Gazans watch the skies to spot planes dropping US aid

we start with the war between Israel and Hamas as International pressure mounts for Action to address the prospect of imminent famine among Palestinians in Gaza. We're following a number of developments. The US is said to have authorized the transfer of billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets to Israel in recent days. The package, reported by The Washington Post and Reuters, comes despite growing calls for US military aid to be linked to changes in how Israel conducts the war. It's just days after the UN's top Court, the International Court of Justice, ordered Israel to allow the unimpeded flow of food Aid into Gaza. Israel says UN allegations that it's blocking Aid are wholly unfounded. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to send officials to Egypt and Qatar in the coming days for a new round of talks on a possible ceasefire in Gaza. In the past 24 hours, both the UK and the US Military have airdropped Food Supplies into Gaza. Our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson was on the plane.

Aid drops into Gaza are expensive, inefficient, and increasingly controversial. These ready-prepared meals from the US Army are being flown more than a thousand miles from a US Airbase. There's plenty of food just a short drive from Gaza's borders, but this American Aid is being flown right across the Middle East. Eighty crates of food onboard two C17 transport planes dropped into a population the UN says is on the brink of famine. It's not perfect. We know that there's upwards of 2 million people who need food on the ground who are hungry innocent civilians who didn't ask for this conflict, and we're dropping meals in the tens of thousands. But at least it's something. So does it feel like a drop in the bucket? Maybe a little bit. But if you're a family on the ground who got some of this Aid, it can be a lifesaver. Twelve people were reported to have drowned this week trying to retrieve packages from the sea, six others crushed in a stampede. What are you doing to try and mitigate those risks?

Literally everything we can. So I know you spoke with the colonel earlier. We use a chute that falls at a slower rate to give the gozin more time to see the parachutes and make sure that they're out of the way. We also have assets overhead that clear the drop zone so we will not drop if there's any sort of grouping of people there. After 3 hours in the air, the ramp opens on Gaza's devastated coastline. They just open the Hat ready to release the aid down into Gaza. There's no organized distribution system down there.

It goes a drop of Aid in an ocean of hunger. Getting Aid in this way is a last resort, but a growing number of countries are doing it. How much do these eye-catching flights relieve pressure on Gaza's civilians and how much the pressure on governments elsewhere?

Lucy Williamson, News Kata, well, our correspondent is in Jerusalem and she told me more about the US weapons transfer to Israel. So according to these reports in The Washington Post and Reuters as well, they're quoting unnamed US state and defense department officials, and they're saying that more than 1,800 2,000 pound bombs, some 500 500 pound bombs, and 25 F-35 fighter jets have been authorized in this latest set of military aid assistance coming across to Israel. Now, a lot of this has already been initially approved by Congress, but the reason this is so interesting in terms of the timing just after a visit by the Israeli defense minister to Washington is that really in recent days we have seen tensions deepening between Israel and the US and you that really reached the lowest moment on Monday after you had the US extension at the UN Security Council when it came to a resolution being passed on a ceasefire in the Gaza War. For the first time, Israel was very angered about that and there have been these calls from senior Democrats in the US and from other groups of society like Arab Americans suggesting that if military weapon supplies transfers to Israel were not going to be cut, then they should be limited or they should be conditioned by the Biden Administration. That doesn't seem to have happened.

Yeah, I mean it's really interesting, isn't it? We've spoken over the last couple of weeks about the relations being strained, and just as you say there widespread calls for this um the two to be linked that military aid should be linked to the humanitarian aid to Gaza but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Indeed, and the White House has been saying that it supports Israel's continued right to defend itself. We know that the Israeli defense minister in the US had been talking to Washington about its declared aim to keep Israel with a what's called a qualitative military Edge in this region and also talking about not just Waging War in Gaza but the prospect of a possible escalation on Israel's northern border where there have been in recent months these near daily cross border exchanges of fire with the powerful Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. That was your land now reporting from Jerusalem.