In this episode of ‘Rethinking Humanitarianism’, hosts Heba Aly and Melissa Fundira speak to guests Yara Asi and Chris Gunness about aid and humanitarian responses in Palenstine.
Even before Israel’s current siege, 80% of Gazans relied on international humanitarian aid for survival, according to the UN.
But under international law, it’s the occupying power’s responsibility to provide food, shelter, medicine, and other essential needs.
Have aid agencies historically let Israel off the hook by failing to challenge the very thing that creates the need for aid in the first place: Israel’s occupation? And if decades of humanitarian response in the region have failed Palestinians thus far, as some argue, but halting it would be catastrophic, as others say, then how should aid agencies pivot?
Guests: Yara Asi, assistant professor in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida, co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, US Fulbright scholar to the West Bank; Chris Gunness, former UNRWA spokesperson.
