Can Gaza aid drops work?

Israel's decision on Friday to allow planes to airdrop aid into Gaza are an attempt to whitewash "a policy of deliberate starvation" and will do little deal with the growing humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

Even with an additional daily "pause" in military action now allowing UN agency lorries through on the ground, the aid delivered in the past two days is a "drop in the ocean", said UN aid chief Tom Fletcher.

After months of food shortages caused by Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, a quarter of the two million people living there are "facing famine-like conditions", said the UN's World Food Programme, with "almost 100,000 women and children suffering from severe acute malnutrition".

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What did the commentators say?

There appears to be "near unanimity" among aid agencies that airdrops will not do enough to meet the growing hunger in Gaza, said BBC correspondent Joe Inwood. It's a "grotesque distraction from the reality of what's needed on the ground" right now, the International Rescue Committee's Ciarán Donnelly told the broadcaster.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, posted on X that they were "a distraction and smokescreen".

There are also risks involved in dropping thousands of tonnes of food onto the densely populated Gaza Strip. Last year, 12 people drowned trying to collect airdropped aid that had landed in the Mediterranean Sea. And, on Sunday, 11 Palestinians were injured when a pallet "fell directly on tents where displaced people are living", said Al Jazeera. Even when they land safely, airdrops often lead to chaotic scenes as people rush to grab as much as they can.

Airdrops are "nearly impossible to regulate", said the BBC's Inwood, and therefore the supplies could get diverted by Hamas and other armed groups – an issue Israel said was its "primary objection" to UN aid efforts and the reason behind its recent aid blockade.

There is consensus among both humanitarian and military analysts is that airdrops "should be used only as a last resort, in areas that are otherwise inaccessible", said The Washington Post. This is a view shared by UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy who said yesterday that, "whilst airdrops will help to alleviate the worst of the suffering, land routes serve as the only viable and sustainable means of providing aid into Gaza".

What next?

Although Israel's military insists it will not be limiting the number of supply trucks that can enter Gaza on "secure routes" during the daily 6am to 11pm window, it is unlikely that full resumption of aid will happen until a ceasefire is agreed.

Donald Trump has said the situation in Gaza "is one of the main reasons" he's meeting Keir Starmer in Scotland today. And Starmer has today called the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza "an absolute catastrophe".

"News that Israel will allow countries to airdrop aid into Gaza has come far too late", Starmer wrote in The Mirror, "but we will do everything we can to get aid in via this route".