Omid Memarian, a journalist, analyst and recipient of Human Rights Watch's Human Rights Defender Award, is the Director of Communications at DAWN.
"Our humanity is not the same since this war started," says Juliette Touma, the director of communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, otherwise known as UNRWA. In an interview with Democracy in Exile, Touma discusses the staggering humanitarian toll from Israel's war in Gaza, where famine is now spreading, and the urgent need for international action. "Words and terminology and legal terms do not feed hungry children," she says. Palestinians in Gaza have "gone through what no human being should go through."
Touma also describes the costs of the campaign to discredit and defund UNRWA led by Israel and the United States after the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, which culminated in a new law passed by Israel's parliament in early 2025 that formally bans the agency from operating on Israeli territory. "The agency has been under an unprecedented attack, and what's behind it is plans to strip Palestinian refugees of their refugee status," she says.
Established in 1949 by the U.N. General Assembly to aid Palestinian refugees who had just been forcibly displaced by Israel's creation in 1948, the U.N. agency provides humanitarian and human development services to some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. "The question is, in the absence of UNRWA, who would provide those services?" Touma asks. "What would be the alternative, for example, over the decades to hundreds of thousands of children who went to United Nations schools run by UNRWA? What would be the fate of those people? What would be the fate of these children?"
Before the war, UNRWA operated 183 schools throughout Gaza, for nearly 300,000 students. They were forced to close and become makeshift shelters when the war began. Most of the buildings have since been bombed. More than 370 UNRWA workers have been killed in Gaza, the highest death toll for aid workers in a single conflict in U.N. history.
"There's no such thing as a humanitarian zone in Gaza because no place is safe in Gaza," Touma says. "No one is safe. No one has been spared. Nothing has been spared—not hospitals, not schools, not people's homes, not markets, not shelters for the displaced." The longer the war drags on, she adds, "the more people are suffering totally unnecessarily and the closer we inch towards losing our collective humanity."
The following transcript has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
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UNRWA's commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, recently described Gaza's famine as "man-made," adding, "months of warnings have fallen on deaf ears." From your vantage point, how has UNRWA's assessment of famine risks changed over the past six months, and what are the most significant obstacles now to preventing famine from becoming irreversible in Gaza?
He is absolutely right. UNRWA has been warning about the risks of famine for months on end. If you recall, towards the end of last year, we were very, very close to confirming famine in some parts of the Gaza Strip, but there was the ceasefire which allowed us to bring in lots and lots of basic supplies, including food. That's why famine was delayed a little bit. For the past six months, UNRWA has been banned by the Israeli authorities from bringing to Gaza any supplies, including food, but also medicines and hygiene kits and other basics for the communities that we're serving.
At what point does the U.N. decide to declare a famine officially? Some observers say that for the past six months, or even longer, the conditions in Gaza already met that threshold. Was there a delay in making the declaration, or was it a matter of following specific criteria and assessments before confirming that this is indeed a famine? Can you explain how you reached this point?
There is a panel of technical experts that UNRWA is actually not part of, from other U.N. agencies, and they have a very strict methodology according to which they confirm or not famine and hence why they took their time.
It has to do, in short, with the number of children under the age of five, as one indicator, dying of malnutrition; with the number of meals that people are able to have in one day; accessibility of food; food prices and such. It is quite a strict methodology, and famine was confirmed in Gaza City just a few weeks ago. We know from our own colleagues that they've been going hungry for weeks on end, and that it's very, very difficult to find food in most parts of the Gaza Strip, especially in Gaza City. Just before the confirmation of famine, we had colleagues who worked as humanitarian workers for UNRWA fainting while they were in the line of duty because of exhaustion, dehydration and hunger.
Can you describe what it means for people in Gaza, especially children, the elderly and people with disabilities, to go without food for weeks? Even if aid arrives tomorrow, what irreversible damage has already been done and what has been the cost of famine in recent months?
I wish I had the words that could do any justice to what the Palestinian people in Gaza have been going through for nearly two years now. I don't know how they do it. When you pause for a minute and think about it, it's the love of life that drives them and that keeps them going. They've gone through what no human being should go through. There have been many attempts to describe the situation—hell on earth, a graveyard for children, the graveyard for international humanitarian law. There have been all these debates about whether to call what's happening in Gaza a genocide or not.
It's beyond that. It's way beyond that. It's time to turn words into action and stay away from being distracted by terminology because as we speak, you and I now, there's another child who just got killed or another older person who just died because of malnutrition or lack of access to health care. Words and terminology and legal terms do not feed hungry children.
There's a lot of information, and misinformation, about Gaza. When you follow the news, what do you think is missing about the severity of the situation? Many say what we see barely scratches the surface of the pain and suffering people are going through.
I've been to Gaza myself during the war and so I was able to see it firsthand. There is not only misinformation when it comes to Gaza, there's also disinformation—the deliberate spread of false information to distract and to confuse. That's something that we at UNRWA have been privy to and [we have] also been subjected to as an agency and as individuals working with the agency. It is quite harmful. The great work that the Palestinian journalists who are in Gaza continue to do at a very, very heavy price is absolutely remarkable and admirable. The ban on international media from reporting independently in the Gaza Strip is absolutely obscene. It's more than 700 days of war, two years where no international journalist has been allowed in to report independently on what is happening in Gaza. It's a combination of factors that make the Gaza Strip and make the war in the Gaza Strip a very, very different and unique war in comparison to other conflicts and crises in recent history.
Gaza is not just about the Palestinian people. Gaza is about our collective humanity. Every red line of international humanitarian law has been crossed, and that must stop.
- Juliette Touma
The U.N. and UNRWA have repeatedly mentioned that aid convoys are blocked or delays are extreme. For example, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported that Israeli visa renewals for U.N. officials have been shortened or denied, including for UNRWA's leadership. Can you walk us through specific instances in recent weeks where aid delivery was obstructed and what those obstacles mean for life on the ground?
When it comes to visas for international colleagues working for UNRWA, we've had several incidents. It started with our commissioner-general, Philippe Lazzarini, who was denied entry to the Gaza Strip already in March 2024 and has been banned since from going to Gaza. Later on, Israeli authorities stopped renewing his visa to go to occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. Then, gradually, the international colleagues stopped getting visas. When the Knesset bill came into place in January, we don't receive any visas anymore. We rely only on our Palestinian colleagues who work across the occupied Palestinian territories.
That's also another piece of disinformation—that UNRWA shut down. We've never shut down, not for one day. We continue to provide services. Our schools in the occupied West Bank have just reopened after the summer break. The clinics in Gaza provide 15,000 health consultations, including at mobile health points that our teams have set up. We continue to work with children on psychological support. We have shelters in Gaza that have in them over 100,00 people. Our teams have not stopped for one day, and they also are a model of humanitarian work and humanitarian service.
In general, there have been restrictions on UNRWA's access. Supplies have been stranded in places like Jordan and Egypt. The Israelis have not allowed us to bring in quite a lot of food and lots of medicines and hygiene supplies and other basic material. This is happening under the world's watch, and despite the fact that there is famine. That's what we mean when we say this could have been prevented, if UNRWA and the rest of the U.N. were allowed to work. But this could still be averted or slowed down because now the big concern is that famine will spread from Gaza City to other parts of the Gaza Strip.
You touched on what you have been doing over the past two years. But many people might not know that UNRWA was the largest provider of humanitarian aid in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before October 7, 2023. What was UNRWA doing in Gaza and the West Bank before October 7? How many staff did it have?
I was based in occupied East Jerusalem for one year before the war and that allowed me to travel across the West Bank and across the Gaza Strip. We had schools in the Gaza Strip, United Nations schools run by UNRWA, where more than 300,000 girls and boys went every morning to get their education. We also had just over 20 clinics and provided health care to the communities. We also gave food assistance to the poorest in Gaza. In the West Bank, we continue to run schools and health clinics to provide primary health care. In total, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the agency has just over 17,000 employees, the vast majority of them teachers. Many of our teachers in Gaza have become frontline humanitarian workers, taking on those jobs. They had to switch gears because sadly the schools have been closed since the war started and they're now working in the humanitarian response.
To explain how we got here, can you tell us how and why UNRWA came into existence and how its mandate differs from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR? How has UNRWA's role evolved since 1948?
It's an agency that was established by the United Nations General Assembly towards the end of 1949 and started operating in the early 1950s in five areas. We work in Jordan, in Syria, in Lebanon and in the occupied Palestinian territories that includes the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The mandate that was given to UNRWA was to provide human development services—to provide education to children, to provide primary health care, to provide emergency assistance to Palestinian refugees who are registered with the U.N. That's the role of UNRWA.
Over the course of the past seven-plus decades, the agency has been known for stepping up its emergency response, like we are doing right now in Gaza. Every time there is a conflict or a crisis in the region where we serve, we would change gears and provide humanitarian services, including shelters. Our schools would open to have those displaced come and stay. This is not unique to Gaza. I was in Lebanon, for example, during the recent war, and there we also use the same model. We open our schools for families who are displaced.
It's the only United Nations agency that does direct service delivery. In other words, no other United Nations agency runs United Nations schools or clinics. And that is very special. This is why we provide direct services from the refugees to the refugees in those communities where we work. The agency also does not have a mandate for what we call durable solutions. Unlike UNHCR, to your question, the agency is not mandated to find durable solutions, including a right of return or resettlement. This is not on the agency's mandate. Quite often over the past years, the two got mixed together. UNRWA has been misperceived as the agency that would do durable solutions and would be responsible for the right of return and that is grossly inaccurate. It's an agency that is solely mandated to provide human development services to the communities of Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA Director of Communications, Juliette Touma speaks to displaced people during her visit to the Gaza Strip in January 2024.
Source: © 2024 UNRWA Photo
In June, Lazzarini warned of a serious cash flow crisis that could force him to make an "unprecedented decision" about UNRWA services if funding is not secured. How has that financial picture shifted, especially with the famine crisis escalating? What current services are most at risk if funding does not arrive?
The financial crisis of this agency is endemic. It's always been one of the key areas that the agency has struggled with—the lack of predictable funding and multi-year funding from member states and donor countries. That has always been a challenge for the agency to plan ahead or have a bit of a forecast.
The financial crisis only gets worse. We go from hand to mouth. Why we say the services are at risk is simply because the services are given by UNRWA employees and we have to pay those employees. The core budget for this agency is to pay those doctors and nurses and drivers and teachers and engineers and logisticians and those who are on the humanitarian front line. If we don't get the funding beyond September—because that's where we know we have funding, until the end of this month—then these services, not only in a place like Gaza but in other parts of the region, are at a serious risk. We need this boost of our funding that would allow us to continue until the end of the year and beyond so that we keep those schools open in Syria, in Lebanon, in Jordan, in the West Bank.
UNRWA has been under attack since well before October 7, 2023. Critics of UNRWA, Israeli and others, claim that UNRWA's mandate is problematic, that it prevents Palestinian refugees from resettling, or uses an incorrect and unique definition of who is a Palestinian refugee. They claim UNRWA prolongs the conflict and therefore needs to be dissolved. Could you explain some of these criticisms and address them?
What has prolonged the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is the lack of a diplomatic solution for nearly 80 years now. That's what has prolonged the conflict—the failure of the international community to finally reach a diplomatic solution that would bring peace and stability to these two people.
UNRWA provides human development services, and the question is, in the absence of UNRWA, who would provide those services? What would be the alternative, for example, over the decades to hundreds of thousands of children who went to United Nations schools run by UNRWA? What would be the fate of those people? What would be the fate of these children? In fact, the world owes UNRWA for doing the job that no one else wants to do. Until there is a just solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees, this agency must be supported to continue. Meanwhile, instead of tit-for-tats and accusations, the focus must be on finally finding a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
What is your view on the goal of those who want UNRWA dissolved?
You're absolutely right in saying that the agency has been under attack before the war started. But I've got to say, having been with this agency only for three years—a year before the war and two years during—the level of attack on the agency is beyond comprehension and incompatible with previous years. It ranges from the death toll that we have among our colleagues, close to 370 UNRWA colleagues have been killed in Gaza alone. We've had colleagues arrested. We continue to have colleagues arrested since the war began—over 50 [have been arrested]. Some of them have been released, and they told us just harrowing stories about what they've endured while they were in detention in Israel. The attacks on the agency's buildings—for example, almost every school that UNRWA has in Gaza, about 200 of those have been hit.
Then it goes to the disinformation campaigns using digital platforms and big tech avenues. Then there is a number of legal lawsuits against the agency and against some individuals in the agency and leading all the way to the ban on the agency that was finally passed in October of last year in the Israeli parliament.
So yes, the agency has been under an unprecedented attack, and what's behind it is plans to strip Palestinian refugees of their refugee status. Now, what we keep saying to everyone who's attempting to cancel this agency is, look, if you cancel UNWRA, if UNWRA shuts down tomorrow, the only thing that will happen is that you're depriving millions of people of services, basic human development services. The status of the refugees will remain because that is in a completely different General Assembly resolution that in fact predates the creation of the agency. The issue of Palestine refugees is one of the big picture, final status issues that were going to be discussed should political negotiations take place, in addition to other issues like East Jerusalem borders, resources and such.
There's not only misinformation when it comes to Gaza, there's also disinformation—the deliberate spread of false information to distract and confuse. For more than 700 days of war, no international journalist has been allowed in to report independently. That ban is absolutely obscene.
- Juliette Touma
There have been claims by Israel and others that UNRWA staff participated in the Hamas attacks on October 7, accusations which UNRWA says are part of a disinformation campaign, as you mentioned. Can you address how UNRWA investigates such allegations, what evidence has been disclosed, and how misinformation or disinformation has impacted UNRWA's operations, funding and public legitimacy?
These were allegations, and they remain allegations that have never been substantiated. When the allegations came our way—and there were several allegations, but to your question about the alleged participation of UNRWA colleagues in the October 7 attacks—we took action swiftly. The United Nations, in fact, through the Office of the Secretary-General, launched an investigation. Their investigation was never conclusive, meaning that those claims were never substantiated or proven with regards to the alleged participation of colleagues in the attack.
Allegations continue to come our way. We continue to ask the Israeli authorities for more information to substantiate these claims, and we would not hear back from the Israeli government. In fact, just recently, a few months ago, Commissioner-General Lazzarini wrote to the foreign minister of Israel asking exactly that—substantiating these claims that have been coming our way, that put the lives of our colleagues in a place like the Gaza Strip at risk. Given those claims have not been substantiated, they remain as such.
Now, to the damage that this has had on the agency or funding, the reputation of the agency has been tarnished because these allegations have not been substantiated. When these allegations "came through"—even without the investigation being concluded—within 48 hours, we had 16 countries, including our largest donors, deciding to suspend funding to the agency. Most of them have come back, apart from the United States, which is quite unfortunate because the United States used to provide to the agency half of our core budget every year and, apart from the time of the first administration of President Trump, has been historically the largest donor to the agency.
Meanwhile, it's not all doom and gloom. Despite these allegations, despite the disinformation and misinformation, despite the ongoing spread of accusations against our colleagues, against the agency, we have huge, huge solidarity from around the world, including individuals, and that translates into generosity. Since the war began, the agency has received around a quarter of a billion dollars from individuals around the world who have generously supported it. In fact, we see a bit of a rift between what the public has done and what governments have done. This is an agency that needs every solidarity. Much more work must be done by international journalists on verifying accusations rather than just repeating accusations.
You mentioned that many countries initially suspended or cut funding to UNRWA but have since resumed. What led them to return? Were they convinced the allegations were unfounded, or was it more about political pressure?
We've taken two immediate actions. One is the investigation that looked in particular at the allegations with regards to October 7. In parallel to that, we've also run an independent review that was chaired by the former foreign minister of France, Catherine Colonna, with a group of experts who looked at the neutrality of the personnel and the programs of the agency. According to that review, the agency has the most robust systems in place when it comes to adherence to the humanitarian principle of neutrality.
I think that played a critical role in having most of the countries who have suspended assistance and funding to come back. In addition to that, we've seen a number of countries who have stepped up—either countries who have been historically smaller donors to the agency giving much, much more than what they used to, or traditional donors to the agency who have been very, very generous, even doubling their assistance. We had new donors coming in, countries from the Global South, countries from this region like Algeria, like Iraq. This is how we managed to get through.
It's very unfortunate that the agency and the people that we serve, more importantly, do not have the very generous funding that we used to get from the United States. The decision of the United States was based on allegations that have never been substantiated. Despite that, the United States chose not to refund the agency. With no funding from the United States, our job has become even more difficult.
How does UNWRA assess the safety and viability of areas declared by Israeli military forces in Gaza as "humanitarian zones," like Mawasi, and what responsibility does UNRWA believe Israel has to ensure Palestinian civilians are protected when relocation is ordered?
First of all, there's no such thing as a humanitarian zone in Gaza because no place is safe in Gaza. No one is safe. No one has been spared. Nothing has been spared—not hospitals, not schools, not people's homes, not markets, not shelters for the displaced. This "humanitarian zone" story is—we sometimes forget, I think, because of the intensity of this war—it's not a new one. It didn't come out just this week because of additional forced displacement orders that the Israeli authorities have issued. It's been something that the Israelis have been claiming that exists since the beginning of the war. One party to the conflict cannot declare a humanitarian zone as such. You need a consensus from all parties to the conflict. In the context of Gaza, we don't have that.
When the Israelis continue to claim that there is a humanitarian zone, they would bomb that humanitarian zone. Like we've seen on several occasions in the al-Mawasi area with a huge toll on the population and a very high number of civilian casualties. People have been treated as pinballs with these forced displacement orders. We've interviewed people who've told us—including our own colleagues, by the way—that they've been displaced 14 times since the war began. Basically, people just are on the run constantly. Areas have become very, very overcrowded. In the beginning of the war, when the initial forced displacement order was issued by the Israeli authorities that impacted one million people for northern Gaza and Gaza City, people flocked down to the middle areas and to the south, especially to Rafah. They were boxed into the lowest part of the triangle in Rafah.
Now, Rafah is all bombed out. I had a colleague of ours who drove through Rafah to get out of Gaza, and she said to me that Rafah looks like scenes from Hiroshima. Where will people go? If Rafah is completely bombed out, it's probably littered with unexploded ordnance, given the heavy military operation that that area has endured. Where will people go?
What trends are you seeing in terms of education interruption, mental health among children and prospects of recovery once the emergency phase ends? And what is UNRWA doing to mitigate long-term trauma, loss of skills, opportunities and education?
The level of trauma among the people of Gaza is very hard to speak to. I can't even imagine the level of trauma. And despite that, people continue to go on. For example, our colleagues, despite the shock, despite the trauma, despite the grief, because they've all lost loved ones and friends and family members, they keep going and they keep doing what they're doing, which is serving their communities. But the level of trauma must be very, very, very deep. Now, it's not just among children. It is safe to say that every single person who is a resident of Gaza is traumatized. Our own colleagues, those who spend time in Gaza who are not from Gaza, are also traumatized. Several of us who have served with the United Nations in conflict zones and wars in the past know that what is happening in Gaza is extremely different than any other war I've certainly worked in or on, including places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya.
"If UNRWA shuts down tomorrow, the only thing that will happen is that millions of people will be deprived of basic services. The status of refugees will remain, because that is enshrined in U.N. resolutions. What we keep saying is: until there is a just solution, this agency must be supported to continue."
– Juliette Touma
The level of trauma is very, very high, and children are always the first and the most to suffer. And for that, we are working with children on psychological activities that help children just go day by day to endure—to reconnect a little bit with the fact that they are children. Childhood in Gaza is an absolute risk for many, many, many children. They've grown up decades in the past two years. Too many of them have been killed, way, way, way too many. One child is too many. Imagine here, we're talking about maybe 20,000 kids who have been killed since the war began.
Those who survived, and many of them have, are all traumatized. Many of them have been severely injured. Some have been disabled for life. They lost limbs. [They lost] school and education. The children of Gaza are at the risk of becoming a lost generation. This is the third school year that the children of Gaza are going to lose. Ninety percent of the schools in Gaza have been damaged. Some of them have been completely destroyed, including UNRWA schools. We know from other conflicts and other settings, the longer that children stay out of school, the higher the risk of them falling prey to exploitation—child marriage, as an example, child labor, recruitment into armed groups. The longer this goes on, the higher the risk for children. The higher the risk, I would say, for neighboring countries to Gaza as well.
Again, a ceasefire is what's needed. It's inevitable. We've been calling for a ceasefire since very early on. It's a win-win beyond just the Israelis and the Palestinians. It's a win-win for the region and beyond that, one could argue. It's time not only for a ceasefire, not only for the release of the hostages who have been held in Gaza for nearly two years, it's time for a flow of humanitarian supplies and commercial supplies so that famine does not spread. It's time for courage, it's time for action, and it's time for a diplomatic and peaceful solution to this century-long conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It's time.
What needs to happen to reach a ceasefire in Gaza?
Political will. It happened before, so there's no reason why it shouldn't happen now. And the longer it's delayed, the more lives are being lost totally unnecessarily. The more people are suffering totally unnecessarily and the closer we inch towards losing our collective humanity. Gaza is not just about the Palestinian people. Gaza is about our collective humanity and about safeguarding values, about safeguarding international humanitarian law, because every red line, including the thick red lines, have been crossed in the context of the Gaza Strip, and that must stop. To do that, the first thing that needs to happen is a ceasefire, and then comes accountability.
How do you see UNRWA's role post-ceasefire, particularly given the ongoing hostility towards UNRWA from the Israeli government?
First of all, there has got to be a ceasefire. It's been two years too long. And there has got to be a solution to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It's absolutely time. And that solution has got to be a just solution.
Now, for the day after, I can't imagine how much is needed to reconstruct a place like Gaza. The level of destruction is absolutely humongous. The world is going to need all the efforts and all hands on deck to rebuild Gaza. For that, you're going to need an organization like UNRWA for the services. So, for example, schools for children. We have very qualified teachers in Gaza. We have a system in place. They can do that work. Same with the health facilities and health clinics through the doctors and nurses. Now, what Gaza will also need after this vicious war is finally over is beyond the brick and mortar, is the rebuilding of people's souls—people overcoming their grief and their loss. The international community, including the U.N., must do whatever we can to support the Palestinians in Gaza to overcome what they've seen and what they've been going through for the past two years.
Many of your colleagues in Gaza share with you stories of the destruction and suffering, while journalists are unable to report directly from there. In your view, if journalists had access to Gaza, would this conflict look different today? Do you think global opinion, and perhaps even the course of the war, would have shifted?
I don't know. But the question is, why has it been allowed to happen? Like many other things in this war, how come the international media has been banned from going into Gaza and reporting on the atrocities for the past two years independently? I'm not speaking about embedding with the Israeli army. Independent reporting, that's what's needed. I think here, as well, it's not about a lack of information, because Palestinian journalists have been doing an excellent job reporting what's happening. Social media means that we have this war run live on every single device that we have 24-7. It's a war that has been played live for the past two years. Those who need to know, know.
International media can definitely help in supporting the Palestinian journalists who are in Gaza and in the disinformation campaign and finding out what is actually happening. But it's not about lack of information coming out from Gaza. Everybody knows. Those who want to know, know. And those who want to take action and put an end to this war, also know.
For those who agree with your mission in the United States and want to support you, what can they do?
Every ounce of support is absolutely critical from anyone anywhere in the world. And support can be to continue to speak out against what is happening in Gaza, to continue to engage in putting pressure on those who can make a decision and finally get the people of Gaza a ceasefire, and to release the hostages that have been held in Gaza for nearly two years now. I can't imagine what the Israeli families are going through with the hostages held for nearly two years without any information, whether the son or the daughter or the partner or the grandchild, dead or alive. It's time to release all the hostages. It's also solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, even if it's writing small notes or organizing fundraising events; every ounce of support counts. And most importantly, to keep going and to keep doing what we are doing to also safeguard whatever is left of our humanity. Our humanity is not the same since this war started.
