WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military finished installing a floating dock for the Gaza Strip on Thursday, with authorities set to begin transporting badly needed humanitarian aid to the enclave besieged during seven months of intense fighting in the Gaza Strip. Israel-Hamas war.
The final, overnight construction sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after U.S. President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing hunger while food and other supplies cannot survive at a time when Israel recently seized the important Rafah border crossing, in its assault on that southern city, on the Egyptian border.
Full of logistical, climate and security challenges, the sea route was designed to increase the amount of aid reaching the Gaza Strip, but is not considered a substitute for much cheaper land deliveries that aid agencies say are much more sustainable. Aid shipments will be deposited at an Israeli-built port facility southwest of Gaza City and then distributed by aid groups.
US troops will not set foot in Gaza, US officials insist, even as they acknowledge the danger of operating near the war zone.
Heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants on the outskirts of Rafa it has displaced around 600,000 people, a quarter of Gaza’s population, UN officials say. Another 100,000 civilians have fled parts of northern Gaza as the Israeli military has resumed combat operations there.
Pentagon officials said the fighting in Gaza did not threaten the new coastal aid distribution area, but they made clear that security conditions would be closely monitored and could lead to the closure of the shipping route, even if only temporarily. The site has already been the target of mortar fire during its construction and Hamas has threatened to attack any foreign forces that “occupy” the Gaza Strip.
The “protection of participating U.S. forces is a top priority. And as such, over the past few weeks, the United States and Israel have developed an integrated security plan to protect all personnel who are working,” said Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command. We are confident in the ability of this security agreement to protect those involved.”
US troops anchored the pier at 7:40 a.m. local time on Thursday, the military’s Central Command said in a statement, which emphasized that none of its forces had entered the Gaza Strip.
“It is expected that trucks transporting humanitarian assistance will begin to disembark on land in the coming days,” the statement said. “The United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution in Gaza.”
It was not immediately clear which UN agency was involved.
Israeli forces will be in charge of security on the coast, but there are also two US Navy warships near the area in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, the USS Arleigh Burke and the USS Paul Ignatius. Both ships are destroyers equipped with a wide range of weapons and capabilities to protect American troops at sea and allies on the beach.
Aid agencies say they are running out of food in southern Gaza and fuel is running low, which will force hospitals to close critical operations and stop aid deliveries by trucks. The United Nations and other agencies have warned for weeks that an Israeli attack on Rafah, which sits on the border with Egypt, close to the main aid entry points, would paralyze humanitarian operations and cause a disastrous rise in civilian casualties.
More than 1.4 million Palestinians — half of Gaza’s population — have taken refuge in Rafah, most after fleeing Israeli offensives elsewhere.
The first cargo ship loaded with 475 pallets of food left Cyprus last week to rendezvous with a US military ship, the Roy P. Benavidez, which is off the coast of Gaza. Aid pallets from the MV Sagamore were transferred to the Benavidez. The Pentagon said moving aid between ships was an effort to be ready so it could flow quickly once the dock and bridge were installed.
The installation of the pier several kilometers from the coast and the walkway, currently anchored on the beach, was delayed for almost two weeks due to bad weather and high seas. Sea conditions made it too dangerous for U.S. and Israeli troops to secure the passage to the coast and carry out other final assembly work, U.S. officials said.
According to a defense official, it was estimated that the Sagamore’s initial shipment provided enough to feed 11,000 people for a month. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not yet been released.
Military leaders have said aid deliveries will begin slowly to ensure the system works. They will start with around 90 aid trucks per day via the sea route, and that number will quickly grow to around 150 per day. But aid agencies say this is not enough to avert looming famine in Gaza and should be just one part of a broader effort by Israel to open land corridors.
Biden used his State of the Union Address on March 7 to order the military to create a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza, establishing a sea route to deliver food and other aid. Food shipments were held up at land crossings amid Israeli restrictions and intensified fighting.
Under the new sea route, humanitarian aid is delivered to Cyprus, where it will undergo inspections and security checks at the port of Larnaca. It is then loaded onto ships – mainly commercial vessels – and taken about 200 miles to the large floating dock built by the US military off the coast of Gaza.
There, the pallets are transferred to trucks, driven onto smaller Army boats and then transported several kilometers to the floating bridge, which has been anchored to the beach by the Israeli military. The trucks, which are being conducted by personnel from another countryThey will go down the bridge to a safe area on land, where they will leave the help and immediately turn around and return to the boats.
Aid groups will collect supplies for distribution on land, with the UN working with the US Agency for International Development to establish the logistics hub on the beach.
Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters that the project will cost at least US$320 millionincluding transporting equipment and pier sections from the United States to the Gaza coast, as well as construction and aid delivery operations.
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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
