Aid Groups Question U.S. Airdrop Plans for Gaza

Vivian Nereim
Updated Sat, March 2, 2024 

 (AP Photo/Mahmoud Essa, File)

International aid groups are criticizing a Biden administration plan to airdrop food to desperately hungry Palestinians, saying that such a move would be ineffective and would distract from more meaningful measures like pushing Israel to lift its partial siege of the Gaza Strip.

“Airdrops do not and cannot substitute for humanitarian access,” the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based aid organization, said in a statement Saturday. “Airdrops are not the solution to relieve this suffering, and distract time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale.”

Egypt, France, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have participated in aid airdrops to Gaza, but experts say they are inefficient, expensive and provide woefully small amounts of aid compared with the level of need in Gaza, which aid groups warn is on the brink of famine.

Given those drawbacks, airdrops are typically a measure of last resort. In addition, there is the difficulty of ensuring that the aid is distributed safely and fairly. Governments often organize airdrops over territory controlled by hostile entities, rather than allies.

Robert Ford, a fellow at the Middle East Institute and a retired American ambassador to Syria and Algeria, said the decision to turn to airdrops in Gaza represented a “humiliation” of the U.S. by its ally Israel. American officials had repeatedly tried to get Israel to allow a greater flow of aid into the territory.

“There is an obvious absurdity that we have to use our own military to undertake airdrops to deliver humanitarian aid because the military of the top American aid recipient, and our special ally in the Middle East, is blocking this same humanitarian aid,” Ford said. “It gives the image of an American aid recipient that acts with impunity because there is no American pressure applied, beyond verbal pleading.”

The International Rescue Committee, in its statement, said the United States and other countries should instead focus their efforts on “ensuring Israel lifts its siege of Gaza” and getting Israel to reopen border crossings to allow the unimpeded movement of fuel, food and medical supplies.

The committee also stressed the urgency of pushing for a cease-fire in a war that has lasted nearly five months — since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel by the Palestinian armed group Hamas — trapping more than 2 million Palestinians under Israeli bombardment with limited access to food, water and electricity.

Israel denies that it is blocking aid. On Saturday, Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesperson, blamed distribution difficulties on the Gaza side and said that “Hamas is hijacking aid, and the U.N. is covering that up.”

President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States would begin airdropping relief supplies after dozens of Palestinians were killed a day earlier as Israeli forces opened fire near an aid convoy in Gaza City. The number of aid trucks entering Gaza dropped significantly in February, data show, even as aid agencies said that some people had resorted to eating birdseed and leaves.

The decline reflects, in part, Israel’s insistence on inspecting every truck at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, which has acted as the main gateway since it was reopened in December. In addition, the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, has joined UNRWA, the U.N. agency that serves Palestinians in Gaza, in stopping aid shipments to the north, citing lawlessness in the area.

John Kirby, a senior National Security Council official, said that the first U.S. airdrops would focus on food, followed by water and medicine. The United States has also asked Israel to open more border crossings and is examining ways to create a temporary port that would allow aid to be brought in by sea.

Kirby acknowledged that there were limits to what can be brought in by military cargo planes, saying it was a supplement, not a replacement, for aid trucks.

An official at another aid group, Oxfam, said this past week that it also did not support U.S. airdrops, “which would mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior U.S. officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza.”

Not everyone agrees. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian American political analyst who had previously called for airdrops, said that they were a necessary supplemental option amid dire conditions.

“The situation is so desperate. Any food, any aid that makes it in, is incredibly helpful to the people on the ground,” said Alkhatib, who has family in Gaza and said he was frustrated by the aid groups’ critiques.

“As someone with skin in the game, I’ll take whatever we can get,” he said.

c.2024 The New York Times Company


Israel-Gaza war: US carries out its first aid airdrop in strip

Henri Astier - BBC News
Sun, March 3, 2024 

The US has carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian aid for Gaza, with more than 30,000 meals parachuted in by three military planes.

The operation, carried out jointly with Jordan's Air Force, was the first of many announced by President Joe Biden.

The head of a well-known aid organisation told the BBC he thought there was a famine in northern Gaza.

At least 112 people were killed as crowds rushed to an aid convoy outside Gaza city on Thursday.

Hamas has accused them for the killing. Israel denies this and says it is investigating.

The first US airdrop comes as a top US official said the framework of a deal for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza was in place.

The Biden administration official said on Saturday that Israel had "more or less accepted" the deal.

"It will be a six-week ceasefire in Gaza starting today if Hamas agrees to release the defined category of vulnerable hostages (...) the sick, the wounded, elderly and women," the unnamed official said.

Mediators are due to reconvene in Cairo on Sunday, and Egyptian officials said delegations from both Hamas and Israel were expected to arrive for the negotiations.

One official said certain technical issues around a possible deal still needed to be resolved, such as how many Palestinian prisoners would be released by Israel in exchange for hostages held by Hamas.

On Saturday C-130 transport planes dropped more than 38,000 meals along the Gaza coastline, US Central Command said in a statement.

"These airdrops are part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes," it added.

Other countries including the UK, France, Egypt and Jordan have previously airdropped aid into Gaza, but this is the first by the US.

Jan Egeland, head of aid organisation the Norwegian Refugee Council, has just returned from a three-day visit to Gaza.

"I was prepared for nightmare, but it is worse, much worse," Mr Egeland told the BBC on Sunday.

"People want to take your hand... saying 'we are starving, we are dying here'.

"I think there is famine in the north," he said, adding that there had been no aid for 300,000 people living in ruins, with Israel not allowing any through.

US administration officials said that Thursday's "tragic incident" had highlighted "the importance of expanding and sustaining the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza in response to the dire humanitarian situation".

Dozens of people are being treated at al-Shifa Hospital following Thursday's tragedy

Aid agencies have said that airdrops are an inefficient way of delivering aid.

"Airdrops are expensive, haphazard and usually lead to the wrong people getting the aid," Mr Egeland said.

Displaced Gaza resident Medhat Taher told Reuters news agency that such a method was woefully inadequate.

"Will this be enough for a school? Is this enough for 10,000 people?" he said. "It's better to send aid via crossings and better than airdropping via parachutes."

In his statement on Friday, President Biden said the US would "insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need".

US Vice-President Kamala Harris will meet Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz in Washington on Monday to discuss a truce and other issues, Reuters quotes a White House official as saying.

In Thursday's incident, 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured as they crowded around aid lorries on the south-western edge of Gaza City.

Israel said most died in a crush after it fired warning shots.

Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told the BBC that he and a team sent to al-Shifa hospital had found a large number of people with bullet wounds.

Hamas meanwhile said an Israeli bombardment had killed at least 11 people at a camp in Rafah in southern Gaza on Saturday. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the attack "outrageous". The Israeli army said it had carried out a "precision strike" against Islamic Jihad militants in the area.

The UN's World Food Programme has warned that a famine is imminent in northern Gaza, which has received very little aid in recent weeks, and where an estimated 300,000 people are living with little food or clean water.

The Israel military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign to destroy Hamas after its gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October and took 253 back to Gaza as hostages.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 30,000 people, including 21,000 children and women, have been killed in Gaza since then with some 7,000 missing and at least 70,450 injured.