GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Rent is accumulating for the family of Asmaa al-Qassar, a Syrian woman who has not been able to find a job ever since she fled the fighting in Syria to the Gaza Strip in September 2011 with her Palestinian husband and two children. Qassar, who lives in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, fears she will not be able to pay her rent, which is 550 shekels ($145) per month, and the electricity and water bills that add up to about 100 shekels ($26) per month.

Qassar, who has a diploma in math, told Al-Monitor that she has been looking for a teaching job in private schools and preschools ever since she arrived in Gaza, to no avail. She feels that she has reached a dead end and decided to save up as much as she could from the salary of her husband — who found a job as a photo editor at a local agency three months after they arrived in Gaza — which amounts to $400 a month.

“When I came to Gaza, I lived in an apartment in the Bureij refugee camp, where rent is cheaper than in Gaza City and its suburbs. We struggled to replace some of our furniture and clothes that we had lost in our Syrian home in Jdeidet Artouz, in Rif Dimashq,” she said.

Qassar was denied the three-month employment opportunity provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), while her husband was granted the permit a year after their arrival in Gaza. According to UNRWA’s regulations, only one member of a single family is allowed a temporary job, so long as the family member is registered as a refugee.