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On Thursday 25 April, General Patrick Ryder, spokesperson for the Pentagon (the US Ministry of Defence), said that the United States has begun the construction of a temporary pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip: the pier will be used to distribute humanitarian aid for the Palestinian population, to alleviate the crisis caused by six months of Israeli bombings and military operations.
The general announced that naval vessels have begun assembling both the temporary floating dock and sea walkway off Gaza’s northern coast, and that aid deliveries could begin as early as early May.
According to the Pentagon, the operation will start from Cyprus where the aid will be inspected and then transferred by commercial ships to this large floating platform. From there, smaller US army ships will transport the aid to the pier anchored to the shore and trucks from a third country will pick it up and deposit it in distribution centers to get it, probably thanks to NGOs, to the population. The operation will be protected by the Israeli and US forces. The Pentagon has specified that no US soldiers will enter Gaza: deliveries would initially fill around 90 trucks a day and could quickly increase to around 150 trucks a day.
U.S. officials have warned, however, that they do not expect the pier to replace deliveries across Gaza’s land borders, which the United Nations says remains the most efficient way to bring humanitarian aid to the Strip. Now most of the aid enters through two border crossings in southern Gaza: however, it is limited and insufficient also due to Israeli obstructionism. The construction of the temporary pier, therefore, would certainly add a new entry point for aid (by sea, as well as by land as already happens), but it would not solve the main problem: that of logistics and the safe distribution of basic necessities. to the population.
The United States plan has some rather obvious critical aspects that had already emerged when President Joe Biden spoke about it at the beginning of March. The first and most significant concerns how the Israeli forces will manage the safety of the personnel who will be responsible for delivering the aid: just on Thursday, during a United Nations inspection, there was an explosion near the area where the pier it will touch the ground. The whole operation could then be complicated if Israel, as it has already announced, launches a military operation in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza.
– Read also: Israel is ready to attack Rafah
