GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The parents of many students of Al-Razi Primary School for Girls in Rafah province were surprised on the first day of school on Aug. 28 to see that their daughters' names were missing from the school’s enrollment lists. The director of the school, which is affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, suggested they go to the UNRWA-affiliated Rafah Elementary “C” Boys School to see if they had been transferred there. They found the students registered at the boys' school, where each class had grown to include around 30 boys and between five and 10 girls.

Later that day, the parents staged a sit-in at the school to protest the decision to move the girls without their knowledge and to the mixing of the genders.

Adding insult to injury, the school's administration could not give clear reasons why some female students were transferred to an all-boys school, saying only that it's trying to end the double-shift system currently operating in 94% of UNRWA schools for refugees. The same building in Rafah accommodates two schools — al-Razi primary school and Rafah elementary school — operating on double shifts: one full school day in the morning and another for different students in the evening.

The father of one of the 250 students who were transferred, Abdel Menhem Zaareb, told Al-Monitor, “I registered my daughter in first grade in 2015 at Al-Razi Primary School for Girls, and I did not see this coming. Students are normally promoted to the next class in the same school.”