"I wish I could enjoy recess", says student Reem, a ninth-grader at an UNRWA school in Jordan. "But the school yard; it’s so small."

AMMONNEWS - Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit on Sunday pledged Jordan's continued support of UNRWA to help the United Nations agency carry out its programmes to Palestinian refugees in the Kingdom in a manner to reflect positively on their condition.

“I heard about UNRWA loans from my neighbour. She told me that I can take a loan to start my own business”, explains Amneh Abu Salim. Amneh, better known as Um Hussein, is a 60 year old mother of 12 living in Baqa’a camp in Jordan. The advice given by her neighbour was life-changing; a loan from UNRWA has helped Em Hussein to build a business of her own.

Palestinians in Jordan constitute both the majority of the kingdom's population, and the largest Palestinian refugee community in the world. In the 1960s, Jordan was the main area of operation for militant Palestinian factions who used it as both a recruiting and training ground for guerrillas, as well as a launching ground for most commando operations into occupied Palestine. After the 1967 war, the largest of these factions joined the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which grew so strong within the kingdom that it was described as a state within the state. The Jordanian regime and its military launched an 11-day war against the PLO in September of 1970, expelling the fighters from the kingdom's urban centers, and dealt a final blow to the Palestinian resistance in July 1971, expelling the fighters that remained to Lebanon and Syria.