Mon. Jul 28th, 2025
Bowen: Israel’s Aid Increase Seen as Response to International Outcry Over Gaza Starvation

Amid sustained international condemnation over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which many attribute to Israeli policies, Israel has announced measures intended to “improve the humanitarian response,” according to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

These measures include allowing airdrops of aid, with the IDF conducting its first airdrop overnight, followed by a subsequent drop by the United Arab Emirates air force on Sunday.

The IDF also stated it would implement a “tactical pause in military activity” in select areas and establish “designated humanitarian corridors… to refute the false claim on international starvation.”

Hamas has denounced these actions as a “deception,” accusing Israel of attempting to “whitewash its image before the world.”

Subsequent to the announcement of the “tactical pause,” reports emerged of an Israeli airstrike resulting in the deaths of Wafaa Harara and her four children: Sara, Areej, Judy, and Iyad.

While Israel maintains it is not responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and denies imposing restrictions on aid, these assertions are disputed by European allies, the United Nations, and various aid organizations operating in the region.

These newly announced measures may indicate a tacit acknowledgment by Israel of the need for increased action.

More likely, they represent a gesture towards allies who have strongly criticized Israel’s role in the alleged starvation in Gaza.

A recent statement, issued on Friday, July 25th, by Britain, France, and Germany, was particularly direct.

“We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and urgently allow the UN and humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work in order to take action against starvation. Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law.”

Following a total blockade of aid into Gaza, Israel imposed restrictions on the approval of aid contents and the movement of aid convoys. In collaboration with the United States, a new aid distribution system, the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF), has been established, reportedly intended to replace the United Nations-operated aid network. Israel alleges that Hamas has diverted aid from the UN system, a claim the UN states has not yet been substantiated with evidence.

The UN and other agencies have refused to cooperate with the GHF system, citing concerns over its perceived inhumane and militarized nature. According to the UN, over 1,000 Palestinians have been fatally shot while attempting to reach the GHF’s four distribution sites.

A retired US special forces colonel who worked for the GHF in Gaza told the BBC that he witnessed American colleagues and IDF soldiers opening fire on civilians. Both deny they have targeted civilians.

Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has already criticized the GHF’s methods. Israel informed him that his visa would not be renewed after he posted on social media a month ago that the GHF system had brought to Gaza “conditions created to kill… what we are seeing is carnage. It is weaponised hunger. It is forced displacement. It’s a death sentence for people just trying to survive. It appears to be the erasure of Palestinian life”.

Following Israel’s announcement of the new measures, Whittall stated to the BBC that “the humanitarian situation in Gaza has never been worse.”

He said for Israel’s new measures to change matters for the better it would have to reduce the time it takes to allow trucks to transit the crossings into Gaza and improve the routes provided by the IDF for the convoys to use.

Israel would also need to provide “meaningful assurances that the people gathering to take food off the back of the trucks won’t be shot by Israeli forces”.

Whittall has been going in and out of Gaza since the war started, though that is now ending unless Israel decides not to withdraw his visa after all. He says that as IDF military operations continue “there remains an abhorrent disregard for humanitarian law”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant are already the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last year, accused of joint criminal responsibility for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” Netanyahu, Gallant and the Israeli state deny the allegations.

Israel released footage of a transport plane dropping pallets of aid into Gaza at night. The IDF stated it had delivered seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar and tinned food.

In other wars I have seen aid being dropped, both from the aircraft themselves and close up on the ground as it lands.

Air dropping aid is an act of desperation. It can also look good on television, and spread a feel-good factor that something, at last, is being done.

It is a crude process, that will not on its own do much to end hunger in Gaza. Only a ceasefire and an unrestricted, long term aid operation can do that. Even big transport planes do not carry as much as a small convoy of lorries.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, after the 1991 Gulf War, the US, UK and others dropped aid from C-130 transport aircraft, mostly army rations, sleeping bags and surplus winter uniforms to tens of thousands trying to survive in the open in mud and snow high in the mountains on Iraq’s border with Turkey. I flew with them and watched British and American airmen dropping aid from the rear cargo ramps of the planes several thousand feet above the people who needed it.

It was welcome enough. But when a few days later when I managed to reach the improvised camps in the mountains, I saw young men running into minefields to get aid that landed there. Some were killed and maimed in explosions. I saw families killed when heavy pallets dropped on their tents.

When Mostar was besieged during the war in Bosnia in 1993, I saw pallets of American military ‘meals ready to eat’, dropped from high altitude, scattered all over the east side of the city that was being constantly shelled. Some aid pallets crashed through roofs that had somehow not been destroyed by artillery attacks.

Professionals involved in relief operations regard dropping aid from the sky as a last resort. They use it when any other access is impossible. That’s not the case in Gaza. A short drive north is Ashdod, Israel’s modern container port. A few more hours away is the Jordanian border, which has been used regularly as a supply line for aid for Gaza.

Gaza was one of the world’s most densely populated places before the war when the population of more than two million Palestinians had access to the entire strip. In British terms, the Gaza Strip is slightly smaller than the Isle of Wight. Compared to American cities, it’s roughly the size of Philadelphia or Detroit.

Now Israel has forced most of Gaza’s people into a tiny area on the southern coast, amounting to around 17% of Gaza’s land. Most of them live in densely packed tents. It is not clear if there is even an open space for despatchers high in the sky to aim at.

Pallets of aid dropped by parachute often land far from the people who need it.

Each pallet will be fought over by desperate men trying to get food for their families, and by criminal elements who will want to sell it for profit.

Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump are expected to meet in Scotland for talks on Monday.

Keir Starmer will ask Donald Trump to resume ceasefire talks in Gaza and England prepare for their Euros final

Several aid groups say dropping food from the air onto densely populated Gaza is a risk to civilian lives.

Families say mothers Mary Sheikh al-Eid and Khadija Abu Anza were shot while seeking aid from GHF station in southern Gaza.

Israel faces increasing pressure from Western allies to lift restrictions into the flow of aid into Gaza.