UK working to get aid dropped into Gaza, Starmer says

Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK is working with Jordan on plans to drop aid into Gaza by air, after more than a third of MPs signed a letter calling on the government to recognise a Palestinian state.

A small team of British military planners and logisticians is being made available to help Jordan with getting aid into the territory.

On Friday, Israel said it would allow foreign countries to deliver air supplies in the coming days amid mounting international concern about humanitarian conditions in the territory.

Sir Keir also said the UK was “urgently accelerating efforts” to evacuate children who need critical medical assistance to the UK for treatment.

“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,” the prime minister wrote in The Mirror.

It comes as he faces growing pressure to recognise a Palestinian state. On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron committed to recognising Palestinian statehood within months.

Some 220 MPs from nine political parties – more than half of them Labour – signed a joint letter which said such a move would send a “powerful” message and a vital step toward a two-state solution.

Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham and chair of the international development select committee, wrote the letter and coordinated its signing.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday that “the clock is really ticking” on the international community’s ability to recognise a Palestinian state.

“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,” she said.

Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, has referred to plans to recognise a Palestinian state as a “prize for terror” following the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

On Friday, Sir Keir said that recognising Palestinian statehood would have to be part of a “wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution”, while US President Donald Trump suggested Macron’s announcement “doesn’t matter” as he left the US for a visit to Scotland.

On aid, Sir Keir said the government would “pull every lever” to deliver food and life-saving support to Palestinians.

“This humanitarian catastrophe must end,” he added in a post on X.

Writing in the Mirror, the PM said the UK was “already working urgently with the Jordanian authorities to get British aid onto planes and into Gaza”.

But speaking to the Today programme, Champion described aid drops as “largely symbolic”, adding that there were scenes of “grotesque hunger games” when the international community last delivered air supplies into Gaza.

“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.

Five people were killed when at least one parachute failed to deploy and a parcel fell on them during an aid drop in March 2024.

In a separate incident later that month, Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office said 12 people drowned when they went into the sea to retrieve food packages dropped from the sky.

The UK has been involved in previous efforts to airdrop aid into Gaza – a method aid agencies have cautioned is an inefficient way to deliver supplies.

The previous Conservative government struck a deal with Jordan to deliver aid by air in 2024. Tonnes of supplies including medicines, food and fuel were dropped into northern Gaza by parachute from Jordanian Air Force planes.

The same year the Royal Air Force began conducting air drops directly. The RAF went on to deliver over 100 tonnes of food over the course of 11 flights between March and May, according to the government.

Israeli media reported that the United Arab Emirates and Jordan would carry out the latest drops, but a senior Jordanian official told the BBC that its military was yet to receive permission from Israel to do so.

The UN has described the move as a “distraction to inaction” by the Israeli government.

Its food aid programme warned that almost one in three people in Gaza are going for days without eating.

“Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment,” the World Food Programme said in a statement.

Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies into the Palestinian territory, has repeatedly said that there is no siege and blames Hamas for cases of malnutrition.

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza, two children with serious health conditions have been brought to the UK for private medical treatment.

The young girls were granted temporary visas, arriving in the UK in May from Egypt with the assistance of Project Pure Hope, a humanitarian healthcare initiative.