We provide Israel the missiles and artillery to bomb the crap out of the Palestinians and then provide the medical supplies and food to help them survive the fruits of our labor.
U.S. Begins Aid Airdrops Over Gaza as Truce Talks Intensify
Parachutes carrying tens of thousands of meals mark an effort to get around barriers to humanitarian relief
By Summer Said, Chao Deng and Gordon LuboldFollow, WSJ
Updated March 2, 2024
The U.S. began its first airdrops of humanitarian aid to Gaza after a failed aid mission overseen by Israel two days earlier turned deadly, while negotiators in Cairo raced to rescue a plan to pause fighting in the strip before the Ramadan holiday begins around March 10.
Both moves were intended to address an increasingly pressing humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip, as the war between Israel and Hamas stretches to nearly five months and as Israeli authorities continue to restrict aid delivery by land.
Parachutes carrying about 38,000 ready-to-eat meals were released from three American military aircraft flying over southwestern Gaza on Saturday, in an initial attempt to address a woeful shortage of food in the strip. The Jordanian air force released two airdrops of food above northern Gaza in what the U.S. termed a joint mission.
The U.S. carried out its first airdrops of aid over the Gaza Strip on Saturday, just days after a failed aid mission overseen by Israel turned deadly. Photo: U.S. Air Force/Reuters
The rush to get supplies to Palestinians in Gaza comes after a deadly aid-convoy incident in northern Gaza on Thursday, which health officials in the strip say resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians. Israel, which oversaw the aid delivery, said it killed fewer than 10 people when its troops shot at a crowd of Palestinians, and that many were killed by Palestinian gunmen or trampled to death in the chaos of the moment. Israel said its troops were threatened.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants are displaced, are hungry and lack adequate access to medical care. The United Nations and aid groups have managed virtually all of the humanitarian response since the start of the war but have been limited due to the intensity of the conflict and widespread lawlessness, as well as by Israeli inspection checks at two land border crossings.
International aid groups have said that aid by air—which can deliver far less volume than by truck—falls short of what Gazans need. The groups have called for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and for Israel to allow more aid to enter by land.
“Airdrops are not the solution to relieve this suffering and distract time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale,” said the International Rescue Committee, a nonprofit based in New York.
Israel is re-evaluating how to deliver aid into northern Gaza, said an Israeli official, after its failed attempt on Thursday. Israel used unofficial crossing points to deliver at least three aid convoys to northern Gaza last week. The crossing points weren’t announced in an attempt to avoid mass gatherings of civilians around aid trucks.
U.S. officials and the U.N. have asked Israel to open new crossing points into northern Gaza to bolster aid there. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday that he was willing to bring the idea to Israel’s cabinet but that Israel believed the main challenge was in distributing the aid inside the strip, rather than getting it in.
Aid deliveries are on the agenda when Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz travels to Washington on Sunday for meetings with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Vice President Kamala Harris and congressional lawmakers. The White House said Harris will meet with Gantz on Monday to discuss a hostage deal, a temporary cease fire and expanded aid flows into Gaza.
The U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Gaza and the West Bank, Jamie McGoldrick, said that while the agency waits for additional openings to the north, it is planning to deliver food there in the coming days using a coastal path allowed by Israel. The U.N. had stopped northern deliveries of food and medical aid via that route recently due to security risks, leaving the onus on Israel to deliver assistance.
Additional aid by air has also come from Egypt, Jordan and Qatar in recent days. Egypt released yellow parachutes carrying several tons of aid above northern Gaza on Saturday, the Egyptian military said. Earlier in the week, a Jordanian mission, carried out with Egypt, Qatar, France and the United Arab Emirates, included Jordanian King Abdullah II boarding a military aircraft to help drop tons of food parcels along the Gaza coast.
The parties are hoping to address the prospect of famine across the strip and to appease Hamas, which has repeatedly said cease-fire negotiations depend on increased aid, especially to the northern half of the strip.
A long line of food and aid trucks sit outside the Rafah crossing on southern Gaza’s border with Egypt. Some trucks, including two holding water and baby formula, have waited outside the gate for more than a month, as they wait for screening by Egyptian and Israeli authorities.
The U.S. has discussed an airdrop mission for days, essentially an end-run around the problems getting aid into Gaza by ground. When President Biden on Friday announced the airdrop plan, he said additional plans for a “marine corridor” were under consideration. U.S. officials on Saturday said they were in discussions with Israel and Cyprus and working with the U.N. and commercial entities to set up a maritime route in the Mediterranean.
That corridor could take different forms, but the U.S. military has the capability to build temporary piers off the coast of Gaza that could be used to float in much more aid from U.S., international and private entities.
Talks between Israel, Hamas and their mediators were expected to kick into high gear as the two sides try to reach a cease-fire for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, starting around March 10. Israeli officials landed in Cairo on Saturday ahead of a delegation from Hamas and Qatar expected to arrive Sunday.
Israel gave Hamas a Ramadan deadline to return hostages held in Gaza or face a ground offensive in Rafah. Ramadan in recent years has been a flashpoint for violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Israel and Hamas are trying to strike a truce that would involve the exchange of dozens of Israeli hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners over the cease-fire’s first phase of about 40 days, during which Israel would also allow more aid into the strip.
Mediators will be hashing out how Israel might deliver 500 aid trucks a day and set up 200,000 tents and 60,000 caravans as temporary housing for displaced Palestinians. The current proposal says this should be done during the truce’s initial phase.
Hamas officials have told negotiators that in the coming days they might propose new figures for how many Palestinian prisoners they expect to receive in exchange for roughly 40 Israeli hostages. The latest framework being discussed in Cairo involves exchanging about 400 Palestinian prisoners for 40 of the hostages in Gaza, including five female Israeli soldiers.
Israel is expected soon to deliver a list of high-profile Palestinian prisoners whom it won’t release.
One of the main sticking points is the extent to which Israel will allow Palestinians in southern Gaza to return to the north during a potential truce. In the negotiations, Israeli officials said they would let displaced women and children return but would hold back most of the male population, according to Egyptian officials.
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, according to Israel. Israel responded with bombing and a ground operation that have killed more than 30,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities, whose figures don’t distinguish between civilians and militants. Over the course of the war, most of the population of Gaza has been pushed to the southern city of Rafah, where Israel has also said it would conduct a military operation.
Egyptian intelligence officials told their Israeli and U.S. counterparts that they have recently had trouble contacting Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, to get him to sign off on a possible deal or a list of hostages. As a way to get Sinwar to re-engage, Egypt asked Israeli and American officials to agree to pause fighting before the release of Israeli hostages.
The Cairo meetings show how a potential cease-fire isn’t out of reach, despite Israel and Hamas digging into their usual positions in public. “We face a brick wall of delusional, unrealistic Hamas demands,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a Thursday news conference. Hamas, he said, “knows its demands are delusional and is not even trying to move close to an area of agreement.”
On the other side, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan maintained that Israel’s priority was to continue fighting in Gaza. “The Israelis are still obstructing the negotiation process and trying to gain more time,” he said Friday on Al Jazeera television.
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