Prime Minister Keir Starmer says the UK is working with Jordan to airdrop aid to Gaza. A small team of British military planners will support the operation.
Israel has said it will allow foreign countries to drop aid into Gaza in the coming days.
Keir Starmer also said the UK is “urgently accelerating efforts” to bring sick children from Gaza to the UK for medical care.
“News that Israel will allow countries to airdrop aid into Gaza has come far too late – but we will do everything we can to get aid in via this route,” he wrote in The Mirror.
This comes as over 220 MPs signed a letter asking the UK government to recognise a Palestinian state. Most of the MPs are from the Labour Party.
The development comes after French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would recognize the Palestinian state.
Sarah Champion, a Labour MP who organised the letter, told BBC Radio 4: “The clock is really ticking and we really need to do it while there is the possibility of there being a state of Palestine… and that is not going to be there for much longer.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has called such plans a prize for terror after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
On Friday, Starmer said, “Palestinian statehood must be part of a wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution.”
Former US President Donald Trump said, “Macron’s promise doesn’t matter”, before leaving for Scotland.
Starmer said the UK would pull every lever to send aid to Palestinians.
“This humanitarian catastrophe must end,” he posted on X.
He said the UK is “already working urgently with the Jordanian authorities to get British aid onto planes and into Gaza.”
Criticism to airdrop aid to Gaza
Sarah Champion, speaking to BBC, called the aid drops largely symbolic and referred to them as “grotesque hunger games.”
“It’s survival of the fittest when these are dropped… what we need is Israel to make the decision to open every single border so that aid floods. That is the only way to stop this man-made famine,” she said.
In March, five people were killed during an aid drop when a parachute failed. Twelve others drowned trying to collect food dropped into the sea.
The UK has joined earlier aid drops with Jordan. Supplies included food, fuel, and medicine. The Royal Air Force has also dropped over 100 tonnes of food during 11 flights.
Reports say the UAE and Jordan plan new air drops, but Jordan says it still waits for Israeli permission. The UN says airdrops are a distraction to inaction.
The World Food Programme says “Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment.”
Israel says there is no siege and blames Hamas for the hunger. Since the war began, two children from Gaza have been brought to the UK for private treatment. They arrived in May from Egypt through the group Project Pure Hope.
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