How the U.S. military will use a floating pier to deliver Gaza aid

 

Construction will take up to two months and require 1,000 U.S. troops who will remain off shore, officials say. Once complete, it will enable delivery of 2 million meals daily.

The U.S. military anticipates that a floating pier, to be built off Gaza’s coastline in coming weeks, will enable delivery of 2 million meals daily to Palestinians facing starvation, the Pentagon said Friday, describing its plan to address the worsening humanitarian crisis there without deploying American personnel directly into the war zone.

Construction of the offshore pier and causeway connecting it to land will take as long as 60 days and require about 1,000 U.S. troops, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters.

President Biden announced the initiative during his State of the Union address Thursday, as hopes dim for a another cease-fire in Israel’s five-month war with Hamas and his administration contends with withering criticism for the vast supply of U.S. weaponsthat have contributed to the conflict’s massive civilian death toll. It’s one element of a broader “maritime corridor” that the United States and other countries have pledged to establish amid growing concerns about the situation.

The perceived need for the floating structure is a reflection of the political land mines that have stymied efforts to get humanitarian aid to those trapped by the fighting.

Israel’s deep-water port at Ashdod is less than 25 miles from Gaza, but Israeli officials have refused to open its northern border crossing. Egypt’s El Arish port, just south of Gaza, has been a key arrival point for assistance. But all shipments must go through a laborious process of loading onto trucks that travel to an Israeli inspection site, only to be unloaded and reloaded again to then join an ever-growing line of vehicles waiting to enter the Palestinian territory.

About 576,000 people — more than a quarter of the enclave’s population — are on the brink of famine, United Nations officials said. Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier this week that at least 20 people there have died of malnutritionand dehydration.

There is “dire, urgent need” for relief, Ryder said in outlining what he characterized as an “emergency mission” still being finalized.

U.S. troops, including the Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade based in Virginia, will take part in the effort. The operation will include construction of a floating pier at sea that will allow ships to deliver aid, which will then be loaded onto Navy support vessels and offloaded onto a floating causeway. The two-lane causeway, about 1,800 feet in length, will be steered onto a landing site ashore and secured to the ground by non-U. S. personnel whom Ryder did not identify. Trucks will then access the causeway to pick up and haul the aid.

Washington is coordinating with other countries in the region, the United Nations and humanitarian groups to determine how the aid will be distributed once it arrives on land, Ryder said. American personnel stay either on the causeway or on the ships, he said.

Source : Washington post