Can food airdrops avert mass starvation in beleaguered Gaza?

Sources within the humanitarian aid sector say that in the claimed absence of any alternative, the use of airdrops and the planned pier in Gaza will at least bring some relief. (AFP)
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Updated 13 March 2024
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Can food airdrops avert mass starvation in beleaguered Gaza?

  • Enclave has endured months of bombardment and effective siege since Israel launched air-and-ground invasion
  • Opinion divided on whether ongoing airdrops by the US and five Arab countries can make a dent in the problem

LONDON: The US and its Arab allies appear to have finally circumvented the biggest obstructions in the path of food-aid flow to the neediest residents of the Gaza Strip. But averting a humanitarian disaster is still a work in progress.

With Israel proving unable or unwilling to facilitate the entry of aid by road to the beleaguered enclave, the US has begun efforts to bring relief to the millions of Palestinians on the brink of starvation.

Gaza has endured months of bombardment and effective siege since Israel launched an air-and-ground invasion in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7. According to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, some 30,500 Palestinians have been killed, 70,500 injured and 7,000 have gone missing since the violence began.

News that the US would begin airdrops of food and other supplies over Gaza came on the very day 100 Palestinians were killed by gunfire as they tried to reach a relief convoy. Israel denied that its forces were responsible for all the deaths, but the incident convinced the US and its Arab partners that they had to step in.




The WFP said that just six tons of aid were airdropped over Gaza last week, against 200 tons that sat in a 14-truck convoy waiting to be let through by Israel. (AFP)

President Joe Biden described the loss of life as “heart-breaking,” adding that the desperation of innocent people caught up in the war was starkly portrayed by the incident involving the relief convoy.

Biden said: “You saw the response when they tried to get aid in. And we need to do more, and the US will do more. In the coming days, we are going to join with our friends in Jordan and others in providing airdrops of additional food and supplies.”

Several days after this, the US added to its airdrop strategy a proposal to build a temporary dock on the northern Gaza coast to ferry provisions in from Cyprus by sea — an Israeli-approved humanitarian maritime corridor connecting the territory with the Mediterranean country.

That announcement, part of Biden’s final State of the Union address before the November elections, saw the US president promise that the pier, to be constructed by the US military, would allow Gaza to “receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.”




A military plane drops humanitarian aid over northern Gaza. (AFP)

Promising “no US boots on the ground,” Biden said that the pier “would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”

While the promises have been clear, the details surrounding them have been opaque, with no information given on how much aid the US and its allies intend to airdrop over the Palestinian territory.

Indeed, the pledge to construct a pier has raised a number of important questions. Number one is how the aid would be distributed, given the US pledge that none of its troops would set foot on Gazan soil.

Gershon Baskin, Middle East director for the International Communities Organization, says the need for a partner on the ground could present its own future challenges, particularly with Israel representing the only viable option.

“I think with the vacuum of governance, the Israeli government has a responsibility to take this on and to protect the aid,” he told Arab News.

“If it does not want relief materials to be cornered by Hamas, then the Israeli government needs to be doing the protecting. And this might all happen, but that, in turn, brings the danger of creating an Israeli military government in Gaza. This is not something you want long term.”




Seven countries are involved in the operation to airdrop aid to the people in Gaza. (AFP)

Biden’s SOTU address suggested that he expected Israeli authorities to take on the security role, especially when he said the country “must also do its part.”

He added: “To the leadership of Israel, I say, humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.”

Media reports on Monday said that Israel was considering arming some Palestinian individuals or clans in Gaza to provide security protection for aid convoys into the enclave as part of wider planning for the supply of humanitarian relief after the fighting ends.

INNUMBERS

7 — Countries taking part in Gaza food airdrop operations.

2.2m — People in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity in Gaza.

1.4m — People reached since the start of the current crisis.

$760m — Money needed for WFP operations until end of 2024.

Source: WFP

Soon afterward, a Hamas-linked website warned Palestinian individuals or groups against cooperating with Israel to provide security for aid convoys.

A senior US official said that the Biden plan for a US-built pier could become operational with or without Israel’s cooperation.




According to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, some 30,500 Palestinians have been killed, 70,500 injured and 7,000 have gone missing since the violence began. (AFP)

“The president directed that we look at all options, that we don’t wait for the Israelis and that we pursue every channel possible to get assistance into Gaza,” the official told Arab News.

For weeks, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an American commentator on Gaza affairs brought up in Gaza City, had advocated via X for air dropping aid into the enclave, tagging everyone from President Biden to World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain.

In a post on March 2, Alkhatib, who calls himself “a pragmatic realist,” wrote: “Stop Dismissing Gaza Food Airdrops! When I first began putting together talking points and ideas for a big push to conduct food airdrops over Gaza in late December of 2023, I reached out to many pro-Palestine activists, advocates and experts in the humanitarian field.

He added: “Airdrops are typically considered a method of last resort due to their associated costs and general inefficiency from planes’ limited cargo delivery capacity compared to ships or trucks.

“But over time, and as I continued pushing, writing and engaging multiple parties and nations, many opened up to the idea of dispersed large-scale airdrops over Gaza, particularly in the isolated and famished north. This led to the large airdrops by Jordan, Egypt and the UAE, paving the way for the US to embrace this option.”

Sources within the humanitarian aid sector say that in the claimed absence of any alternative, the use of airdrops and the planned pier in Gaza will at least bring some relief.

However, they told Arab News that there are viable alternatives to air and sea aid.




US aircraft as part of a joint operation with Jordan and Egypt have been involved in delivering aid to Palestinians. (AFP)

One option popular with aid groups and NGOS seen as vital to staving off looming mass starvation is for the Israelis to remove all impediments to the flow of aid by trucks into Gaza.

While welcoming the Biden administration’s proposed sea corridor, Sigrid Kaag, the UN’s humanitarian, and reconstruction coordinator in Gaza, said that “air and sea is not a substitute for land — and nobody says otherwise.”

Similarly, a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees spokesperson said: “The most straightforward way of getting aid into the Gaza Strip is to use the existing (road) crossings.”

The UN and the World Food Programme have warned that “if nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza.”

Ghina Bou Chacra, a spokesperson for Amnesty International, made it clear that what was needed was for Israel to lift its blockade on the entry of aid trucks.

“Israeli authorities have time and time again refused to take steps to ensure adequate access to humanitarian aid in Gaza,” Chacra told Arab News.




The amount of aid that can be dispensed by truck dwarfs what Palestinians in Gaza are seeing being dropped from the skies. (AFP)

“They must open all the access points and crossings to enable humanitarian organizations to transfer aid more rapidly into Gaza.

“They must do this on an even larger scale to areas in need and also ensure that humanitarian operations are protected from military attacks.”

Chacra added: “The roads are accessible and there are hundreds of trucks full of humanitarian aid at Gaza’s border (with Egypt) waiting for Israeli clearance.”

Without details on the movement of aid by sea, it is hard to compare, but when looking at air and road, the amount of aid that can be dispensed by truck dwarfs what Palestinians in Gaza are seeing being dropped from the skies.




Palestinians run toward food parcels airdropped onto a Gazan beach. (AFP)

The WFP said that just six tons of aid were airdropped over Gaza last week, against 200 tons that sat in a 14-truck convoy waiting to be let through by Israel.

Both Chacra and Jamie Shea, associate fellow of the International Security Programme at Chatham House, described the airdrops as a wasteful and inefficient means of dispersing aid.

Chacra further cautioned that the strategy was “potentially dangerous,” just hours before news broke that five people had been killed and 10 injured in Gaza after being hit by a pallet of aid.

The accident occurred close to the enclave’s Al-Shati coastal refugee camp on March 8, with reports claiming the pallet struck a group of men and children — who were awaiting its arrival on the ground — after the parachute attached to the aid payload failed to deploy.

“Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly warned that air drops should only ever be used as a last resort — when delivery by road or sea is impossible,” Chacra said.




News that the US would begin airdrops of food and other supplies over Gaza came on the very day 100 Palestinians were killed by gunfire as they tried to reach a relief convoy. (AFP)

According to Alkhatib, the Palestinian-American commentator, “large-scale airdrops over Gaza are requiring the use of hundreds of parachutes like nothing we’ve seen in recent years, presenting a host of challenges that are gradually being overcome and addressed.”

Shea suggested that in the absence of good alternatives, the US could try something like the 1948 Berlin airlift, when, with its European allies, Washington flew hundreds of planes loaded with aid to Tempelhof Airport to feed the West Berlin population and force the USSR to end its blockade of the city.

“Stalin did not shoot at US planes and the only casualties were from forced landings. It would require Western or Arab troops on the ground to unload and service aircraft, protect the airport from looters and store food prior to distribution,” Shea said.

“Simply dropping off the food and supplies directly to the civilian population would undoubtedly lead to much of it ending up in the hands of the black market or Hamas.”

Echoing the view of many analysts, Shea said that with Biden under political pressure at home, the airdrops were certainly “a good way of showing to Democratic Party voters that the US cares about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and is putting pressure on the Israelis to seriously address this dire situation.”

Moreover, he said, as supplies start to arrive in Gaza via airdrops, the flow of aid — no matter how insufficient — is giving Israel a “safety valve.”




Over 2 million Palestinians are facing acute food insecurity in Gaza. (AFP)

He added: “In sharing the responsibility with other countries, Israel is suddenly not under pressure to open its border with Gaza in a way to allow significant humanitarian supplies through.”

Meanwhile, in a post on Monday on X, Alkhatib said: “Despite being inadequate on multiple levels, in 99 percent of the time, food that’s airdropped over Gaza gets immediately collected by civilians in desperate need; part of the reason why Hamas hates airdrops is because there are limited to no opportunities for the group to steal aid.”


Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

Updated 18 February 2025
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

  • The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups

JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.

An Israeli army excavator demolishes a residential building in the Tulkarem camp for Palestinian refugees during an ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.

 


More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

People walk past shops in Homs on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 19 February 2025
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More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

  • “Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

GENEVA: More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Assad, including 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.
Assad was toppled in December in a rebel offensive, putting an end to his family’s decades-long grip on power in the Middle Eastern country and bookmarking a civil war that broke out in 2011, with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions from their homes.
The Islamist-led rebels whose offensive ousted Assad have sought to assure the international community that they have broken with their past and will respect the rights of minorities.
“Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.
“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though, otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.
At a meeting in Paris in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Turkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”
The meeting’s final statement also pledged support for Syria’s new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
 

 


Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

Updated 19 February 2025
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Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck weapons which it said belonged to the former Syrian administration in southern Syria.

 


Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

Updated 18 February 2025
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Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

  • France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco

ALGIERS: Algeria on Tuesday denounced a visit by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati to Western Sahara, after Paris recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory, as “objectionable on multiple levels.”
The vast desert territory is a former Spanish colony largely controlled by Morocco but claimed for decades by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati, who described her visit as “historic,” launched with Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid a French cultural mission in the territory’s main city, Laayoune.
An Algerian foreign ministry statement posted on social media Tuesday said the visit “reflects blatant disregard for international legality by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
“This visit reinforces Morocco’s fait accompli in Western Sahara, a territory where the decolonization process remains incomplete and the right to self-determination unfulfilled,” it said.
Dati’s trip, a first for a French official, “reflects the detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one,” the statement added.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead proposing autonomy under Morocco.
France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco.
But in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said Rabat’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” to resolve the Western Sahara dispute.
Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara.
In October, the UN Security Council called for parties to “resume negotiations” to reach a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” to the Western Sahara dispute.
In November 2020, the Polisario Front said it was ending a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco after Moroccan troops were deployed to the far south of the territory to remove independence supporters blocking the only road to Mauritania.
The Polisario Front claims the route is illegal, arguing that it did not exist when the ceasefire was established in 1991.
 

 


Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

Updated 18 February 2025
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Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

  • Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently

BAGHDAD: A major pipeline connecting Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to Turkiye is ready to reopen and resume exports, the Kurdish foreign minister said on Tuesday, potentially ending a dispute between Baghdad and Irbil that led to the closure of the pipeline in 2023.
Foreign Minister Safeen Dizayee declined to say when the pipeline would reopen but said it would mark a turning point in relations between Kurdistan and Baghdad.
Iraq’s oil minister said on Monday the Iraq-Turkiye pipeline (ITP) will resume next week.
“All arrangements that were set on the table have been agreed to, with the aim to prepare for re-exports. There shouldn’t be any hiccups. The legal aspects have been met, the technical aspects are in place,” Dizayee told Reuters by phone. “The button just has to be pushed to increase production and then re-export.”
The oil flows were halted by Turkiye in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion for unauthorized pipeline exports by the Kurdistan Regional Government between 2014 and 2018.
Negotiations to restart the pipeline have been ongoing, with US officials participating in some of the talks.
Resuming oil exports will boost the Kurdistan region’s budget, Dizayee said.
“This means Kurdistan will benefit from the federal budget and hopefully this will end the saga of (civil servants’) salaries coming or not coming, received in dribs and drabs,” Dizayee said.
Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently.
Oil producers in the Kurdistan region have had to wind down production without an export route. It will likely take some time for them to restart their oil wells and for the pipeline to use its full capacity. Before it was shut down, it transported around 450,000 barrels per day.
“They’ve invested a lot. It was a risk they took and it must pay off. They [the companies] need assurances that their investment will not be down the drain,” Dizayee said. “Compensation is something that needs to be discussed.”
An international consultancy will be brought in to do an assessment of the cost of production, expenses, cost recovery and the production sharing agreements, he said.