GazaHerald – Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is worsening as combined international airdrops over the past week amounted to the equivalent of just 15 aid trucks, less than 1 percent of what the enclave needs each day for basic survival, according to local sources.
Aid agencies say at least 600 trucks must enter Gaza daily to avert famine. Yet, in the past 13 days, only 1,115 trucks have been allowed in, just 14 percent of what is required, while over 200 people have already died from starvation.
A senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations accused “complicit countries” of parachuting aid into Gaza “not to end the hunger, but to sustain it” through “headline-grabbing gestures.”
He linked this to Israel’s longstanding policy of restricting supplies to below the minimum calorie threshold needed for survival, a strategy officials in Israel have previously described as keeping Palestinians on a “starvation-plus diet” since the blockade began in 2007.
The analyst said this policy is designed to make life “as miserable as possible” so that Palestinians feel they have no choice but to leave Gaza, a policy Israel now labels “voluntary migration.”
“Starve to death if you stay, get bombed to death if you stay, or leave,” he said.
Isreali orchestred chaos
Local officials say the humanitarian chaos is compounded by deliberate Israeli actions to undermine distribution. Many aid trucks have been looted amid what Gaza’s Government Media Office calls “a systematic policy of engineering starvation and chaos to break the will of the people.”
In addition to shortages, aid airdrops have turned deadly. On Saturday, a 15-year-old boy was killed by a falling pallet in Gaza, one of at least 23 Palestinians crushed to death by airdropped supplies since October 2023.
The health system in Gaza is completely collapsing, according to the director general of the health ministry, and the Strip is going from “hunger to starvation.” He reported that all water available in displacement shelters is undrinkable, and 11 starvation-related deaths were recorded in just 24 hours. He added that recent aid deliveries met less than 5 percent of the ministry’s needs and that 12,000 patients urgently require treatment abroad.
Gaza’s authorities are calling on the United Nations, Arab and Islamic nations, and the wider international community to take urgent action to open all crossings, guarantee safe aid access, and hold Israel accountable for what they describe as crimes against civilians.
