Breaking News: Aid drops into Gaza are proving to be an inefficient and risky method of delivering humanitarian assistance, according to veteran war correspondent Peter Beaumont.Evergreen Context:
The practice of air-dropping humanitarian aid, while sometimes necessary in extreme circumstances, is generally considered a last resort by professionals in relief operations. This method is typically employed only when all other forms of access are impossible. However,in the case of Gaza,alternative and more effective supply routes exist.
Historically, air-dropped aid has presented meaningful risks. Following the 1991 Gulf War, aid was dropped into Iraqi Kurdistan from C-130 transport aircraft. While intended to help tens of thousands surviving in harsh mountain conditions,the drops resulted in casualties. Individuals were killed or maimed by mines when attempting to retrieve aid that landed in hazardous areas. Tragically, some families also lost their lives when heavy aid pallets fell onto their tents.
A similar situation was observed in Mostar during the Bosnian War in 1993. Pallets of American military rations, dropped from high altitudes, were scattered across the eastern part of the city, which was under constant shelling.Some of these pallets crashed through the roofs of buildings that had miraculously survived artillery attacks.
Gaza, prior to the current conflict, was one of the most densely populated regions globally, with over two million Palestinians having access to the entire strip. The Gaza Strip is comparable in size to the Isle of Wight in the UK, or roughly the size of Philadelphia or Detroit in the United States. Currently, Israel has displaced the majority of Gaza’s population to a small area on the southern coast, encompassing approximately 17% of the territory. Many of these displaced individuals are living in crowded tent encampments. The effectiveness of air drops is further hampered by the lack of open spaces suitable for precise targeting by dispatchers.Aid pallets dropped by parachute frequently land far from the intended recipients. This scattering of resources frequently enough leads to desperate competition among individuals trying to secure food for their families. furthermore, criminal elements may exploit the situation, attempting to sieze the aid for resale and profit.
The availability of alternative access points, such as Ashdod, Israel’s modern container port, and the Jordanian border, which has been utilized for aid delivery to Gaza, highlights that air drops are not the only, nor the most effective, means of providing assistance.
