What if help could fall from the sky? Faced with a situation described as “desperate”, the United States announced, Friday March 1, that it would participate “in the coming days”, and for the first time, in air drops of humanitarian packages in the Strip. Gaza, besieged by the Israeli army. “We will join our friends from Jordan and other countries,” said President Joe Biden, receiving Italian head of government Giorgia Meloni at the White House.
“Innocent people are trapped in a terrible war, unable to feed their families, and you saw the response when they tried to get help,” he said, referring to the tragedy. , Thursday, February 29, during a distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza, where more than 110 people died. The American president also stressed that the United States would “seek to open other access routes to Gaza, including the possibility of a maritime corridor to deliver large quantities of humanitarian aid.” Questioned by journalists, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, John Kirby, clarified shortly after that this will not be a unique operation.
Until now, the United States has not carried out such aid drops, judging their effectiveness to be limited. But while the Gaza Strip is, according to the UN, threatened with famine, and awaiting a ceasefire agreement, Washington’s position has evolved.
More expensive and risky
Faced with the desperate situation, foreign military planes have already parachuted pallets of humanitarian aid. Starting with the Jordanian aircraft: King Abdullah II even participated in one of these operations. A video shows the monarch in military fatigues aboard a plane dropping urgent medical supplies to field hospitals. Amman organizes most of the airdrops over Gaza, with support from countries including the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. Monday February 26, one of these deliveries was carried out by a C-130 plane belonging to the French army. But some packages held by a parachute ended up in the sea, and several Palestinians swam to collect the pallets.
The Air and Space Force, in charge of the mission, justified itself by explaining the drop took place above water in order to prevent a person from being injured by a pallet, whose weight can reach several hundred kilos. There were fewer difficulties during the first joint airdrop operation by France and Jordan last January. The seven tonnes of “humanitarian and health freight” landed in secure areas as close as possible to the Jordanian field hospital in the Gaza Strip.
Belgium, for its part, should also soon organize an airdrop of food and humanitarian equipment by A400M military plane. On Thursday February 29, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also declared her desire to participate in these operations in which several Egyptian and United Arab Emirates aircraft took part on the same day.
But these drops have several disadvantages, including the risk of injuring an individual. For Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN agency for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), airdrops pose “many problems”. “Help arriving in this way can only be a last resort,” he insisted. “Transfer by land is simply better, more efficient and less expensive.” Except that nearly a thousand trucks are stuck and waiting at the Egyptian border, according to the UN.
“A drop of water in the ocean”
For Jeremy Konyndyk, president of the NGO Refugees International, airdrops can “only be useful at the margins”. A plane can drop the equivalent of the load of two trucks, but at a cost ten times higher, he told the BBC on Friday. And international actors are well aware of this: an American official estimated that these airdrops “could only be a drop in the ocean” compared to the needs of the population on site.
There are criticisms in the American media. Some believe that Joe Biden’s gesture only serves to mask his reluctance to use his influence to force Israel to be more cooperative in providing humanitarian aid. Faced with his counterpart, President Benjamin Netanyahu, the tenant of the White House has chosen until now not to use a powerful lever that the United States has over Israel: the dependence of the Jewish state on the weapons. On December 29, 2023, the American government announced, without going through Congress, the “emergency” sale to Israel of artillery ammunition for an amount of $147.5 million.