Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 22/5/2025; Author: Nerma Šehović
Videos are being shared on social media claiming to show China “breaking through” the Israeli blockade of Gaza in May 2025 and delivering humanitarian aid to the population. This did not happen. In reality, the situation in Gaza remains critical.
A reel was posted on Facebook on May 14, 2025, claiming that China had “broken through” the Israeli blockade of Gaza and delivered humanitarian aid for children in the Palestinian enclave. The reel is a montage of several clips showing airplanes flying in formation or dropping food packages by parachute.
As of the date this analysis was published, the reel had been shared 1,700 times, and the same claims, often “supported” by the same footage, were posted on several other Facebook profiles. This “news” began circulating on social media at a time when Israel had blocked the entry of any humanitarian aid into Gaza for three months, putting millions of people at risk of starvation.
Did China Actually “Break Through” the Blockade?
After a short-lived ceasefire was reached between Hamas and the Israeli military in January 2025, Israel resumed attacks on the Gaza Strip on March 18, 2025. A few weeks earlier, on March 2, Israel had completely blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. The total blockade lasted three months and put 2.1 million people living in Gaza, many of them children, at risk of starvation. On May 19, 2025, humanitarian aid entered Gaza for the first time in three months, but Israel allowed only five aid trucks in. The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said this was a “drop in the ocean” compared to the urgent needs of the population, stressing that much more aid needed to reach Gaza.
Although China, like many other countries, condemned the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza, there is no evidence that it actually broke through the blockade and delivered aid. Chinese institutions have not announced that they did this or plan to do so, and neither global nor Palestinian media have reported such an event. In fact, a Google search in English for the claim that China “broke” the Israeli aid blockade shows a number of fact-checking articles debunking the claim (link). A young man from Gaza, Kareem Abu Kwaik, also addressed the viral claims about this event on May 17, 2025. In an Instagram post liked by nearly two hundred thousand people, he stated that, at that time, no aid had entered Gaza for 70 days.
As for the footage being shared on social media as evidence of China “delivering aid to Gaza”, it actually comes from earlier events and depicts unrelated scenes. One video showing planes flying in a triangle formation captures a Chinese-Egyptian military exercise held in early May, during which aircraft from both air forces flew over Giza, Egypt. In some of the clips shared alongside the claims of a Chinese “breakthrough”, the pyramids in Giza are clearly visible (link).
The videos showing packages being dropped from planes by parachute are from earlier humanitarian aid operations to Gaza, carried out by various countries in 2024. Most of these clips appear to show an aid drop operation conducted by the U.S. and Jordan in March 2024 (1, 2, 3). This can be inferred from the appearance of the parachutes and aid packages, as well as the similarity between frames from the viral Facebook reel and footage from last year’s operation.
So, China did not “break through” the Israeli blockade of Gaza in May 2025, nor did any other country. Due to the blockade and constant airstrikes carried out by Israel, the situation in the enclave remained critical at the time this analysis was written.
Therefore, we rate the initial post claiming that China delivered humanitarian aid to Gaza despite the Israeli blockade as fake news. All subsequent shares of this claim are rated as the distribution of fake news.
