Starmer outlines UK involvement in Gaza aid airdrops

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer signalled that the U.K. will play a role in providing airdropped aid to the Gaza Strip as he faces growing pressure to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Israel said on Friday that it will allow airdrops of food and supplies from foreign countries into Gaza in the coming days.

“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,” Starmer wrote in an opinion piece for British newspaper the Mirror. “The images of starvation and desperation in Gaza are utterly horrifying,” he said.

“We are already working urgently with the Jordanian authorities to get British aid on to planes and into Gaza,” he wrote.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said earlier this week that Gaza is suffering from a “man-made” mass starvation because of an aid blockade into the territory. The United Nations World Food Program has warned that almost one in three people in the Gaza Strip are going for days without eating.

Airdrops to Gaza have been criticized for being dangerous and inefficient. 

 Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, called airdrops a “distraction and screensmoke” in a social media post Saturday. “Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation. They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians,” he said.

Starmer has been facing growing calls to recognize Palestinian statehood. A third of British MPs, including some of his own Cabinet ministers, have signed a letter calling for the U.K. to recognize a Palestinian state.

The prime minister said that “recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps” to achieve peace in the region, although “it must be part of a wider plan that ultimately results in a two-state solution and lasting security for Palestinians and Israelis.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said this week that France intends to recognize a Palestinian state in September at the U.N. General Assembly.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned on Saturday that recognizing the state of Palestine before it has been established could be “counterproductive,” saying: “If something that doesn’t exist is recognized on paper, the problem could appear to be solved when it isn’t,” Meloni said.