US President Joe Biden said on Friday that the United States will parachute humanitarian aid (especially food) into the Gaza Strip, then bring it into the territory from above, dropping it from planes. Other countries are already doing so, including Jordan and France, given the difficulties in getting aid to certain parts of the territory by land. Even before the war, Gaza needed dozens of trucks of aid every day: the beginning of the conflict between Israel and the radical Palestinian group Hamas slowed down, and in certain periods blocked, the entry of aid. According to what Biden said, the launches should begin “in the next few days”.
President Biden’s announcement comes a day after the killing of more than 100 Palestinians who had gathered to receive food from aid trucks. The humanitarian situation in the Strip has been very serious since the beginning of the war, also because Israel’s controls on convoys and the shortage of drivers in the Strip, among other things, have caused major delays in the distribution of aid; by land they can only enter through two border crossings, Rafah with Egypt and Kerem Shalom with Israel.
The possibility of parachuting aid had been excluded until now, given the higher cost of air transport compared to land transport and the limited quantity of goods that can be transported by a single plane, equal to that carried by two or three trucks. Presidential spokesman John Kirby said that aid drops are particularly complex operations, and that efforts will be made to prevent Hamas from appropriating the parachuted packages. On Thursday, some aid parachuted from Jordan was blown into Israeli territory by the wind. Biden also said the United States would consider opening a “maritime corridor for the delivery of large quantities of aid.”
– Read also: What is known about the massacre of Palestinians who were waiting for aid in Gaza