Israel will allow foreign countries to airdrop aid into Gaza starting Friday, an Israeli security source said, as the country faces mounting backlash over a spiraling hunger crisis in the Palestinian enclave.
The airdrops are expected to be carried out in the coming days by the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, according to the security source. Despite pressure for a ceasefire, both Israel and the United States signaled Friday that they were abandoning talks with Hamas.
Israel also said that World Central Kitchen, an international relief organization that has provided food to Palestinians in the enclave throughout the war, had also begun reactivating its kitchens. WCK did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
The organization paused operations in Gaza in November after a number of its workers were killed in an Israeli strike last year, but announced in June it would resume cooking in Gaza.
Past efforts to airdrop aid into Gaza, including by the United States, were heavily criticized as an insufficient and impractical way to get relief to the more than 2 million people suffering in dire conditions under Israeli military assault.
The developments come as Israel faces growing backlash on the international stage, with doctors and aid groups operating in Gaza warning of starvation spreading across the enclave.
More than 100 people had died from “famine and malnutrition,” most of them children, since the war began in the enclave, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said in a statement Wednesday.
Israel lifted the two month blockade in May, but has since allowed only limited supplies into the territory, with doctors and health officials reporting growing numbers of children dying from malnutrition in Gaza in recent days.
The aid that has been allowed in has largely been distributed by the controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation under a system within which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while making their way to collect food.
United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher called Friday for a "ceasefire now," as he shared an update to U.N. member states outlining the challenges to distributing aid in the enclave and the steps "necessary to stop this horror." Airdropping aid was not named among the latter.
Netanyahu said Friday that his country and the U.S. were "now considering alternative options to bring our hostages home," after the apparent collapse of talks with Hamas following a response from the militant group to the latest truce proposal.
President Donald Trump said Friday that Hamas "didn't really want to make a deal. I think they want to die."
"It got to a point where you are going to have to finish the job," he told reporters.
Hamas has blamed Israel for hindering talks and the collapse of a previous ceasefire.
