Aid airdrops in Gaza offer little relief given overwhelming need
In DepthIn the face of international pressure, Israel has allowed airdrops of food aid, but the amounts delivered are a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the humanitarian emergency. Thousands of aid trucks continue to sit outside the enclave.
The footage is impressive, but the results limited. For the past week, several countries, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, France and the United Kingdom, have been carrying out humanitarian aid airdrops over the Gaza Strip, using military planes to fly over the Palestinian territory.
France is set to airdrop 40 metric tons of aid over four separate drops and Spain 12 metric tons. Other countries such as Belgium, Italy and Germany said they would also release aid.
"The emergency in the Gaza Strip is such that it is absolutely vital to get essential goods in," said a source at the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs about the airdrops, acknowledging that the operation "barely" addresses the scale of what is needed. The Israeli military also announced it had carried out food airdrops in the enclave, where more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war in response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
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