Air dropping emergency food into the Gaza enclave is ludicrous, for many reasons spelled out in the July 27 front-page article “In frayed Gaza, aid airdrops take hold.” From my experience as a director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance, I can confirm that such operations are inefficient, extremely costly and dangerous.
Opinion
Letters to the Editor The Washington Post
I led U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance. Airdrops aren’t how to help Gaza.
August 3, 2025
Pushing parachutes out of aircraft is the most inequitable technique to deliver humanitarian supplies. As was proved in numerous war zones, it is the young, the strong, the fleet of foot and the heavily armed who end up with the supplies, either by getting to the pallets first or by later forced requisition. Without skilled cadres of relief workers on the ground to collect and fairly disseminate food supplies to children, schools, hospitals, the elderly, the wounded and other target populations, the latter groups lose out and continue to starve. Moreover, by thinning out aid experts on the ground, a reliance on airdrops all but guarantees Israel’s worst-feared result: more diversion to militants.
In a major study on airdrops I co-authored at the Institute for Defense Analyses, researchers pointed out perhaps the main benefit of airdropping supplies: Beyond making donor countries feel good, the benefit is that the grotesque costs and inefficiencies of air operations might help get the trucks rolling again.
Jim Kunder, Alexandria
The writer is a former deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.