https://www.ninkilim.com/articles/gaza_airdrops_just_a_smokescreen/en.html
Since March 3, 2025, Israel has enforced a total siege on the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, most of them children. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared: “Not a single grain of wheat will enter Gaza.” That declaration became genocidal policy. In the months that followed, the territory plunged into a Stage 5 famine, the most catastrophic level classified by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
By July 2025, Gaza’s hospitals were out of anesthetics and food, doctors were collapsing from hunger during surgery, and dozens of children had already died of starvation. “We heal others while we ourselves are the ones in need of healing,” wrote Dr. Fadi Bora, a Gaza surgeon, after a 12-hour shift on an empty stomach. This is not wartime disruption - it is deliberate starvation, weaponized as policy.
As the occupying power, Israel is legally obligated under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure the provision of food and medical supplies. Instead, it has blocked, bombed, and controlled all aid entering Gaza.
Under customary international humanitarian law, the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime (Rome Statute, Article 8(2)(b)(xxv)). It is also a grave breach of Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “violence to life and person” including acts that cause death by deprivation.
Israel is also in defiance of provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January and March 2024, which required it to allow humanitarian aid and prevent acts that contribute to genocide. These measures are binding. Israel has openly disregarded them.
Beyond Israel’s obligations, all UN member states are bound by the Genocide Convention, which requires the prevention of genocide - not merely its punishment after the fact. The ICJ’s 2007 Bosnia v. Serbia judgment affirmed this duty: states can be held liable if they fail to act when they had the capacity to intervene.
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework reinforces this: when a state is either unwilling or unable to protect its population - or worse, is the perpetrator - the international community must act. In Gaza, the world has not acted. It has enabled.
It is important to correct a common misconception: no airdrops occurred from March to July 2025. During the critical early months of Israel’s siege - when famine conditions rapidly worsened - Israel refused to authorize any airdrops, and most countries complied.
Only on July 27, 2025, under massive international pressure and after images of skeletal children and collapsed hospitals became undeniable, did airdrops resume. That means the first 144 days of the siege passed with zero air deliveries of aid.
Available records indicate the following:
| Date | Countries Involved | Amount of Aid | Aircraft Type (if known) |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 27, 2025 | Jordan, UAE | 25 tons | Not specified |
| July 31, 2025 | Likely Jordan, UAE | 43 aid packages | Not specified |
| August 1, 2025 | Spain, France, Germany, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Israel | 126 packages (~57 tons) | Mix: C-130s and A400Ms confirmed |
These deliveries - though involving multiple nations and modern aircraft - remain grossly insufficient. The UN estimates that 2,000–3,000 tons per day are needed to meet minimum humanitarian standards in Gaza. The 57 tons delivered on August 1 represent less than 3% of that requirement.
| Operation | Flights/Day | Tons/Day | Total Duration | Aircraft Used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin Airlift (1948–49) | ~541 | ~4,978 | 15 months | C-47 (3.5 tons), C-54 (10 tons), Avro York |
| Gaza Airdrops (2025) | ~2–4 (since July 27 only) | 22–57 (peak) | 1 week (ongoing) | C-130s, A400Ms (payload up to 37 tons) |
Despite modern aircraft and superior logistics, Gaza airdrops remain symbolic gestures, not strategic interventions. The Berlin Airlift sustained 2.2 million people for over a year with older, smaller planes in a postwar environment. Gaza’s population is nearly identical, yet the international response is orders of magnitude smaller, despite far greater capabilities.
The contrast is damning. In Berlin, the world defied a superpower to save a city. In Gaza, the world complies with a regional power to the point of complicity.
Airdrops today serve not as real solutions, but as PR tools - a way for Western governments to calm domestic outrage without confronting Israel’s siege directly. They are a smokescreen, not a strategy.
The legal reckoning will come. When the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) assess the famine in Gaza, they will ask:
“Was enough done, and could more have been done sooner?”
The answer will be:
Too little. Too late. And deliberately so.
This verdict will not only condemn Israel. It will implicate the governments that enabled this atrocity:
In 1948, the world organized the greatest humanitarian airlift in history. In 2025, it let an entire population starve, offering symbolic airdrops only after emaciated children filled screens and timelines.
The reckoning will come - in courtrooms, in archives, and in the judgment of future generations.