US Air Force C-130J Super Hercules conducts airdrop of humanitarian assistance over Gaza.USAF/DoD/ZUMA
Over the weekend, the United States and Jordan airdropped 66 bundles of aid containing 38,000 meals into Gaza. Israel’s war on the densely populated strip following the October 7 attack by Hamas has killed over 30,000 and wrought a humanitarian disaster—basic social systems have vanished and UN officials have been warning that almost a quarter of the population in Gaza, more than 500,000 people, are “one step away from famine.”
The US Central Command described the policy as “part of a sustained effort to get more aid” into the area. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced a second airdrop with an additional 36,800 meals.
But as conditions in Gaza continue to deteriorate, humanitarian aid policy experts have criticized the policy, calling airdrops inadequate and “embarrassing” for the US government. Robert Ford, a fellow at the Middle East Institute and former ambassador to Syria and Algeria, told the New York Times the airdrops are a “humiliation” for the United States, noting the “absurdity” of using the US military to deliver aid into a territory controlled by an ally. Scott Paul, humanitarian policy lead at Oxfam America, said the airdrops only served to “relieve the guilty consciences” of government officials.
As my colleague Noah Lanard reported, the UN aid agency established to help Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, was hamstrung after Israeli intelligence alleged in January that a handful of UNRWA employees had participated in Hamas’s October 7. Soon after, the Biden administration suspended funding. This created a chain reaction of countries cutting off money for UNRWA that has pushed the aid group most essential to helping Gaza to a “breaking point,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the agency. (The independent UN investigation of UNRWA remains ongoing and the United States has not independently confirmed Israel’s claims of October 7 participation.) This week, the European Union restored some of its funding to UNRWA.
The inability to get aid into Gaza has been........