The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper The Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
Current Temperature
42°F
Current Conditions
Overcast clouds
View complete weather report

Color Scheme

Subscribe now

Israel to allow humanitarian airdrops over Gaza

A Jordanian Air Force C-130 drops humanitarian aid supplies on March 28, 2024 over northern Gaza. Israel said on Friday that it would soon allow other countries to drop aid from the air into the Gaza Strip during a widening humanitarian crisis in which several children have died of malnutrition. (Diego Ibarra Sánchez/The New York Times)
By Aaron Boxerman New York Times

JERUSALEM – Israel will allow foreign nations to parachute humanitarian aid to a population in the Gaza Strip desperate for food, officials said Friday, during a widening crisis in which children have died of malnutrition.

Jordan and the United Arab Emirates were expected to begin airdrops in the coming days, according to COGAT, the Israeli military agency that regulates humanitarian affairs in Gaza.

The announcement followed rising international condemnation of the dire state of affairs in Gaza, with many countries – including some of Israel’s traditional allies – holding the Israeli government responsible for the situation. Israel says it is doing everything it can to allow aid into the Palestinian enclave.

“The humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in Gaza must end now,” the governments of Britain, France and Germany said in a joint statement Friday.

Experts criticized the planned airdrops as largely symbolic and warned that they were unlikely to provide enough aid to the roughly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, who are in dire conditions after 21 months of war.

Nearly 1 in 3 people in the territory is not eating for days at a time, according to the United Nations’ World Food Program. Gaza health authorities say that acute malnutrition is rising and that children have died.

On Friday, the United Nations accused Israel of throwing up “bureaucratic, logistical, administrative and other operational obstacles” to the distribution of aid. Those restrictions compound other problems with getting food to hungry people, the U.N.’s office of humanitarian affairs said, including attacks on convoys by armed criminals inside Gaza.

“Why use airdrops when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders?” said Juliette Touma, the chief spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. “It’s much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper,” she added.

Israeli officials say they have not limited the number of trucks entering the territory, and they say the U.N. has failed to distribute hundreds of truckloads’ worth of food and other provisions from border crossings deeper into the Gaza Strip.

Ceasefire talks to end the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian armed group, have stalled. Many Gaza residents had hoped a truce would allow food to flow freely into the enclave. But on Thursday, the Israeli government and the United States announced that they were recalling negotiators from Qatar, where they had held talks with Hamas.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.