ISTANBUL

France announced Tuesday that it will airdrop a total of 40 tons of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip starting Friday.

"We will organize, starting Friday and in close coordination with Jordanian authorities, four flights carrying 10 tons of food each into the Gaza Strip," Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told French broadcaster BFM TV, as he is co-chairing a high-level conference on a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at UN headquarters in New York.

Stressing that the air route is "useful" but "not sufficient," he noted that 52 metric tons of French humanitarian cargo are currently blocked just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip.

"It is therefore essential that Israeli authorities finally agree to reopen land access to Gaza in a sufficiently meaningful way to ease the horrific suffering of the civilian population there," Barrot said.

He further reaffirmed that they had achieved and "even exceeded" the goals that they had set by creating momentum with Britain’s announcement that it is considering recognizing the state of Palestine.

"Other countries are following suit," Barrot said. "In short, we have revived a political horizon: the two-state solution, which was on the verge of collapse."