In Gaza’s skies, parachutes meant to carry life often deliver only humiliation, injury, and death. Thousands of starving residents, frail from months of siege, chase falling boxes across rubble and sand, only to return empty-handed, or worse, wounded. On Friday, the Palestinian Red Crescent’s Al-Sarayah Field Hospital treated 21 people injured during an airdrop in Gaza City, including three children and one critically hurt man fighting for his life.

With crossings sealed since early March, Israel has reduced Gaza to the brink of famine. Shops are bare, bread is a luxury, and prices for what little remains have soared beyond reach. In a bid to ease mounting global condemnation, Israel has allowed limited airdrops, a method rights groups call dangerous, degrading, and deliberately inadequate. Aid boxes have crashed into tents, sparked violent scuffles, and, in some cases, drawn desperate civilians into areas under direct Israeli fire. Survivors say these “aid zones” are often deadly traps, echoing massacres near the Netzarim corridor and other occupied areas.

Humanitarian organisations warn that airdropped supplies meet less than 0.5% of Gaza’s daily needs and serve more as a distraction than a lifeline. The World Health Organization, UNRWA, and the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor all insist that only the full opening of land crossings can stop the engineered famine. Until then, the people of Gaza remain trapped between the hunger that stalks them and the deadly aid that falls from the sky.