In Gaza, if bombs and hunger don't kill you, aid airdrops can

Into the absurd

The absurdity of aid airdrops has ignited debate on their safety and effectiveness. On his part, Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and former UN aid official, said that "airdrops are costly and indiscriminate, and usually result in the wrong people getting aid."

He's right.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including those languishing in hospitals and camps for the displaced, return with nothing, humiliated and disappointed and still desperately hungry.

This is especially true in the northern part of Gaza, where more than 300,000 Palestinians are rationing the little food and water they have, according to the World Health Organisation.

Before the war, about 500 trucks entered Gaza each day, a figure that aid agencies have not come close to reaching since the start of the conflict.

In February, just 98 trucks per day crossed into Gaza on average, according to the United Nations, compared with an average of 170 per day in January.

Devious plan

This is all part of Israel's devious plan to kill and expel as many Palestinians from Gaza as it can get away with.

The fact that countries have had to resort to airdrops in the first place shows just how much Israel has succeeded in its sinister plan, with dozens of Palestinians—especially children—dying from starvation and malnutrition.

Alarming figures indicate that acute malnutrition has surged to 16.2%, surpassing the critical threshold of 15% set by the WHO.

Meanwhile, more than half a million people in Gaza are on the brink of famine, with the entire population of 2.3 million grappling with severe food shortages, as reported by aid organisations.

The Palestinian death and injury toll—which is now well over 31,000 and 72,000, respectively—is just staggering. It only underscores just how critical and urgent the need for humanitarian aid is.

This weekend, the US declared its plans to build a pier along the Gaza coast to facilitate more aid but underlined that it could take up to two months to build. Does this mean it expects this nightmare to continue beyond two months?

And why build a pier in the first place? There are thousands of trucks full of aid that have just been sitting on the Egyptian side of the border that Israel has not allowed. Meanwhile, the trucks coming in from Israel have been blocked by Jewish settlers.

A political, not logistical problem

So it's evident to those paying attention that the problem with getting aid into Gaza is not a logistical problem but a political one. Starvation is part of Israel's collective punishment of the Palestinian people and is being used to incentivise them to leave their land.

Furthermore, the announcement of the construction of the US pier has raised eyebrows that it could serve economic and security objectives in the future and be used to further facilitate the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

As Western governments grapple with an increasingly outraged public over its support for Israel amid this ongoing atrocity and elections in the US and UK are fast approaching, it seems to those who are paying attention that the airdrops are more about optics than a sincere attempt to alleviate Palestinian suffering.