Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : On August 3, 2025, the Belgian Air Force conducted a humanitarian act that reverberated far beyond the skies of Gaza. In coordination with Jordan, Belgium airdropped 15 tonnes of urgently needed food and medical supplies to the besieged Palestinian territory, followed by another 16 tonnes the next day. This was not a routine delivery, nor a symbolic gesture wrapped in diplomatic language. It was a deliberate and defiant intervention into one of the most militarized and politically contentious airspaces on earth—controlled by Israel and monitored by the United States.
Until this moment, humanitarian aid into Gaza was often paralyzed by bureaucracy, stalled at Israeli-controlled checkpoints, or denied outright under the pretext of security. Belgium changed that narrative. Operating through Jordan’s logistical support but acting on its own sovereign judgment, it broke a decades-old deadlock. In doing so, it risked not only its aircraft but its diplomatic credibility, confronting two global powers that have maintained a tight grip over any movement into or out of the Palestinian enclave.
What followed was equally remarkable. Belgium’s courage ignited a wave of international solidarity. France soon launched its own airdrops, delivering more than 40 tonnes of supplies. Spain, Germany, and Italy committed to logistical and material support. Canada conducted its own airdrop, independently delivering 21,600 pounds of food and medical cargo. Jordan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates served as regional facilitators. The United Kingdom publicly announced its intention to follow suit, while Saudi Arabia began preparing for participation. In total, more than a dozen countries are either actively engaged in the operation or finalizing their plans.
Unlike previous gestures of concern, these acts are concrete. They do not depend on negotiated corridors or Israel’s discretionary approval. These are real packages of food and medicine dropped into a war zone without diplomatic clearance from Tel Aviv or Washington. They signal a moral awakening and a tectonic shift in how global powers respond to humanitarian crises under occupation.
For decades, Israel has claimed that unauthorized deliveries into Gaza violate its sovereignty. The United States has echoed that sentiment, shielding Israel from international accountability. But with Belgium and other European democracies taking independent action, that consensus is fracturing. The long-standing Israeli-American control over humanitarian access is being directly challenged—not with resolutions or rhetorical statements, but with aircraft and parachutes.
Even within the United States, signs of dissent are emerging. Public frustration is mounting as Americans question why their tax dollars fund weapons but not food. Congress, typically unified in approving military aid to Israel, is now confronted by images of European nations acting with the kind of moral clarity once associated with the U.S. itself.
The implications are profound. Once humanitarian aid becomes unstoppable, the siege itself becomes indefensible. As more nations bypass traditional channels and deliver relief directly, Israel’s blockade narrative loses legitimacy. Likewise, the United States finds itself increasingly isolated—continuing to defend an ally accused of systematic war crimes while its own reputation as a defender of international law continues to erode.
And yet, the most glaring absence remains the Islamic world.
While Muslim-majority nations have issued strong verbal condemnations and convened emergency meetings, few have matched Belgium’s direct action. It is a painful paradox that Christian-majority countries like Belgium, France, and Spain have taken the lead in delivering life-saving aid to starving Muslim civilians. Their planes reached Gaza’s skies before many Muslim leaders could even finalize their joint communiqués.
But it is not too late for the Muslim world to assert its relevance. A unified humanitarian airlift—coordinated among Türkiye, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar, and Egypt—could amplify the momentum initiated by Belgium. Simultaneously, Muslim countries could introduce targeted economic sanctions against both Israel and the United States until a ceasefire is implemented and the blockade is lifted.
The numbers are compelling. According to 2024 trade data, Muslim countries imported approximately $290 billion in goods and services from the United States and $23 billion from Israel. In return, they exported roughly $190 billion to the U.S. and $15 billion to Israel. That translates to a total bilateral trade volume of $480 billion with the United States and $38 billion with Israel. Even a partial embargo on strategic goods—oil, consumer products, or financial services—could produce seismic pressure. Reallocating trade toward nations supporting humanitarian initiatives would not only reward ethical diplomacy but also establish new global economic alliances rooted in justice.
Such measures could be complemented with preferential trade agreements. Belgium, for example, could be granted Most Favored Nation (MFN) status among Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states. Similar incentives could be offered to France, Spain, and any country demonstrating moral courage in the face of international inertia.
What Belgium has demonstrated is that one does not need to be a superpower to be a leader. By defying silence and cowardice, it reminded the world that aid does not require authorization when people are starving. It showed that neutrality in the face of oppression is complicity. And most importantly, it proved that humanity can still pierce through the clouds of political paralysis.
The West may label its ongoing military support to Israel as strategy, but history will remember it as sanctioned cruelty. No child dying from hunger is a combatant. No woman in a bombed-out hospital is a threat to national security. The slow starvation of civilians is not collateral damage—it is deliberate and systematic.
In a moment where domination has become policy, Belgium chose dignity. In skies long filled with drones, it dropped bread. In an arena shaped by fear, it delivered courage.
The time for statements is over. The time for action is now. History will ask: who came when Gaza starved? And Belgium will answer: we did.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : Instantly, both Israel and the United States have turned colorblind, deaf, and heartless, refusing to see the rivers of blood in Gaza or hear the cries of its dying children. They ignore the wailing of mothers clutching lifeless infants, the screams of youth writhing in agony as their limbs are amputated, their bodies shredded, their reproductive organs destroyed by sniper fire. They look away from children dying not only from bombs but from starvation, as two million people are herded from one ruined shelter to another, promised food only to find death. This is not war. This is a calculated slaughterhouse, a genocide carried out under the shield of “self-defense,” and the world knows it.
Yet Washington and Tel Aviv expect everyone else to mimic their silence—do not see, do not hear, do not speak. They want to render humanity numb to horror. But their dominance is fading. Donald Trump’s transactional diplomacy, where allies are insulted and international partnerships are reduced to trade-offs and arm-twisting, has driven even America’s closest friends to break free. Nations once compelled to echo U.S. narratives are now openly defying them, charting their own course, and rejecting the moral bankruptcy of shielding Israel’s crimes.
As French President Emmanuel Macron declared at the UN conference on Palestine, “The status quo is no longer acceptable. France will recognize a Palestinian state because peace cannot be postponed indefinitely while children die every day in Gaza.” Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock echoed this, saying, “Humanitarian law is not optional. No ally, no matter how powerful, can expect us to be complicit in mass starvation and endless occupation.” Even the United Kingdom, long America’s most loyal partner, now openly calls for an “irreversible pathway to Palestinian statehood,” signaling a break from Washington’s veto of justice.
Meanwhile, António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, tore through decades of diplomatic hypocrisy with unprecedented clarity: “Statehood for the Palestinians is a right, not a reward… Gaza has descended into a cascade of catastrophes—tens of thousands dead, virtually the entire population displaced many times over, the shadow of starvation looming over everyone. These are not preconditions for peace. They are the foundation of it.”
Yet from Washington, the response is chillingly different. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio mocked the 140 nations pledging to recognize Palestine: “They can’t even tell you where this Palestinian state is… At the end of the day, Hamas is sitting there saying: We’re winning the PR war. The Palestinian statehood side is the Hamas side.” In one sentence, Rubio dismissed the will of nearly the entire planet, equated Palestinian self-determination with terrorism, and gave Israel another blank check to continue its war crimes.
This arrogance exposes the deepening isolation of the U.S.-Israeli axis. On one side, 140 nations, the UN, humanitarian agencies, civil society, and millions in the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, and New York demand ceasefire, statehood, and accountability for atrocity crimes. On the other, two governments defy global law and morality, veto every path to peace, and unleash a narrative so grotesque that even mainstream U.S. media is cracking.
When Israel’s ambassador recently suggested that countries supporting Palestinian statehood should “take the Palestinians into their own lands,” Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade sarcastically asked, “Why doesn’t Israel migrate instead, leaving the land to its original owners, the Palestinians?” Such questions were once unthinkable in America but are now inevitable because the brutality is undeniable.
Europe’s defiance is not a sudden act of courage but the result of exhaustion with U.S. unilateralism. Trump’s foreign policy has humiliated allies, reduced partnerships to mere transactions, and insulted leaders across NATO. The last straw is Gaza: a live-streamed massacre defended relentlessly by Washington. Macron said it plainly: “The international order cannot survive if a superpower shields an occupying force from law while condemning others for far less.” Canada, once in lockstep with U.S. policy, now calls for sanctions on Israeli officials over settlement expansion and starvation tactics, defying its largest ally.
The tide is turning because the truth can no longer be buried. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s occupation, annexation, and forced displacement are illegal. The UN General Assembly passed resolutions demanding ceasefire and humanitarian access, only to be vetoed or ignored by Washington. Civil society, from London’s streets to Jakarta’s mosques, is united under one banner: Stop the genocide. Free Palestine. Social media has shattered propaganda walls, showing unfiltered images of bombed hospitals, starved infants, and mass graves. The world sees what America refuses to: deliberate extermination disguised as war.
Even within the U.S., voices of conscience rise despite political fear. Senator Bernie Sanders declared, “We cannot stand by while a whole people is bombed, starved, and erased from history under our funding and protection.” UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese described Israel’s actions as “a war of extermination against an occupied people,” earning U.S. sanctions for telling the truth. The line is now clear: stand with humanity and be punished by Washington, or stand with Washington and be complicit in atrocity.
This strategy is failing. U.S. power, once unquestionable, is now bought off with trade deals and investments as nations build independence from its dictates. Trump’s recent EU trade deal has been interpreted not as strength but as a payoff for European defiance over Gaza. The old world order, where America dictated morality, is dead. In its place is a multipolar conscience where even U.S. allies refuse to endorse blind support for Israel’s slaughterhouse policies.
And yet, Israel and the U.S. cling to a delusion: that Palestinians can be erased, either by bullets or by “resettlement,” stripping them of homeland and history. This delusion is what fuels resistance, global outrage, and calls for immediate statehood. As Guterres warned, “We cannot defer peace efforts until suffering becomes unbearable. We must act before it is too late.” The world has chosen to act, with or without Washington’s approval.
The conclusion is as inevitable as it is just. The momentum of history, powered by the conscience of humanity, is moving toward Palestinian freedom. The days when America and Israel could bully nations into silence are gone. Their veto cannot erase law. Their propaganda cannot hide mass graves. Their power cannot crush the will of a people who, despite decades of dispossession, refuse to vanish.
The day is coming—and now it feels close—when Palestinians will live in a sovereign state, when Israel will exist as a nation among equals instead of a colonizer above the law, and when the United States, stripped of its moral cloak, will face the shame of having stood on the wrong side of humanity’s last great struggle for justice.

The “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in the Gaza Strip, UN-backed global food security experts warn.

An alert issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) says there is mounting evidence that widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths among the 2.1 million Palestinians there.

“Latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City,” it adds.

UN agencies have already warned there is man-made, mass starvation in Gaza, and reported at least 63 malnutrition-related deaths this month. They have blamed the crisis on Israel, which controls the entry of all supplies to the territory.

“The facts are in – and they are undeniable. Palestinians in Gaza are enduring a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said.

“This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes. The trickle of aid must become an ocean. Food, water, medicine, and fuel must flow in waves and without obstruction.”

Israel imposed a total blockade on aid and commercial deliveries to Gaza at the start of March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on the armed group to release its Israeli hostages.

The blockade was partially eased after 11 weeks, after the Israeli government came under pressure from its allies, but the shortages of food, medicine and fuel have worsened.

Israel has insisted there are no restrictions on aid deliveries and that there is “no starvation”.

However, it has announced in recent days measures aimed at helping the UN and its partners collect aid from crossings and distribute it within Gaza, including daily “tactical pauses” in military operations in three areas and designated corridors.

The IPC says immediate action must be taken to end the hostilities and allow for an unimpeded, large-scale, life-saving humanitarian response.

The report does not formally classify Gaza as being in a famine, saying that can only be made through analysis that will be conducted “without delay”.

The IPC – a global initiative by UN agencies, aid groups and governments – is the primary mechanism the international community uses to conclude whether a famine is happening.

Households are classified as IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe) if they experience an extreme lack of food, starvation and exhaustion of coping strategies.

For a famine to be officially declared in a specific area, there must be evidence that:

• At least 20% of households are in Phase 5
• At least 30% of children are suffering from acute malnutrition
• There are two deaths for every 10,000 inhabitants per day, or four child deaths out of 10,000 children, “due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease”

In May, the IPC warned the entire population of Gaza was facing high levels of acute food insecurity and that 470,000 people (22%) were facing “catastrophic” levels, or Phase 5.

The IPC alert issued on Tuesday says the intensification of the Israeli military’s bombardment and expansion of its ground operations over the past two months have had a “devastating impact” on civilians and critical infrastructure.

People’s access to food across Gaza has also become “alarmingly erratic and extremely perilous” during the same period, it adds, noting the UN has recorded the killing of more than 1,000 people seeking aid by Israeli forces.

The IPC says malnutrition has been rising rapidly in the first half of July and has reached the famine threshold in Gaza City.

It cites the Gaza Nutrition Cluster – which is made up of UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations – as saying more than 20,000 children have been admitted to clinics for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, with more than 3,000 severely malnourished.

It says hospitals have also reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since 17 July.

The IPC alert calls for immediate action to be taken to “alleviate the catastrophic suffering”.

“This includes scaling up the flow of goods, restoring basic services, and ensuring safe, unimpeded access to sufficient life-saving assistance,” it says.

“None of this is possible unless there is a ceasefire.”

The World Food Programme and Unicef expressed alarm that two famine thresholds – food consumption and acute malnutrition – had been breached in parts of Gaza.

They warned that collecting robust data on the third threshold – starvation-related deaths – under the current circumstances in Gaza was “very difficult as health systems, already decimated by nearly three years of conflict, are collapsing”.

On Monday, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said another 14 people had died as a result of malnutrition over the previous 24 hours. That brought the number of malnutrition-related deaths since the war began to 147, including 88 children, according to the ministry.

The World Health Organization also said on Sunday there had been 63 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza this month, including 24 children under five. It noted that the bodies of most of the dead showed “clear signs of severe wasting”.

“The unbearable suffering of the people of Gaza is already clear for the world to see. Waiting for official confirmation of famine to provide life-saving food aid they desperately need is unconscionable,” said the WFP’s executive director, Cindy McCain.

“We need to flood Gaza with large-scale food aid, immediately and without obstruction, and keep it flowing each and every day to prevent mass starvation. People are already dying of malnutrition, and the longer we wait to act, the higher the death toll will rise.”

WFP and Unicef said “barely a trickle” of what was needed by Gaza’s population had entered since Israel partially eased its blockade, and that more than 62,000 tonnes of aid – the equivalent of approximately 3,100 lorry loads – was required every month just to cover basic humanitarian food and nutrition assistance.

At a news conference in Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the situation in Gaza was “tough” but that it was a “lie” that Israel was deliberately starving the population.

“Who is responsible for this tough reality?… This is Hamas,” he declared. “Whether there is a starvation policy? No, the contrary is right.”

Saar said 5,000 aid lorries had entered Gaza over the last two months, and that Israel was making “amazing efforts, including this week, by opening these humanitarian corridors, by airdrops by any possible means”.

Israeli military body Cogat, which co-ordinates the entry of aid into Gaza, said more than 200 lorry loads were collected from crossings by the UN and other international organisations on Monday, and hundreds more were awaiting collection.

However, Gaza residents said they had seen little to no improvement in the availability of food since Israel announced the new measures to facilitate aid distribution.

“[On Monday] they airdropped a very small amount of aid in our area. Thousands of people fought over it,” mother-of-two Bakr Salah, 35, a nurse at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, told the BBC.

“My children are starving. They have not eaten a single meal for two days. We keep hearing about aid coming in, but we never see any of it,” he added.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, Bilal Atallah, a 45-year-old father of five, said he had spent all of Monday waiting for food aid without success.

“I had no choice but to buy flour from the looters who had stolen it from aid lorries,” he said. “It cost me $35 (£26) for 1kg (2.2lb) of flour.”

Other Gaza residents also reported that criminal gangs were intercepting and looting aid convoys, and then reselling supplies at unaffordable prices.

The UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said most UN lorries that entered Gaza on Sunday were looted, but said it was by “desperate individual civilians”.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of stealing aid. However, the New York Times cited senior Israeli military officials as saying on Sunday that the military had never found proof that the armed group had systematically stolen aid from the UN.

Reuters news agency also reported last week that internal US government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft by Hamas of US-funded aid.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 60,034 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.