Israel's military says airdrops of aid will begin in Gaza as hunger grows
The statement late Saturday followed months of experts' warnings of famine amid Israeli restrictions on aid. International criticism, including by close allies, has grown as several hundred Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks while trying to reach food distribution sites.
The military statement did not say where the airdrops or humanitarian corridors would be. It also said the military is prepared to implement humanitarian pauses in densely populated areas. Israel's foreign ministry said late Saturday that the humanitarian pauses would start Sunday in 'civilian centers' along with humanitarian corridors.
The military 'emphasizes that combat operations have not ceased' in Gaza against Hamas, and it asserted there is 'no starvation' in the territory, where most of the population of over 2 million has been displaced into a shrinking area with little infrastructure. The majority of people rely on aid.
Later, the Israeli military released video footage of what it said were airdrops in coordination with international organizations and led by COGAT, the Israeli defense agency in charge of aid coordination in the Palestinian territory. It said the drop included seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar and canned food.
Witness accounts from Gaza have been grim. Some health workers are so weakened by hunger that they put themselves on IV drips to keep treating the badly malnourished. Parents have shown their limp and emaciated children. Wounded men have described desperate dashes for aid under gunfire.
The military statement said airdrops would be conducted in coordination with international aid organizations. It was not clear where they would be carried out. And it wasn't clear what role the recently created and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — meant as an alternate to the U.N. aid system — might play. GHF chair Johnnie Moore in a statement said the group stood ready to assist.
Israeli airstrikes and gunshots kille d at least 61 people in Gaza overnight and into Saturday, most of them shot dead while seeking aid, according to Palestinian health officials and the local ambulance service.
The airdrops were requested by neighboring Jordan, and a Jordanian official said they mainly will drop food and milk formula. The United Arab Emirates said airdrops would start 'immediately.' Britain said it plans to work with partners to airdrop aid and evacuate children requiring medical assistance.
But the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, warned that airdrops are 'expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians' and won't reverse the increasing starvation or prevent aid diversion.
While Israel's army has said it allows aid into the enclave with no limit on the trucks that can enter, the U.N. says it is hampered by military restrictions on its movements and criminal looting. The Hamas-run police had provided security for aid delivery, but it has been unable to operate after being targeted by airstrikes.
Israel on Saturday said over 250 trucks carrying aid from the U.N. and other organizations entered Gaza this week. About 600 trucks entered per day during the latest ceasefire that Israel ended in March.
Israel faces growing international pressure. More than two dozen Western-aligned countries and over 100 charity and human rights groups have called for an end to the war, harshly criticizing Israel's blockade and a new aid delivery model it has rolled out.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food, mostly near the new aid sites run by the GHF, an American contractor, the U.N. human rights office says.
The charities and rights groups said their own staff struggled to get enough food.
Inside Gaza, children with no preexisting conditions have begun to starve to death.
'We only want enough food to end our hunger,' said Wael Shaaban at a charity kitchen in Gaza City as he tried to feed his family of six.
Meanwhile, an activist boat from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition trying to reach Gaza with aid, the Handala, livestreamed video showing Israeli forces boarding around midnight.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement on X that the navy stopped a vessel it identified as the Navarn from entering Palestinian territorial waters off the Gaza coast. It said the vessel was safely making its way to Israeli shores and all the passengers were safe.
'Unauthorized attempts to breach the blockade are dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts,' the ministry said.
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Atlantic
5 hours ago
- Atlantic
‘We're Trying to Do the Best We Can Before We Die'
George Anton is hungry, but he's become used to the sensation—the urgent, aching feeling in his stomach, the heaviness of his limbs. He hardly has time to acknowledge the discomfort, given all the work he has to do. He is the operations manager for an aid-distribution program operating through the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City, the sole remaining Catholic church in Gaza. Anton lives at the church in a single room that he shares with his wife and three daughters. Four hundred people are sheltering there, he told me; it was once a sanctuary from the war. Recently, however, the fighting has come to encircle it. An Israeli tank shell struck the church early last month, killing three people there, according to a statement by the patriarchate. This week, daily pauses in the fighting have calmed the neighborhood somewhat, but not enough for the church to resume aid programs: food hampers, a communal laundry, psychosocial support programs and clinics. Some of these functioned even before the current war. But these days, the church has nothing to distribute. Its food pantry is empty, and supplies have run out. When I reached Anton by phone on Wednesday, he was busy looking for a way to bring more food to the church's pantry. Anton is one of hundreds of Gazan aid workers—affiliated with religious, international, and local organizations—who are trying to find and distribute supplies to keep others alive. Complicating their work is their own hunger and exhaustion, as well as the paucity of food coming into the territory altogether. An alert on Tuesday from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an organization made up of United Nations agencies and aid groups, noted that the 'latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.' The people sheltering at the church have, in the absence of communal supplies, begun to ration their own small stashes of food items, mostly gathered from the markets when the situation was stable enough for them to venture out. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has become the official mechanism for dispensing food aid, has very few distribution points, all in areas far from the church. Many Gazans fear visiting these sites: According to the UN, more than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces while seeking assistance from GHF, the UN, and other aid convoys. (GHF has called these numbers 'false and exaggerated statistics.') I spoke with one Palestinian aid worker who did try to get food from GHF. In early June, Youssef Alwikhery, an occupational therapist with Medical Aid for Palestinians, hadn't eaten for close to a week. Several of his brothers, uncles, and cousins had tried to get food from GHF before—30 attempts altogether, he estimated—but only one had succeeded in bringing a box back. So Alwikhery rose one morning at 3 a.m. and made his way to Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza, a main thoroughfare leading to a distribution point that was a little over a mile from his home. He saw thousands of people. Some started running toward the distribution point, and he ran too. 'It was like a game, like a death game,' he told me. Soon came the sound of shots and explosions. Alwikhery turned back. 'It's not help. It's like Russian roulette,' he said. 'If you want to run, you might die, or you might get injured. You might get a box. This is the formula. This is the point.' Alwikhery now pays exorbitant prices for small amounts of food at the market, and he eats just one meal a day. He lives with his parents and his brothers' families, including 9- and 11-year-old children. They, too, eat only one meal a day, usually around four or five in the evening, and if a family member needs to cook, they burn whatever they can, because the price of fuel is high. One photo Alwikhery sent me shows his occupational-therapy textbook being used as kindling. I first met Alwikhery in the summer of 2022, at Al-Awda Hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northernmost part of Gaza, when we worked with the same international medical organization. He specialized in helping patients with congenital disabilities carry out their daily activities. Israel ordered the closure of Al-Awda in May, and now Alwikhery works in Medical Aid for Palestinians' emergency clinic in central Gaza. He told me that he finds the state of his pediatric patients disturbing; he described children with cerebral palsy who couldn't move their bodies to do simple exercises because they were so calorically deprived. My call with Anton was at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, and so far that day, he told me, he had consumed nothing but coffee and tea. He rises early, at 6 a.m. The first thing he does is check to make sure the church's solar panels, water tanks, and piping are still functioning and did not sustain any damage overnight. Then he reads the news, goes to morning prayers, and calls his colleagues in Jerusalem for updates on when food trucks might reach Gaza and how they will be secured. Around 4 p.m. the day we spoke, his wife and three daughters, ages 9, 11, and 14, had shared one can of tuna with some bread. In recent weeks, his girls have taken to spending much of their time in the family's room, sleeping and reading to conserve their energy. The oldest and youngest used to enjoy soccer and basketball, but now they don't feel safe going out, and anyway, they're too tired. Anton told me he encourages them to pretend they're fasting, as though for Lent. Photos: Starvation and chaos in Gaza Sometimes, fellow aid workers or journalists tell Anton about families on the brink, and he gathers any extra supplies he can from the families sheltering in the church to deliver by foot. Recently, a journalist told him about a father of six who used a wheelchair and could not access income or aid. This man had no extended family nearby to share resources. Anton was able to gather only enough food to last the family approximately one week. When conditions were safe enough last Saturday, he delivered the food to the family's tent. The children, two boys and two girls, were 'really suffering,' he told me. 'They're like skeletons, you know.' Families such as that one, where one or more members have a disability, or whose kinship networks are small or nonexistent, are among those hardest hit by starvation, both Anton and Alwikhery told me. Anton's day would not finish after we spoke. He said he would try to find himself some bread later in the night. He and some other people sheltering at the church would stay up to monitor the hostilities in the neighborhood, tend to anyone needing help or comfort, and assist some of the elderly to use the communal bathrooms in the dark. 'We're trying to do the best we can before we die, you know,' he told me. 'Because I'm telling you, if this situation will last for a longer time, all of us will die hungry.'
Los Angeles Times
6 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Why not enough food is reaching people in Gaza even after Israel eased its blockade
International outcry over images of emaciated children and increasing reports of hunger-related deaths have pressured Israel to let more aid into the Gaza Strip. This week, Israel paused fighting in parts of Gaza and airdropped food. But aid groups and Palestinians say the changes have only been incremental and are not enough to reverse what food experts say is a ' worst-case scenario of famine' unfolding in the war-ravaged territory. The new measures have brought an uptick in the number of aid trucks entering Gaza. But almost none of it reaches U.N. warehouses for distribution. Instead, nearly all the trucks are stripped of their cargo by crowds that overwhelm them on the roads as they drive from the borders. The crowds are a mix of Palestinians desperate for food and gangs armed with knives, axes or pistols who loot the goods to then hoard or sell. Many have also been killed trying to grab the aid. Witnesses say Israeli troops often open fire on crowds around the aid trucks, and hospitals have reported hundreds killed or wounded. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots to control crowds or at people who approach its forces. The alternative food distribution system run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has also been marred by violence. International airdrops of aid have resumed. But aid groups say airdrops deliver only a fraction of what trucks can supply. Also, many parcels have landed in now-inaccessible areas that Palestinians have been told to evacuate, while others have plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, forcing people to swim out to retrieve drenched bags of flour. Here's a look at why the aid isn't being distributed: The U.N. says that longstanding restrictions on the entry of aid have created an unpredictable environment, and that while a pause in fighting might allow more aid in, Palestinians are not confident aid will reach them. 'This has resulted in many of our convoys offloaded directly by starving, desperate people as they continue to face deep levels of hunger and are struggling to feed their families,' said Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. 'The only way to reach a level of confidence is by having a sustained flow of aid over a period of time,' she said. Israel blocked food entirely from entering Gaza for 2 ½ months starting in March. Since it eased the blockade in late May, it allowed in a trickle of aid trucks for the U.N., about 70 a day on average, according to official Israeli figures. That is far below the 500-600 trucks a day that U.N. agencies say are needed — the amount that entered during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year. Much of the aid is stacked up just inside the border in Gaza because U.N. trucks could not pick it up. The U.N says that was because of Israeli military restrictions on its movements and because of the lawlessness in Gaza. Israel has argued that it is allowing sufficient quantities of goods into Gaza and tried to shift the blame to the U.N. 'More consistent collection and distribution by U.N. agencies and international organizations = more aid reaching those who need it most in Gaza,' the Israeli military agency in charge of aid coordination, COGAT, said in a statement this week. With the new measures this week, COGAT, says 220-270 truckloads a day were allowed into Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that the U.N. was able to pick up more trucks, reducing some of the backlog at the border. Cherevko said there have been 'minor improvements' in approvals by the Israeli military for its movements and some 'reduced waiting times' for trucks along the road. But she said the aid missions are 'still facing constraints.' Delays of military approval still mean trucks remain idle for long periods, and the military still restricts the routes that the trucks can take onto a single road, which makes it easy for people to know where the trucks are going, U.N officials say. Antoine Renard, who directs the World Food Program's operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, said Wednesday that it took nearly 12 hours to bring in 52 trucks on a 6 mile route. 'While we're doing everything that we can to actually respond to the current wave of starvation in Gaza, the conditions that we have are not sufficient to actually make sure that we can break that wave,' he said. Aid workers say the changes Israel has made in recent days are largely cosmetic. 'These are theatrics, token gestures dressed up as progress,' said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam's policy lead for Israel and the Palestinian territories. 'Of course, a handful of trucks, a few hours of tactical pauses and raining energy bars from the sky is not going to fix irreversible harm done to an entire generation of children that have been starved and malnourished for months now,' she said. As desperation mounts, Palestinians are risking their lives to get food, and violence is increasing, say aid workers. Muhammad Shehada, a political analyst from Gaza who is a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said aid retrieval has turned into the survival of the fittest. 'It's a Darwin dystopia, the strongest survive,' he said. A truck driver said Wednesday that he has driven food supplies four times from the Zikim crossing on Gaza's northern border. Every time, he said, crowds a kilometer long (0.6 miles) surrounded his truck and took everything on it after he passed the checkpoint at the edge of the Israeli military-controlled border zones. He said some were desperate people, while others were armed. He said that on Tuesday, for the first time, some in the crowd threatened him with knives or small arms. He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for his safety. Ali al-Derbashi, another truck driver, said that during one trip in July armed men shot the tires, stole everything, including the diesel and batteries and beat him. 'If people weren't starving, they wouldn't resort to this,' he said. Israel has said it has offered the U.N. armed escorts. The U.N. has refused, saying it can't be seen to be working with a party to the conflict – and pointing to the reported shootings when Israeli troops are present. Israel hasn't given a timeline for how long the measures it implemented this week will continue, heightening uncertainty and urgency among Palestinians to seize the aid before it ends. Palestinians say the way it's being distributed, including being dropped from the sky, is inhumane. 'This approach is inappropriate for Palestinians, we are humiliated,' said Rida, a displaced woman. Momen Abu Etayya said he almost drowned because his son begged him to get aid that fell into the sea during an aid drop. 'I threw myself in the ocean to death just to bring him something,' he said. 'I was only able to bring him three biscuit packets'. Mednick writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Fatma Khaled in Cairo and Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed to this report.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘This is considered death, not aid or food': People in Gaza react to Israel airdropping aid packages
The Israeli military said that over 43 aid packages were airdropped into Gaza on Thursday. The packages contain food for residents in southern and northern Gaza - which residents say is like 'a drop in the ocean.'
