Jordan’s military is test-running an air bridge for aid to Gaza

AL-QARARA, Gaza Strip — With just five minutes on the ground, Jordanian air force crew members rush to unload cardboard boxes from the back of a Black Hawk helicopter on the tarmac. In the distance, past a wire fence, is the rubble: toppled buildings and concrete shells of damaged high-rise apartments.

Jordan’s Royal Air Force began a new aid operation to Gaza soon after the ceasefire began last month between Israel and Hamas. It has been test-running 16 helicopter flights a day within Israel’s self-declared buffer zone. Delivering aid into Gaza by land still faces considerable obstacles after more than a year of war.

Mission commander Col. Naji Azzam Bani Nasr said the Jordanian operation, which NPR joined last Sunday, was aimed at getting essential medicines to Gaza hospitals.

“Anesthesia, medications for chronic diseases — these are the things they lack in Gaza hospitals and they need it very fast,” he said on the tarmac at Jordan’s King Abdullah II airbase. Bani Nasr said as of Feb. 9, the air force had delivered almost 100 tons of aid during the operation.

Jordan operates two field hospitals in Gaza, one established in 2009 and a second which began operating after the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.

Touching down in southern Gaza during the first Jordanian air lift of the day, the concrete landing field within Israel’s self-declared buffer zone was empty. Beyond a fence, three trucks were waiting to be loaded. As each flight unloaded, another was poised to land.

NPR was not allowed to take photographs from the ground of the destruction — a ban imposed by Israel, Jordanian military officials said. But the extent of the devastation was clearly visible from the air.

Over Israel, bright-green farm fields and communities with swimming pools dotted the landscape. From the air, the pale blue of the Mediterranean Sea was the only spot of color crossing into Gaza, where destroyed and damaged concrete buildings were a bleak palette of gray.

Sunday’s trip was a rare glimpse for foreign journalists on the ground in the devastated Palestinian territory. Gaza-based Palestinian journalists have covered the war from the start, with 82 journalists killed in 2024 by the Israeli military, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. But Israel largely bans foreign journalists from Gaza. The two-hour flight moved along the Dead Sea that separates Israel from Jordan, over Israel and touched down in southern Gaza, near the town of al-Qarara.

The United Nations says more than two-thirds of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed since the war began and 90% of the population displaced. A fragile ceasefire which took effect on Jan. 19 called for Israel to increase the number of aid trucks across its land borders with Gaza, but aid groups say many badly needed medical and fuel supplies remain restricted.

“We started using land routes when we could but sometimes there is a need for some commodities like medicine, some equipment and some high-value food items for children we need to get to Gaza quickly,” says Hussein Shibli, director of the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization, which organizes the aid shipments with the military.

Jordan, along with other countries, had previously dropped aid pallets with parachutes from cargo planes over Gaza. But the drops were dependent on weather, with some landing in the sea. At least 20 people either drowned trying to retrieve the aid or were killed when pallets landed on them, according to Gaza health authorities.

It is also difficult to ensure distribution to those who most need the aid with regular air drops.

Jordan is a key U.S. security partner. Many of the Jordanian Black Hawk pilots on the aid mission were trained in the U.S.

Each Black Hawk can carry one ton of cargo — far less than the roughly 20 tons a truck can carry — and flying in aid is much more expensive. Air shipments, like aid delivered by truck, must still be cleared in advance by Israeli authorities.

Shibli said Jordan was considering whether to continue the air bridge to supplement land deliveries. Jordanian authorities say this Sunday’s flights will be the last in the test program, and it’s unclear when they may resume.