GAZA,(Palestine Foundation Information Center) Juliette Touma, Director of Communications and Media at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), affirmed that the current mechanism for distributing relief aid in Gaza “is not working at all,” calling for a return to the previous system that allowed hundreds of trucks carrying food and essential supplies to enter daily.
Touma stressed that UNRWA continues to provide vital services to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank despite Israeli obstructions, including blocking entry visas for international staff. She said that around 6,000 trucks are currently stuck at Gaza’s borders.
Touma also noted that today’s situation in Gaza is incomparable to what it was before the war, destruction is widespread, security is absent, and residents’ needs far exceed just food, according to an interview with Al Jazeera.
Juliette Touma was appointed as UNRWA’s Director of Communications and Media in 2022, after holding various roles over 20 years, including as spokesperson for the UN mission in Syria during the peak of the conflict there, Head of Communications for the UN Development Program in Iraq, and having visited Gaza multiple times before and during the current war, according to UNRWA’s website.
Failure of the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”
Touma explained that the new food distribution system, overseen by the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” “is not working at all,” providing only four distribution points at best, compared to over 400 points previously operated by UNRWA across Gaza before the war.
The “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” is a US-based company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, founded in February 2025. Reports suggest its creation was an Israeli idea developed since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2023, aimed at “undermining Hamas’s control and preventing aid from reaching it,” confining aid to Israeli-controlled areas, and disconnecting Gazans from Hamas financially and materially, according to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
Touma — who holds a master’s degree in media and communications from the University of London, said life in Gaza before the war, despite over 15 years of blockade, was more adaptable: people could fish, farm, and UNRWA was supporting one million people with food aid.
Today, however, destruction is massive, people have been displaced repeatedly, even UNRWA shelters can no longer accommodate the displaced, and the entire food security system has collapsed.
Touma pointed out that Gazans now need more than just food; they require security, medicines, hygiene items, fuel, clean water, and child nutrition supplies.
UNRWA Never Stopped Working
When asked about claims that UNRWA ceased operations in Gaza, Touma emphasized that UNRWA never stopped working there despite all circumstances, with over 10,000 Palestinian staff continuing to provide services.
Touma, who previously worked with civil society organizations in culture, arts, and music, said UNRWA health teams in Gaza are offering around 15,000 consultations daily, while hundreds of thousands visit UNRWA clinics in the West Bank.
She also revealed that one in every ten children assessed in UNRWA clinics in Gaza suffers from malnutrition and that teams continue screening children, providing support, managing shelters for displaced families, supplying clean water for half of Gaza’s population, and continuously removing sewage and waste.
Touma noted that the academic year recently concluded in the West Bank, with about 40,000 students completing their studies at UNRWA schools despite current conditions.
But a major challenge facing UNRWA today is Israel’s refusal to issue entry visas for its international staff, preventing them from supporting their Palestinian colleagues and enhancing their ability to continue working under ongoing challenges, Touma said.
6,000 Trucks Await Entry
Since October 2023, Israel has intensified its efforts to dismantle UNRWA’s role, culminating in the Knesset voting overwhelmingly at the end of October to pass a law banning UNRWA from operating in occupied Palestinian territories, revoking its privileges and diplomatic immunity, and ordering the evacuation of its international staff from East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank — an unprecedented move against the UN’s largest humanitarian organization serving over 6 million Palestinian refugees.
Touma highlighted that around 6,000 trucks loaded with medicines, food, and essential supplies are stuck just steps away from Gaza, in Egypt and Jordan, urging their immediate entry to save lives.
Despite the aid piling up at Gaza’s borders, nearly one million children urgently need assistance, she said. Touma called for resuming aid flows as they were before the war and during ceasefires, with the same volume, between 500 and 600 trucks per day under UN supervision, primarily UNRWA.
In concluding her remarks to Al Jazeera, Touma stressed that UNRWA remains the largest humanitarian organization operating in Gaza and capable of managing relief operations if allowed to work, affirming that lifting the blockade and restoring the humanitarian system are essential to saving Gaza’s residents and children.
These statements come amid an ongoing Israeli assault approaching two years, during which most UN agencies have ceased humanitarian work in Gaza. Recently, a US proposal to task the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” with managing aid distribution has faced widespread skepticism from international organizations, citing its lack of experience and operational capacity compared to UNRWA’s well-established historic role in the Strip.
The humanitarian system in Gaza faces unprecedented challenges amid the continued blockade and the prevention of tens of thousands of tons of aid and medical supplies from entering, as international calls persist for the resumption of UN operations, an immediate end to the war, and the facilitation of sustained, orderly flows of humanitarian and commercial aid into Gaza.
