Gaza, Palestine — As famine looms over the besieged Gaza Strip, food is now falling from the sky — a grim symbol of a deepening humanitarian catastrophe. While over 22,000 aid trucks loaded with food and essentials sit just kilometres from the border, Israeli restrictions continue to prevent their entry, forcing aid agencies and international partners to rely on costly and inefficient airdrop operations.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), only 14 percent of the requested humanitarian aid has been allowed into Gaza. Meanwhile, more than two million civilians remain trapped in worsening conditions, facing what human rights organisations and UN officials are calling “deliberate starvation.”
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, in a stark public statement, criticised the current approach and called for urgent political action:
“If there is political will to allow airdrops — which are highly costly, insufficient and inefficient — there should be similar political will to open the road crossings.”
Airdrops have become a symbol of desperation, not solution. They often miss their targets, are dependent on favourable weather, and fall far short of meeting the scale of humanitarian need. The airdrop approach is a last resort typically used in areas inaccessible by any other means — yet in Gaza, land crossings are geographically available but remain politically and militarily restricted.
Humanitarian agencies say the bottleneck is not logistics, but policy. Aid trucks laden with flour, medicine, fuel, and clean water supplies remain stuck at checkpoints near Rafah and Kerem Shalom, either turned back or stalled by complex vetting procedures, while Gaza’s infrastructure collapses under months of relentless bombardment and siege.
International law experts and NGOs have warned that the blockade — particularly the denial of food and medicine to civilians — may amount to a violation of international humanitarian law.
UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) have separately warned that children are dying of malnutrition and dehydration in parts of northern Gaza where aid has not been delivered for weeks.
The call from Lazzarini and others is now clear: airlifts and airdrops are not a sustainable solution. Without the immediate opening of road crossings and safe humanitarian corridors, Gaza’s crisis is set to spiral into an irreversible humanitarian collapse.
Observers say that the lack of global accountability and the politicisation of humanitarian aid is costing lives each day the blockade continues.
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