on the Gaza Strip since 2007 after the Hamas movement ruled the strip by force after rounds of fighting with forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority.
The Gaza Strip suffers from continued internal Palestinian division. Such situation casts a shadow over the economic and living conditions in the strip.
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said that unemployment rate in the West Bank has slightly decreased compared with a noticeable increase in Gaza Strip.
The bureau said in a statement that "unemployment rate in Palestine increased in 2018 to reach about 31 percent of the labor force participants compared with about 28 percent in 2017." It said that the number of unemployed individuals increased from 377,000 in 2017 to 426,000 in 2018.
The statement specified that the unemployment rate was about 18 percent in the West Bank in 2018 compared with about 19 percent in 2017, while the unemployment rate was about 52 percent in the Gaza Strip in 2018 compared with 44 percent in 2017.
"The youth graduates are the most subgroup suffering from unemployment with a rate of about 44 percent; 27 percent in the West Bank and 69 percent in the Gaza Strip," said the statement.
Maher al-Tabbaa, a media official at the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce in Gaza, said that "the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip has caused a near total deficit to create any new job opportunities, which leads to a rise in record unemployment rates."
Al-Tabaa said that the private sector in Gaza has for years been unable to generate any new job opportunities because of the economic downturn. "There are no new jobs in the public sector in light of the continued division and the failure of reconciliation," he said to Xinhua.
Al-Tabaa considers unemployment rates in the Gaza Strip as the highest in the world due to its geographic size and population, which is likely to worsen if the Israeli siege and internal Palestinian division continue.
Jamal al-Khudari, an independent lawmaker and chairman of the committee to defy the Israeli siege, warned that the economic and living conditions in Gaza are getting worse in light of the continued Israeli siege and the absence of realistic practical solutions to the disastrous humanitarian situation of two million people in the Gaza Strip.
Al-Khudari said that the labor sector and graduates are the most important sectors affected by the Israeli siege, which requires urgent Palestinian and international efforts to avoid the effects of the serious situation.
He added that about 90 percent of the factories and shops in the Gaza Strip suffer from heavy financial losses due to the siege, which made them partially reduce their work or shut down completely.
He called on Arab and international labor unions to form an international fund to support workers and graduates in the Gaza Strip.
