Israel announced it will allow Arab countries to resume the airdrops of food into Gaza after such operations were suspended for months, according to multiple reports.
The government decided to allow aid to be brought in through Jordan and Egypt and to deliver fuel for the United Nations’s critical facilities, Ynet News reported Thursday. CNN and ABC News were among other outlets reporting that Arab neighbors, including the United Arab Emirates, would parachute aid into the Gaza Strip.
Additionally, the World Central Kitchen organization has begun operating its kitchens again, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“When the UN wants to, it can. After criticism earlier this week, it suddenly transferred hundreds of trucks, despite claiming it was unable to do so until then,” a senior military source reportedly said. “According to all IDF estimates, there has been no change in the amount of food entering the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, and Hamas’s hunger campaign in Gaza is timed.”
The move comes after critics of Israel in recent days, including the World Health Organization, have warned that civilians in Gaza are facing mass starvation, as the Hamas-controlled area has long been dependent on international aid for basic necessities. More than 100 humanitarian organizations signed a joint statement this week calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to restore the full flow of food, clean water, and medical supplies to Gaza.
Hamas claimed Wednesday that at least 10 people have died from starvation in the last 24 hours, according to the terrorist organization’s health ministry.
Netanyahu’s government has denied reports of mass starvation. It has accused Hamas of sabotaging an Israeli-U.S.-backed aid plan to distribute food and water to Palestinians in Gaza as an alternative to traditional aid distributions from the U.N. and other established international organizations, which are often suspected of being seized by Hamas.
The Israel Defense Forces claimed this week that the U.N. and aid agencies refused to deliver around 950 trucks carrying food and essential supplies into Gaza to civilians because of disputes with Israel.
“We are providing humanitarian aid according to international law. The ones trying to sabotage this aid are Hamas and its people, who are willing to do everything to prevent our forces from dismantling infrastructure that could harm us and our citizens,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said during a visit to Gaza this week.
Israel has faced growing pressure and possible sanctions from the international community over its war with Hamas, which escalated the regional conflict with its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on an Israeli music festival that killed roughly 1,200 civilians.
France announced on Thursday it would soon recognize a Palestinian state, a move likely to put Israel in a weaker position as it jockeys for control over the Gaza Strip. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer signaled he would do the same.
Israel will coordinate airdrops of aid into Gaza from foreign countries, according to announcements this week, which signaled the operations are expected to mirror missions carried out by Jordan and the United Arab Emirates last year. Great Britain and the U.S. also led parachute drops last year from military planes.
Aid drops are viewed as a measure of last resort that can pose dangers to civilians, in part due to aid falling into the sea and people drowning while trying to recover it. In other cases, airdrops have fallen on people crowding to reach the aid, crushing them.
Other drawbacks of parachute aid include the heavy expenses and limited capacity. Airdrops cost up to seven times as much as land deliveries, the World Food Programme says, and have much more limited delivery capacity. One truck of aid is capable of delivering nearly 10 times the amount one aircraft could deliver, according to the U.N.
When the Biden administration helped coordinate air drops in the Gaza Strip last year, then-White House spokesman John Kirby warned that the operations were “not an ideal way of getting aid” to people. “
“They [airdrops] are certainly an indication of how desperate things are that we are now going to have to resort to airdrops,” he said at the time.
The move to use the aidrops comes as international aid organizations paint a dire picture of what is happening in Gaza, saying that the U.S.-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has failed to distribute food and supplies to civilians.
GHF has sought to replace U.N.-led aid distribution efforts, which Israel has long suggested allow supplies to flow to Hamas, who then resells them to civilians for a higher price to fund terrorist activity. GHF opened on May 27 and runs four distribution sites, three in the far south-west of Gaza and one in central Gaza. By July 1, the foundation said it had delivered more than 52 million meals in five weeks.
GHF has been denounced by Hamas and the U.N., which has refused to distribute aid trucks to Gazans.
Much of the international aid groups’ concerns about GHF revolve around the foundation’s security footprint, which is provided by Israeli troops. Soldiers have repeatedly fired into groups of Palestinians they perceived as “threats” near the aid site, fueling accusations that it is deliberately murdering civilians.
ISRAEL’S GAZA AID EFFORT HAS TURNED INTO A DEADLY SCRAMBLE FOR FOOD
The U.N. said on Tuesday that around 1,000 people have also been killed by Israeli gunfire near aid distribution sites in Gaza, most of which are operated by GHF.
The Israel Defense Forces has suggested the death tolls are overstated, and said in a statement earlier this month, its troops fired near crowds “in order to remove an immediate threat posed to them.”
