GAZA CITY - Summer has arrived, school's out, and on the carpeted floor of a Gaza City mosque Ala al-Ramalawi is reciting the Koran to a group of 12-year-old girls in colourful veils.
For most of Gaza's children summer camp still means swimming, horseback riding and campfire songs.
But the number of children attending religious camps has soared in the two years since the Israeli siege tightened on Gaza, and after the recent Israeli war that destroyed the Strip.
There are of course many who attend both, as the two types of camps compliment - not contradict - one another.
But as a result of the Israel blockade and recent war, many areas of along Gaza’s 42-km-long coastline are too polluted for swimming and the World Health Organization warned residence to avoid them, because of diarrhoeal diseases or skin diseases threats.
Gaza’s environment authority warned that at least 10 percent of Gaza’s total beach area is too polluted for swimming or fishing.
Faced with death and starvation caused by the Israel blockade and war, there is a growing religious awareness among the enclave's impoverished residents.
"There is no way for us but learning ... The enemy wants to condemn us to a siege and shelling and poverty," says Ramalawi, 16, who prides herself on having memorised the Koran. She is not a member of Hamas.
Anwar Nassar, the director of the Koran camps, says Hamas supporters make up at most 60 percent of the youth who attend the camps, but that the total number of attendees has soared since two years ago.
Since democratically elected Hamas took over Gaza on June 15, 2007 in response to a planned US-backed coup against the Palestinian democracy, Israel and US-pressured Egypt have sealed Gaza off to all but limited humanitarian aid, crippling the local economy, fueling massive unemployment, and stalling reconstruction efforts.
Israel has insisted that the blockade is necessary to prevent Hamas - a resistance movement - from arming itself, but Gaza had been under siege before that and it is still considered under Israeli occupation.
Many critics in the Arab world call the siege 'satanic' because of its inhuman nature and indiscriminate affect.
Human rights groups have slammed the restrictions as collective punishment of the overcrowded territory of 1.5 million people, where the vast majority of the population depends on foreign aid.
The lack of most building materials has meant that Gaza has recovered little from the devastating three-week Israeli offensive at the turn of the year that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians - mainly civilians, with a high toll of women and children.
"The stronger the siege gets and the more frustration there is, the more it pushes the youth towards religiosity and Koranic studies," Nassar said.
More than 20,000 youth between the ages of 12 and 20 will attend the two-month-long religious summer camps this year, up from just 3,000 the year before, he said.
Another 100,000 are attending camps that are purely recreational, according to Ayman Dalul, the director of the "Victory of Gaza for Jerusalem" camp.
"We will teach the participants arts, swimming, riding horses and history. There are other camps especially for scouts, technology and computers," he says.
"Teaching the Koran is part of the religion," said Sheikh Hamza, a 22-year-old teacher, one of 1,200.
"These are the generations that the movement will rely on for steadfastness and confronting enemies," he added.
Such activities, which date back to the movement's founding in the 1980s, have helped it to build up grass-roots political support because of the religious conservatism in Gaza.
Umm Mohammed proudly sends her three daughters to a Koranic camp held on the second floor of a mosque near her house.
"Every path is blocked," she says. "Everything brings frustration. We have to be stronger."
Churches urge 'resistance' to Israeli settlements