Gaza airdrops deliver a fraction of what trucks could, aid groups warn

Of the scant paths for food aid to reach Gazans facing starvation, one is particularly ineffective, aid groups warn: dropping pallets of food from planes.

Airdrops, tried briefly by the United States and others in March of last year, resumed over the weekend, amid a starvation crisis that the world’s leading hunger monitor said this week had “worsened dramatically” to the point of famine.

Israel made an initial drop Saturday, followed by aid flights from other countries in the region, including Jordan, amid mounting international criticism over the impact of Israeli policies in Gaza. Israel also said it would facilitate more deliveries of food by trucks, open secure corridors and pause fighting each day in certain areas to allow aid to increase.

As aid groups scramble to try to meet the needs of Gazans, they warn that airdrops, while better than no aid at all, should not be seen as a solution.

“While we welcome any effort to get aid to desperate civilians in Gaza, we know that airdrops are very expensive, often ineffective and not sustainable,” said Katy Crosby, senior director for policy and advocacy for the international aid group Mercy Corps.

David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization, and Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, among others, say the way to get aid to Gaza is clear: Open land crossings to allow in a high volume of trucks and allow aid groups unfettered humanitarian access to reach Gazans in need.

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, had the equivalent of 6,000 trucks in Jordan and Egypt waiting to be allowed into Gaza as of Saturday, Lazzarini said in a statement posted to X. Israel’s military says it does not limit trucks entering Gaza.

Israel accuses Hamas of corrupting the long-standing U.N.-coordinated system of aid delivery by systematically stealing and looting. It also says humanitarian groups have failed to collect and distribute the aid - charges they deny.

Before the war, the Gaza Strip depended on about 500 truckloads of aid per day, under strict regulations imposed by Israel and Egypt.

After the war in Gaza began in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the number of trucks fluctuated but steeply declined overall, with many days seeing only a few dozen, and with Israel controlling major parts of the aid delivery process. Aid groups report onerous inspections, limited land entry points and faulty deconfliction channels.

Despite the struggle to deliver aid by other methods, airdrops are “considered an absolute last resort” in the humanitarian community - used when there are “actual geographic barriers” such as flooding and earthquakes that block roads, said Crosby, of Mercy Corps.

Airdrops, which are not precision-guided, can easily go astray, she said. In Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, the risks are particularly high. People can be crushed by the pallets of food, which weigh more than 1,000 pounds, or they can chase off-course boxes into dangerous areas.

“You are essentially having to run after a parachute, to put it bluntly,” Crosby said.

Once dropped goods reach the ground, there is nobody standing by to organize distribution. Desperate people may rush to collect food, while the most vulnerable - children, women, the elderly and disabled people - often struggle to get it.

“Airdrops are not a solution. They really are theater, it’s theatrics,” said Bushra Khalidi, the policy lead for the aid group Oxfam in the Palestinian territories. Lazzarini echoed that view, calling them a “distraction.”

The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the branch of the Israeli military that handles civil affairs in the occupied territories, did not respond immediately to a request to comment on the criticism of airdrops.

Humanitarian groups have long raised alarms of a looming famine in Gaza. More than 147 people, including 88 children, have died of malnutrition, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

After imposing an 11-week total block on all food and medicine entering Gaza in March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his decision to ease restrictions was in part an effort to placate international allies.

The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new organization with opaque origins and funding sources, has in recent months taken over the distribution of aid in areas controlled by the Israeli military. Hundreds of civilians have been shot dead in the crush to enter these distribution sites, many of them allegedly felled by Israeli soldiers positioned nearby. Israel says its forces fired warning shots.

The recent airdrops are a return to a method tried earlier in the war. The United States under President Joe Biden joined the effort to drop aid to Gaza early last year. Military aircraft - from the U.S., Jordan, Britain and others - flew and dropped crates wrapped in protective plastic and fitted with shock-absorbing bases.

Within six weeks early last year, Britain made 11 airdrops carrying a total of 121 tons of aid from 120 parachutes - about 11 tons per drop. In an announcement at the time, then-Foreign Secretary David Cameron said: “It is only by land that we will be able to transport the full amount of humanitarian assistance needed.”

In that initial wave, the airdrops came under criticism from rights groups as inefficient - and even deadly. Five people were killed by a crate of aid whose parachute malfunctioned in March 2024, and 12 Gazans drowned when they tried to reach airdropped boxes that landed in the sea, Gaza health authorities said.

The U.N.’s Lazzarini said that driving aid into the territory is easier, more effective, cheaper and safer. It’s also “more dignified” for the people of Gaza, he said.

Some criticism has come from inside Gaza as well. Renad Attallah, an 11-year-old in Gaza with a large online following, posted on Instagram: “I want to tell you that airdropping aid is an ineffective and humiliating method. … Just because we are being starved doesn’t mean we should accept humiliation.”