The United Kingdom may soon join international efforts to airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has indicated, as more than 220 MPs across nine political parties demand the government formally recognise a Palestinian state.
Writing in The Mirror on Friday, Sir Keir welcomed Israel’s decision to permit foreign countries to begin air deliveries of supplies into Gaza, describing the move as “far too late” but confirming the UK would act. “We will do everything we can to get aid in via this route,” he stated.
The Labour leader also said the UK was “urgently accelerating efforts” to evacuate critically ill children from Gaza to receive treatment in Britain. “This humanitarian catastrophe must end,” he wrote later on X, formerly Twitter, promising the government would “pull every lever” to ensure life-saving support reaches Palestinians in desperate need.
The development comes as international calls intensify for a political resolution to the crisis. On Friday, France pledged to recognise Palestinian statehood within months — a move many in Westminster now say the UK should emulate.
More than a third of MPs — over half of them Labour — signed a cross-party letter urging immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham and chair of the international development select committee, coordinated the effort and told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “the clock is really ticking”.
“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 warned.
However, Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar condemned the proposal as a “prize for terror”, pointing to the 7 October Hamas attacks.
Champion also cautioned that airdrops were “largely symbolic”, describing previous scenes of “grotesque hunger games” in Gaza as people scrambled for limited parachuted supplies. “What we need is Israel to make the decision to open every single border so that aid floods in. That is the only way to stop this man-made famine,” she said.
The UN and humanitarian agencies have similarly criticised airdrops as an inefficient alternative to ground access, describing the recent decision as a “distraction to inaction”. The World Food Programme reported that nearly one in three people in Gaza are going days without food, with over 90,000 women and children in urgent need of malnutrition treatment.
Previous air operations by the Royal Air Force and Jordanian Air Force in early 2024 dropped over 100 tonnes of supplies into northern Gaza. While Israeli media reported that Jordan and the UAE would resume drops in coming days, Jordanian officials told the BBC they had yet to receive Israeli permission.
Since the war began, only two children from Gaza have been brought to the UK for medical care, arriving in May with assistance from the humanitarian group Project Pure Hope.
Sir Keir has said any recognition of a Palestinian state must be part of a “wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution”, a stance he reiterated following emergency talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
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