The United States will resort to dropping off humanitarian aid from planes to try to supply Gaza, where conditions are increasingly approaching famine and Israel is reluctant to allow a larger flow of aid. United States President Joe Biden announced the new measure at the start of a meeting in the Oval Office with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a day after more than a hundred Palestinians died in a line where they were waiting to receive flour receive. In one attack, Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd.
The aid that has so far flowed into the Gaza Strip “is not enough,” the US President pointed out at the beginning of the meeting. “We will do everything possible” to increase the flow of aid to the 2.3 million people stuck in the Gaza Strip, he stressed. As previously mentioned, the relief effort will begin in the coming days and will be developed in collaboration with other allied countries in the region, including Jordan. Washington is also exploring the possibility of opening a maritime corridor that would allow the importation of a much larger amount of aid than planes can distribute.
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“Innocent people were trapped in a terrible war and couldn't feed their families, and they saw the reaction when they tried to get help,” the president said, referring to Thursday's deaths. “But we must do more and the United States will do more. In the coming days, together with our friends in Jordan and other countries, we will organize air drops of aid to Ukraine.” [sic: la Casa Blanca clarificó que se refería a Gaza] and seek to open up other avenues, including the possibility of a maritime corridor that would allow large amounts of humanitarian assistance.”
According to Biden, “The aid coming to Gaza is far from enough right now.” “Innocent lives are at stake, children’s lives are at stake.”
The American president's announcement comes as US Humanitarian Aid Administrator Samantha Power is in the area and met on Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that country's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
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In statements after the meeting, White House international affairs spokesman John Kirby clarified that air assistance “will not replace assistance by land or sea, but will be a “complement.”
Kirby recalled that airdropping relief packages is a mission fraught with difficulties. “Few military operations are more complicated. There are many spaces that need to function exactly as planned. “We will approach the operation with Jordan cautiously, we will plan it carefully and we will learn from the first starts to improve,” he stressed.
In the case of Gaza, the scenario is even more complicated given its enormous population density. “You have to get as close as possible, but without putting people in danger,” the spokesman added. He clarified that the first shipments will consist mainly of food, “probably military combat rations,” and that they will be delivered “in a safe place where no one will be injured and that is accessible to humanitarian organizations to help distribute the shipment to help” and avoid avalanches. Kirby said. The senior official stressed that the idea of airdrops was already being considered before Thursday's deaths in the humanitarian aid queue, as “needs have become increasingly acute in recent weeks.”
Thursday's deaths “underscore the need to continue to seek alternative routes and means of importing aid into Gaza” and the need for the temporary ceasefire that the United States is seeking to achieve in ongoing talks between Israel and the radical Palestinian militia. Hamas, through Qatar's mediation, called for a prisoner exchange, an increase in humanitarian aid and a cessation of hostilities.
Sending aid by air represents a shift in the American position, which has previously focused on pressuring the Netanyahu government to approve a larger flow of aid by land. The number of trucks entering through Rafah, the Egypt-Gaza border crossing, has been reduced to a handful, without Washington succeeding in persuading the prime minister to agree to opening more crossings or allowing more vehicles to pass through.
The US president is under pressure to take action to ease the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 30,000 people – most of them women and children – have been killed and tens of thousands more injured in the Israeli offensive since October. Discontent over the pro-Israel stance of the White House, which maintains military aid to Israel and rejects a permanent ceasefire, has already led to a presidential election wake-up call in Michigan this week. There, the large Arab-American community mobilized a campaign for “undeclared” voting (equivalent to a blank vote) in the Democratic primary. Their goal was to call for a permanent ceasefire and demonstrate to Biden that his pro-Israel stance in Gaza could cost him re-election in November. The mobilization received 100,000 of those votes, or 13.3% of the total, and activists plan to repeat the initiative at consultations in Minnesota next Tuesday and in Washington state on the 12th. Both states, like Michigan, allow “undeclared” voting.
For its part, the White House maintains that it is doing its best to achieve a temporary ceasefire of about six weeks, which could serve as a first step towards a permanent ceasefire. Biden spoke with Qatar's Emir and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al Sisi on Thursday following the deaths in the humanitarian aid queue.
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