A day after the tragedy in which more than a hundred Palestinians died at the hands of Israeli troops in Gaza while queuing to receive food from a humanitarian truck, US President Joe Biden announced on Friday that he was going to create an airlift to launch aid packages from the sky of Gaza. This Saturday, three C-130 cargo planes of the United States Army dropped the first batch from the sky, 66 packages with 38,000 food rations inside.
“Innocent people have been trapped in a terrible war, unable to feed their families, and they have seen the response when they tried to get help,” Biden said Friday from the Oval Office, minutes before meeting behind closed doors with the prime minister of Italy, Georgia Meloni. “We are going to do everything possible” to ensure humanitarian aid to the 2.3 million people trapped in the Strip, the president promised: “we have to do more.”
The delivery of food from the sky, which will be expanded “in the coming days” with other supplies, is carried out in a coordinated manner “with our friends in Jordan and other” allies in the region, Biden confirmed. In recent months, other countries such as France, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have also dropped aid from the air, but this Saturday marks the first launch by the US.
The planes used, the C-130s, are prepared to reach remote locations and precisely drop pallets full of food and other supplies tied to a parachute net. They have been used in the past to send humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti, among other places.
Since the start of the war, following the Hamas attacks in southern Israel on October 7, the war cabinet led by Benjamin Netanyahu has blocked the entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies into Gaza, arguing that Weapons for Hamas are also smuggled into the trucks. The only humanitarian aid crossing that has remained open, although in dribs and drabs, is Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, which has also recently been bombed by Israel.
Dropping food from the sky is not the most effective way to deliver humanitarian aid, rather a last resort, according to the White House. National Security spokesman John Kirby explained at a press conference that air aid will be “a complement” to sending supplies by other means. “We will learn from the first launches to improve,” said Kirby, who specified that deliveries will be made “in a safe place where no one can be injured and accessible to humanitarian organizations to distribute the shipment.”
Some organizations have been critical of such launches, which “are not the solution to alleviating this suffering, and distract from proven solutions for large-scale aid,” said the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organization. “All diplomatic attention must be focused on ensuring that Israel lifts its siege on Gaza,” he claimed in a statement. “Airdrops do not and cannot replace humanitarian access.”
In parallel, the US is considering the possibility of also opening a marine corridor, which will allow supplies to be distributed from the Mediterranean in much larger quantities. Meanwhile, Biden assured on Friday that he is negotiating with Israel to allow the passage of more trucks by land: “We are going to insist on Israel to facilitate more trucks and more routes, so that more and more people receive the help they need, without excuses,” he said. “Innocent lives and children’s lives are at stake.”
Earlier this week, three senior United Nations officials warned the Security Council that residents in Gaza could face “imminent famine.” The coordination director of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ramesh Rajasingham drew an alarming situation: “Unfortunately, however bleak the picture we see today, there is a good chance that it will continue to deteriorate.” For now, at least 576,000 people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, are “one step away from famine,” he said, warning of an imminent “total” agricultural collapse in the northern Strip in May if the crisis persists. conditions.
