By Olivier Acuña Barba •
Published: 04 Aug 2025 • 21:42
• 2 minutes read
In hopes of helping the over 500,000 people starving in Gaza, many countries are airdropping tonnes of basic staples | Credit: Belgium’s Ministry of Defence
In the face of international pressure, Israel has allowed airdrops of food aid. However, the amounts delivered are a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the humanitarian emergency, Le Monde wrote on Monday, August 4th.
The Belgian army was among those trying to help alleviate the malnutrition and, in cases of starvation, thousands in Gaza are facing. They carried out a second airdrop consisting of 16 tonnes of humanitarian aid, Belgium’s defence minister, Theo Francken (N-VA), announced on X. “Second airdrop completed—sixteen packages, 16 tons of food. Next drop is planned for August 06,” Francken added.
Sixteen tonnes of supplies were delivered by A400M transport aircraft as part of “Cerulean Skies 2,” a multinational emergency relief effort coordinated by Jordan, the Belga News Agency reported. The mission involved troops from the 15th Wing and the Special Operations Regiment.
Many countries are airdropping aid in Gaza
The aid included pasta, rice, canned goods and powdered milk, which was flown from Melsbroek to Jordan on Friday, with the first drop taking place on Sunday.
In March last year, the military dropped a total of 164.3 tonnes of aid. The next mission is planned for Wednesday, 6 August, Francken said.
The footage showing airdrops is impressive, but the results are limited, Le Monde said. For the past week, many countries, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, France and the United Kingdom, have airdropped humanitarian aid over the Gaza Strip, using military planes to fly over the Palestinian territory.
France is set to airdrop 40 metric tons of aid over four separate drops, and Spain is set to airdrop 12 metric tons. Other countries, such as Belgium, Italy, and Germany, said they would also release aid.
More of a symbolic gesture than a solution
Le Monde’s arguments that the airdrops scarcely address the scale of what is needed, given the crisis’s magnitude, with over 60,000 Palestinians reported killed and many tens of thousands more facing starvation.
A French diplomatic source emphasised that land deliveries are far more effective, but thousands of aid trucks remain blocked outside the enclave. Historian Jean-Pierre Filiu notes that airdrops, previously tested in Gaza in March 2024, are costly, inefficient, and dangerous, often serving more as a symbolic gesture to soothe public opinion than a solution to alleviate suffering, the French news outlet added.
Past airdrops have left casualties, with falling crates killing people and supplies sometimes landing in inaccessible or hazardous areas.
That’s real starvation, said Trump
“Today (Friday, August 1st) more than 320,000 young children are at risk of acute malnutrition,” Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations, said in a statement, following a recent trip to Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
As reported by viraltrendingcontent, Antonone Renard, of the World Food Program and working in Gaza, recently said he could “confirm that there are half a million people in famine-like conditions.”
US President Donald Trump also recently said: “Some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can’t fake that.”
