Ray Hanania Show Special: How bad is Gaza’s humanitarian situation?

Juliette Touma 1
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Updated 26 October 2023
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Ray Hanania Show Special: How bad is Gaza’s humanitarian situation?

  • UN Relief and Works Agency spokesperson Juliette Touma says “needs growing by the hour” in the Gaza Strip
  • Israeli attorney Daniel Seidemann slams Netanyahu for bolstering Hamas while marginalizing Palestinian Authority

CHICAGO: The scale of humanitarian suffering in the Gaza Strip has reached unprecedented levels as Israeli airstrikes continue to lay waste to large swaths of the territory, according to Juliette Touma, director of communications for the UN Relief and Works Agency.

During an appearance on the Ray Hanania Radio Show, she painted a grim picture of the situation on the ground, saying: “UNRWA is overwhelmed at the moment in Gaza. The needs are growing by the hour. We do not have supplies. We do not have enough fuel to continue delivering assistance.”

The Gaza Health Ministry said on Wednesday that the death toll since the war began on Oct. 7 had passed 6,500, with 756 Palestinians, including 344 children, killed by Israeli strikes in the previous 24 hours alone.

The unfolding humanitarian crisis is “unprecedented — four times more than what we had planned for in the worst-case scenario,” Touma said. “We are now hosting four times more people than we thought we would have in a worst-case scenario.”

Although Israel has now permitted humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah, border crossing, the territory’s only link to the outside world, Touma said it is only a fraction of what was being delivered prior to the conflict.

“We’ve seen a number of convoys that have been coming through for the past three days; 54 trucks have come into Gaza,” she said.




People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through buildings that were destroyed during Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis. (AFP)

“That’s absolutely nothing. It’s peanuts. It’s crumbs. If you compare it with the numbers that, according to the UN and UNRWA as well, every day to Gaza we should have 500 trucks coming in, including for aid and 100 for fuel alone. So, we have, in three days, 54 trucks and none of these trucks had fuel on them.”

UNRWA, one of the oldest UN organizations, has been serving the people of Gaza for more than seven decades. It is also the largest UN agency active in the Gaza Strip, with 13,000 staff, many of them teachers. Indeed, it is the only UN agency that operates schools. Since the war began, however, UNRWA has been forced to close its schools in Gaza, depriving at least 300,000 children of education.

“Many of our schools have been turned into shelters where people have sought refuge,” said Touma.

The conflict has exacted a significant toll on the agency itself and its staff.

“We have already lost 35 colleagues at UNRWA,” said Touma. “They were killed. Half of them were teachers, half were men, half were women.”

In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, Israel imposed a strict embargo on Gaza, denying its impoverished population of 2.2 million people access to food, water, electricity and medicine. At the same time it launched a daily bombardment, killing thousands of civilians in the process.

Touma called for the blockade to be lifted and for an immediate ceasefire.

“Medicines, fuel, food, water, these are things that are very, very much missing,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s too much to ask. These are the basics that people need to live in dignity. And I also think for people to live in dignity, we need to have a ceasefire as soon as possible.”

Israeli attorney Daniel Seidemann, who also appeared on the Ray Hanania Radio Show this week, said that Israel’s failure to properly engage with the Palestinian Authority, and misconceptions about the true nature of Hamas, created the conditions for the unprecedented attack.

A resident of Jerusalem, member of the Israeli Bar Association and founder of the nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, he added that the dehumanization and violent suppression of Palestinians had contributed to the latest crisis.

Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. The Sunni militia, with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood but with financing and support from Shiite Iran, has engaged in multiple conflicts with Israel, each ending in flimsy ceasefires.

However, the Oct. 7 attack in which 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed by Hamas gunmen who breached the border in several places in the country’s south, marked a fundamental change in the long-running conflict.

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for many years bolstered Hamas, favored Hamas, ironically because strengthening Hamas would give you a pretext of not negotiating with the Palestinian Authority and with Mahmoud Abbas,” Seidemann told The Ray Hanania Radio Show, which is sponsored by Arab News and broadcast weekly on the US Arab Radio network.

“He had an ideology, which was firmly entrenched in Israel, that Hamas can be contained. We’re not going to arrive at peace. We don’t have to give up anything. But they can be contained. And that collapsed on Oct. 7.”

According to Seidemann, Israel’s leveraging of Hamas as a tool to undermine the Palestinian Authority merely strengthened the armed group, while failing to recognize its true nature. Seidemann believes Hamas took inspiration for its ideology from Daesh and Al-Qaeda.




UN workers talk in the playground of an UNRWA-run school that has been converted into a shelter in Khan Yunis. (AFP)

“That is something that I did not anticipate, I don’t think many Israelis anticipated,” he said.

“Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert … was the last Israeli leader to negotiate with the PA in good faith. And he lambasted Netanyahu and has been doing so for years: ‘This is a monster that you created. You made false assumptions about it because you didn’t want to deal with Mahmoud Abbas.’

“Israelis have been safe, in many ways, because of the stability of the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu did everything he could to marginalize them and Hamas was the tool for it.”

While marginalizing the PA, Israeli authorities simultaneously dehumanized the Palestinian people, Seidemann said. A pervading viewpoint was created in which “Palestinian lives matter much less and sometimes don’t matter at all.”

He added: “I very much am sympathetic with the sense that there is a double standard. It’s a global double standard in all sorts of ways. It’s dangerous for me to express that among Israelis these days but, to be honest, that’s what it is.”

By violently repressing any form of dissent, and believing that high-tech military defenses could take the place of a peaceful and dignified solution, and that the world would go on treating the lives of Palestinians as having less worth, the conditions for a violent backlash were laid, according to Seidemann.

“We crush every political expression more radical than a scout meeting, and we have crushed meetings so the political energies go into the direction of people who don’t ask permission — and some of them are violent,” he said.

The blocking of avenues for peaceful resistance and the pushing of Palestinian opposition to the occupation down violent paths has not gone unnoticed, prompting efforts to improve the economic conditions for communities in the West Bank and Gaza.

“People in recent times have been speaking about making the lives of Palestinians better, the improvement of the Palestinian economy,” said Seidemann. “No — the deficit the Palestinians are suffering is the deficit of freedom. The deficit of dignity.

“My friends in East Jerusalem are telling me what the discourse is, on social media, their support for Hamas because ‘we’ve been ignored for years. Nobody has counted us. Everybody’s bypassed us. And regrettably, the only language that Israel understands is violence.’ And I have to concede, we’re proving that.”

Asked whether the peace process can recover from the Hamas attack and resulting assault on Gaza, Seidemann said the ultimate outcome is unknowable but the events of recent weeks have overturned some long-held assumptions.

“The Israeli public is traumatized and that is not auspicious circumstances in which to resume,” he said. “I believe that the notion that Israel can bully and break the will of the Palestinians with superior force has taken a hit and destroyed that myth.

“Yes, you’ve sent this Iron Dome. You’ve sent the soldiers. You haven’t said that’s the one thing that can work, and that is a political agreement, and that is fairness and decency.”

Seidemann is doubtful that the Netanyahu government will change its current course.

“What’s Israel’s goal? I wish I knew,” he said. “I doubt my prime minister knows. It’s one of the reasons, and there are numerous reasons, why it’s time for him to leave.




A shelter for displaced Palestinians in Khan Yunis. (AFP)

“But in his world of ‘we can defer this problem indefinitely; we can live alongside occupation without dealing with it; we can contain the Palestinians; the world doesn’t care; we could normalize and bypass the Palestinians’ — all of that is clearly not true or it hasn’t been true for many of us all along.

“But we’re now entering into a war. We’re in a war and ground operations. And it’s not clear to me what the objective is. I hear from our leaders, and some of them are in exemplary good faith saying we will be victorious. What do you mean by that? And they don’t explain it other than maybe implying that they will destroy Hamas and continue the way things have been.”

While many in the international community have expressed solidarity with Israel following the Hamas attack, they have also called on the Israeli government and military to exercise restraint and to permit humanitarian aid to reach civilians who have been prevented from leaving Gaza.

Israel has massed troops on the border with Gaza in preparation for a widely expected ground operation. The escalation has prompted fears of the conflict escalating into a wider regional war involving other Iranian proxies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Against this background, Seidemann believes a long-term vision is needed to establish peace between Israel and Palestine.

“We have to think of the day after,” he said. “There’s not going to be peace the day after. There are going to be deeply traumatized people on both sides who have suffered unspeakable horrors.

“And we have to pick up and rebuild. And we will be rebuilding in the Middle East, which has an entirely different architecture from what we’ve known in the past.

“It’s not only that the situation is unknown at the moment. It’s unknowable. But it doesn’t absolve us from preparing for it.”

 


Turkish top officials make sudden trip to Damascus after Syria’s deal with Kurdish-led group

Updated 14 March 2025
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Turkish top officials make sudden trip to Damascus after Syria’s deal with Kurdish-led group

  • Ankara intends to examine “how the agreement reached will be implemented and its reflections on the field,” local news agency DHA reported
  • Turkiye considers the SDF and its military arm as terrorist organizations because of their links to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party

ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s top diplomat, defense minister and intelligence chief paid a sudden visit to Damascus on Thursday, days after Syria’s interim government reached a deal to integrate a US-backed Kurdish-led armed group into the country’s army.
The agreement to integrate the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, into the Syrian government followed fierce clashes that erupted last week between government security forces and gunmen loyal to ousted leader Bashar Assad.

Residents celebrate following the signing of a breakthrough deal between Syria's interim government and the SDF, the Kurdish-led authority that controls the country's northeast, in Qamishli, northeastern Syria, on  March 10, 2025. (AP)

Monitoring groups said hundreds of civilians were killed in the violence in Syria’s coastal communities, primarily targeting members of the Alawite religious minority to which Assad belongs.
Ahmad Al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president and a former rebel, met with Hakan Fidan, Turkiye’s foreign minister; Yasar Guler, defense minister, and Ibrahim Kalin, head of national intelligence. They were accompanied by Turkiye’s ambassador to Syria, Burhan Koroglu.
According to local news agency DHA, an official from the Turkish Defense Ministry, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said earlier Thursday that Ankara intends to examine “how the agreement reached will be implemented and its reflections on the field.”
The official added that Turkiye’s expectations on Syria have not changed.
“There is no change in our expectations for the termination of terrorist activities in Syria, the disarmament of terrorists and the expulsion of foreign terrorists from Syria,” the official said.
Turkiye designates the SDF and its military arm, People’s Protection Units, as terrorist organizations because of their links to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
As the Turkish delegation was flying unannounced to Damascus, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented awards for “benevolence and kindness” to a former Syrian fighter pilot imprisoned for 43 years.

Turkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presents the "Benevolence and Kindness" award to former Syrian Army fighter pilot Ragheed al-Tatari, right, in Ankara on March 13, 2025. (Turkish Presidency via AP)

The ceremony, hosted by a foundation linked to Turkiye’s religious authority, honored Ragheed Al-Tatari. Erdogan praised Al-Tatari for his perseverance and gave him an award for his “benevolence.”
Al-Tatari was imprisoned under the rule of Syrian presidents Hafez Assad and later Bashar Assad. He had been detained since 1981. There are conflicting accounts for his imprisonment including refusing to bomb the city of Hama and failing to report a pilot desertion attempt.
Over four decades, Al-Tatari was moved among prisons notorious for housing political inmates, including Palmyra prison and Sednaya. His imprisonment, described by human rights groups as one of the longest in Syria for a political prisoner, ended in December when opposition forces freed him.
In a speech on stage, Erdogan lauded Al-Tatari, calling him “the brave Syrian pilot who listened to his conscience.”


UNRWA collapse would doom generation of Palestinian children: agency chief

Updated 14 March 2025
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UNRWA collapse would doom generation of Palestinian children: agency chief

  • For more than seven decades, the UNRWA has provided essential aid, assistance and services like education and health care to Palestinian refugees
  • Israel has opted to sever ties with UNRWA, banning it from operating on Israeli soil, arguing that UNRWA can be replaced by other UN agencies or NGOs

GENEVA: The UNRWA chief warned Thursday that if the embattled UN agency for Palestinian refugees were to collapse, it would deprive a generation of children of education, “sowing the seeds for more extremism.”
Pointing to a dire funding situation, Philippe Lazzarini warned of “the real risk of the agency collapsing and imploding.”
If that were to happen, he told AFP, “we would definitely sacrifice a generation of kids, who would be deprived from proper education.”
For more than seven decades, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has provided essential aid, assistance and services like education and health care to Palestinian refugees.
Lazzarini has described the organization as “a lifeline” for nearly six million Palestinian refugees under its charge, across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
But UNRWA has long been a lightning rod for harsh Israeli criticism, which ramped up dramatically after Hamas’s deadly attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 sparked the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s allegation early last year that some UNRWA staff took part in that attack spurred a string of nations to at least temporarily halt their backing for the already cash-strapped agency.
And earlier this year, Israel opted to sever ties with UNRWA, banning it from operating on Israeli soil.
While it can still operate in Gaza and the West Bank, it has been barred from contact with Israeli officials, making it difficult to coordinate the safe delivery of aid in the Palestinian territories.
Israel has argued that UNRWA can be replaced by other UN agencies or NGOs.
Lazzarini acknowledged earlier this week that if the only objective is to “bring trucks into Gaza” to address the humanitarian crisis caused by the war, others could step in.
But he stressed that UNRWA’s role was far broader.
“We are primarily providing government-like services,” he told AFP.
“So I don’t see any NGO or UN agencies all of a sudden stepping into the provision of public-like services.”
He cautioned that the loss of UNRWA’s education services could have particularly dire consequences.
“If you deprive 100,000 girls and boys in Gaza, for example, (of an) education, and if they have no future, and if their school is just despair and living in the rubble, I would say we are just sowing the seeds for more extremism,” he warned.
“I think this is a recipe for disaster.”
 


RSF shelling kills 5 children in Darfur

Updated 14 March 2025
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RSF shelling kills 5 children in Darfur

  • Rapid Support Forces target civilians in Al-Fasher’s neighborhoods with artillery assault

PORT SUDAN: Shelling from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed five children in the besieged North Darfur state capital of Al-Fasher, a medical source said on Thursday.

The attack on Wednesday was first reported by the Sudanese army, which has been locked in a war with the RSF since April of 2023.

“The militia targeted civilians in the city’s neighborhoods with artillery shelling, killing five children under the age of six and wounding four women,” the army said in a statement.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a medical source confirmed the toll.

Al-Fasher, under siege by the RSF since last May, is the only one of five state capitals in the vast Darfur region that is not under paramilitary control.

Fighting in the city has intensified in recent months, as the RSF tries to consolidate its hold on Darfur after army victories in central Sudan.

The army and allied militias have successfully repelled the RSF’s attacks on Al-Fasher. 

However, the paramilitary forces have repeatedly shelled nearby famine-hit displacement camps in what local activists say is retaliation.

Since Sudan’s war began, it has claimed tens of thousands of lives, uprooted more than 12 million people, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

In North Darfur alone, nearly 1.7 million people are displaced.

Around 2 million people face extreme food insecurity, and 320,000 are already suffering famine conditions, according to UN estimates.

Famine has hit three displacement camps around Al-Fasher — Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam — and is expected to spread to five more areas, including Al-Fasher itself, by May.

On Wednesday, the African Union said the announcement of a parallel government in Sudan risked cleaving the country.

The RSF and its allies signed a “founding charter” of a parallel government in Nairobi last month.

The AU condemned the move and “warned that such action carries a huge risk of partitioning the country.”

The signatories to the document intend to create a “government of peace and unity” in rebel-controlled areas.

They have also pledged to “build a secular, democratic, decentralized state, based on freedom, equality and justice, without cultural, ethnic, religious or regional bias.”

In early March, the RSF and its allies again signed a “Transitional Constitution” in Nairobi.

The AU called on all its member states and the international community “not to recognize any government or parallel entity aimed at partitioning and governing part of the territory of the Republic of Sudan or its institutions.”

A statement said the organization “does not recognize the so-called government or parallel entity in the Republic of Sudan.”

On Tuesday, the EU also reiterated its commitment to Sudan’s “unity and territorial integrity.”

“Plans for parallel ‘government’ by the Rapid Support Forces risk the partition of the country and jeopardize the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people for an inclusive Sudanese-owned process that leads to the restoration of civilian rule,” it said in a statement.

It follows a warning from the UN Security Council last week that expressed concern over the signing, adding it could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.


Iraq repatriates more families from Daesh-linked Al-Hol camp

Updated 14 March 2025
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Iraq repatriates more families from Daesh-linked Al-Hol camp

BAGHDAD: Iraq has repatriated more than 150 additional families from Al-Hol camp in the neighboring Syrian Arab Republic, an Iraqi security official said on Thursday, the latest such transfer from the camp where many have alleged terrorist links.

Kurdish-run camps and prisons in northeastern Syria still hold about 56,000 people from dozens of countries, many of them the family members of Daesh suspects, more than five years after the terrorists’ territorial defeat in Syria.

While many Western countries refuse to take back their nationals, Baghdad has taken the lead by accelerating repatriations and urging others to follow suit.

The latest group of 505 people is the sixth since the beginning of the year to be repatriated. 

They left the camp on Wednesday, said Jihan Hanan, Al-Hol’s director.

The Iraqi security official confirmed that about “153 families arrived yesterday” in Iraq.

Daesh captured nearly a third of Iraq before local forces, backed by a US-led coalition, defeated them in 2017.

In Syria, US-backed Kurdish forces dislodged IS from the last of its Syrian-held territory in 2019.

Al-Hol is located in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Syria.

Iraq has intensified its efforts to bring back its nationals amid concerns about the security situation in Syria following the ouster of Bashar Assad in December, Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem Al-Araji said last week.


Gaza rescuers exhume dozens of bodies from Al-Shifa Hospital

Updated 14 March 2025
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Gaza rescuers exhume dozens of bodies from Al-Shifa Hospital

  • The Palestinians medical facility is now largely in ruins following multiple Israeli assaults during the deadly war

GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency reported that its crews had exhumed 48 bodies on Thursday from the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital, once Gaza’s biggest medical facility but now largely in ruins following multiple Israeli assaults during the war.

The agency has carried out similar work in the past to return remains to their families if they can be identified or, failing that, to remove them and give them a proper burial elsewhere.

Rescuers handed over 38 bodies after they were identified by their relatives, who took them to be reinterred in other cemeteries, agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said on Thursday.

“The other 10 exhumed bodies were handed over to the forensic department at the Ministry of Health for identification,” he said.

Bassal added that around 160 bodies remained buried within the hospital complex and that the process of exhumation would continue for several days.

AFP footage showed rescuers digging in parts of the courtyard and removing white bags reportedly containing human remains, which were then wrapped in blankets and carried away.

Gaza resident Mohammed Abu Asi, who identified the body of his brother, had come to the hospital to receive the remains.

“It’s like experiencing the war all over again. Recovering my brother’s body feels as though we are burying him today — the pain and the wound have reopened,” he said.

Another Gaza resident, Suha Al-Sharif, came to the site hoping to find her son’s body.

“I know what my son was wearing. That’s why I came. God willing, I will find him,” she said.

“I want to find him. I’m a mother — I am exhausted and do not know where my son is.”

Hospitals in Gaza, particularly Al-Shifa, have been repeatedly targeted by Israeli forces since the start of the war, following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Gaza health workers have previously discovered bodies at Al-Shifa Hospital.

Last year, the UN Security Council expressed “deep concern” after reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies in or near hospitals in Gaza.

The Oct. 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, according to official Israeli figures.

During the attack, militants took 251 people hostage, 58 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has since killed at least 48,524 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures reliable.