Juliette Touma, Director of Media for UNRWA, said that the international organization “Medical Assistance for the Palestinians” reported that at least 200 people were killed in the Israeli air strike that struck tents for displaced people in Rafah on Sunday.
In a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, in which she participated via video from Amman, Touma stated that the consequences of the attack were enormous and that it exacerbated the fear of death. She added that a colleague of hers who recently returned from Gaza told her that death is everywhere and that people seem to have accepted that death is their fate.
She said: “A colleague who moved from Rafah to Al-Mawasi this morning said to me after thinking for weeks: ‘What is the point of moving again if I am going to be killed anyway?’ I want to take this opportunity to honor all 192 members of the UNRWA team who have been killed since the start of the war.” today”. She said one colleague killed is too many and without them the agency would not be the same.
Juliette Touma, Director of Media at UNRWA, renewed the call of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for an immediate ceasefire. She reiterated the Secretary-General’s condemnation of the non-implementation of the order issued by the International Court of Justice regarding Rafah, stressing the need to stop the military operation in Rafah immediately and improve the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza without delay.
response to journalists’ questions, Touma said that most of the donors who suspended their funding for UNRWA in January have resumed funding the agency, with the exception of the United States of America and the United Kingdom. However, she noted that UNRWA is still facing financial problems and said that it is difficult to predict what will happen at the level of the agency’s operations throughout its area of operations after the end of June.
UNRWA supports Palestine refugees in five areas: Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Touma was asked about the draft law presented before the Knesset to declare UNRWA a terrorist organization, and she said that it is the latest attempt – made recently – to dismantle the agency, and that the Commissioner-General of UNRWA describes this matter as outrageous.
She stressed that UNRWA is the backbone of humanitarian operations in Gaza and also provides human development services to Palestinian refugees throughout the region, including more than 500,000 boys and girls in its schools.
