Bowen: Air dropping aid is an act of desperation that won't end hunger in Gaza

Israel has offered to allow air drops of aid into Gaza. It's a gesture towards allies who are issuing strong statements blaming Israel for starvation in Gaza.

The latest warnings on Friday 25th July from Britain, France and Germany were stark.

"We call on the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid and urgently allow the UN and humanitarian NGOs to carry out their work in order to take action against starvation. Israel must uphold its obligations under international humanitarian law."

Israel continues to insist that it places no restrictions on aid trucks entering Gaza, an assertion that is not accepted by close allies or the United Nations and other agencies active in Gaza.

In other wars I have seen aid being dropped, both from the aircraft themselves and close up on the ground as it lands.

It is a crude process, that will not on its own do much to end hunger in Gaza. Only a ceasefire and an unrestricted, long term aid operation can do that.

In Iraqi Kurdistan after the 1991 Gulf War the US, UK and others dropped aid from C-130 transport aircraft, mostly army rations, sleeping bags and surplus winter uniforms to tens of thousands living in the open on the sides of mountains. I flew with them and watched British and American airmen dropping aid from the rear cargo ramps of the planes thousands of feet above the people who needed it.

It was welcome enough. But a few days later when I managed to reach the camps in the mountains, I saw young men running into minefields to get aid that landed there. Some were killed and maimed in explosions. I saw families killed when heavy pallets dropped on their tents.

When Mostar was besieged during the war in Bosnia in 1993 I saw pallets of American military "meals ready to eat", dropped from high altitude, scattered all over the east side of the city that was being constantly shelled. Some aid pallets crashed through roofs that had somehow not been destroyed by artillery attacks.

Air dropping aid is an act of desperation. It can also look good on television, and spread a feel-good factor that something, at last, is being done.

Professionals involved in relief operations regard air dropping aid as a last resort. They use it when any other access is impossible. That's not the case in Gaza. A short drive north is Ashdod, Israel's modern container port. A few more hours away is the Jordanian border, which has been used regularly as a supply line for aid for Gaza.

Dropping aid delivers very little. Even big transport planes do not carry as much as a convoy of lorries.

Pallets dropped by parachute often land far from the people who need it. Israel has forced hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinian civilians into a tiny area on the southern coast of Gaza. Most of them live in densely packed tents. It is not clear if there is even an open space for despatchers high in the sky to aim at.

Each pallet will now be fought over by desperate men trying to get food for their families, and by criminal elements who will want to sell it for profit.