Joe Biden announced on Friday that the U.S. would begin a food aid drop Gaza as the amount of aid has shown itself to be insufficient to feed residents.
“Aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere nearly enough… lives are on the line,” Biden said. “We should be getting hundreds of trucks in, not just several,” he continued. “We’re going to pull out every stop we can.”
The problem with getting aid to the people who need it is a combination of Israel making sure the trucks aren't carrying weapons or other contraband, thus slowing the caravans to a crawl and Hamas deliberately slowing the aid to make Gazans suffer and swinging world opinion in their favor.
USAID administrator Samantha Power announced an additional $53 million in additional U.S. humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
“She’s working on expanding the channels, the corridors through which that aid can flow. We’re going to keep at this,” White House principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said Thursday. “The events of this morning just underscored how deep and dire the humanitarian needs amongst civilian population in Gaza are right now.”
The "events" Dalton is referring to were thousands of Palestinians rushing aid trucks, resulting in dozens of people being trampled, and run over by the trucks. The Hamas mouthpiece, the Gaza Health Ministry, claims that Israel fired into the crowd of people attacking and looting the convoy. They say that 115 Gazans died with another 760 were wounded.
Don't ask where was the security to prevent this tragedy because no one is answering. There are reports that Israel fired their weapons into the crowd but the whole incident reeks of being a set-up.
“I saw things I never, ever thought I would see,” said Mohammed Al-Sholi, who had camped out overnight for a chance to get food for his family. “I saw people falling to the ground after being shot, and others simply took the food items that were with them and continued running for their lives.”
Amid the chaos and bloodshed, some people were run over by the aid trucks, he said.
The first air-drop of food occurred Saturday morning, U.S. time. It's not known how many more drops will be made in the coming days but supplying a million people with food with no organized distribution system invites more chaos like we saw when the trucks arrived.
The food convoy tragedy has only increased calls for a ceasefire. It's what makes me think that that if there was any shooting, it was just as likely to be Hamas as it was the IDF.
The aid convoy was part of a new Israeli initiative to bypass aid agencies and deliver food directly to Palestinian businessmen.
The aid convoy that devolved into a disaster on Thursday, ending with scores of Palestinians dead, was part of a new Israeli operation to get desperately needed food to Gaza residents by working directly with local businessmen, according to an Israeli official, Palestinian businessmen and Western diplomats.
In a rare move, Israel was involved in organizing at least four such aid convoys to northern Gaza this past week after international aid groups suspended operations to the area, citing both Israeli refusals to greenlight aid trucks and rising lawlessness. But on Thursday, that effort spiraled out of control.
It should go without asking why Israel would fire on their own humanitarian convoy.
Israel is not going to stop until Hamas won't be able to threaten them ever again. Biden should forget about his political troubles with pro-ceasefire Democrats and throw his weight behind Israel's efforts to eradicate the Hamas threat.
That's the quickest way to a ceasefire and relief for Palestinian civilians.
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