A Grassroots Campaign: The Urgent Need for an Air Bridge to Gaza

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens, many are calling for an air bridge to deliver vital aid to the besieged population, who are facing a brutal aggression and an ethnic cleansing campaign.

The United Nations has warned that the sector is on the brink of a real famine, citing a report by the Integrated Food Security Classification.

The report stated that severe food insecurity puts all children under five years old in the Gaza Strip at risk of acute malnutrition and premature death.

A Lifeline for the Besieged and Starving

A grassroots campaign has launched an appeal to Turkey, Jordan and Egypt to airlift aid to Gaza, where more than half a million people are facing disastrous levels of severe food insecurity, according to UN reports. This is the highest level of alert.

On January 4, 2024, France and Jordan managed to deliver about seven tons of humanitarian aid to civilians and relief workers in Gaza by air dropping it, but no date for another air drop has been announced yet.

The international community can help prevent the looming famine in Gaza by overcoming all the logistical challenges that prevent the passage of relief convoys and resorting to air dropping aid.

One of the activists in the field of charity work encouraged expanding the scope of work with the idea of ​​providing aid through the air, and said: The Gaza Strip suffers from a shortage of land-based aid; Due to the complex procedures that delay and reduce the number of trucks entering the sector, where only about 80 trucks enter daily instead of 800 before the aggression.

He added: Another problem is that those trucks stop near the crossing and do not enter Gaza, while the sector, which is being annihilated, cannot operate trucks to transport the cargo of the other trucks that do not enter the sector, which exacerbates the suffering. Moreover, after all that, much of the aid arrives spoiled due to the long wait!

The Children of Gaza are Starving!

It is worth noting that the air drop operations to deliver humanitarian aid date back to 1973, when the World Food Organization delivered UN humanitarian aid to the Western Sahara region in Morocco. The efforts lasted three years.

There have been previous cases where food was air dropped in places such as South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where foods such as wheat flour and grains and other goods were placed in sturdy bags, and dropped without using parachutes from cargo planes.

According to some experts, air dropping aid is a viable and practical option, if the countries involved – such as the United States, Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – are committed to helping. Jordan has already shown that it can be done, by air dropping aid eight times, even to a field hospital and a church in Gaza that were under siege.