WASHINGTON – The pier built by the US to transport food to Gaza faces one of the most serious challenges ever: its humanitarian partner is decide whether it is safe to continue delivering supplies reaching starving Palestinians by sea.
The United Nations, the most far-reaching actor in delivering aid to Gaza, halted its work on the pier following a June 8 operation by Israeli security forces that rescued four Israeli hostages and killed more than 270 Palestinians.
Rushing a mortally wounded Israeli commando after the attack, Israeli rescuers they chose not to return the way they came, across a land border, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, told journalists. Instead, they sped toward the beach and the site of the U.S. aid center on the Gaza coast, he said. An Israeli helicopter landed near the US-built pier and helped evacuate the hostages, according to the US and Israeli military.
For the UN and independent humanitarian groups, the event made real one of their main doubts about the US sea route: Whether aid workers could cooperate with the project supported by the US military and guaranteed by the Israeli military without violating fundamental humanitarian principles of neutrality and independence and without running the risk of aid workers being seen as allies of the US and Israel – and , in turn, targets in their own right.
Israel and the US deny that any aspect of month-old US pier was used in the Israeli attack.
The UN World Food Programme, which works with the US to transfer $230 million in dockside aid to warehouses and local aid teams for distribution inside Gaza, suspended cooperation while it conducted a security review. Aid is accumulating on the beach ever since.
“You can be assured that we will be very careful about what we assess and what we conclude,” said UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths.
Griffiths told reporters in a aid conference in Jordan this week that determining whether the Israeli attack misused the beach or roads around the pier “would jeopardize any future humanitarian involvement in that operation.”
The UN must analyze the facts, as well as what the public and Palestinian militants believe about any US, pier or aid worker involvement in the attack, spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York.
“Humanitarian aid should not be used and should not be seen as taking sides in a conflict,” Haq said. “The safety of our humanitarian workers depends on all parties and communities on the ground trusting their impartiality.”
Rumors have emerged on social media, deepening the danger for aid workers, aid groups say.
“Whether or not we saw the pier used for military purposes is almost irrelevant. Because the perception of people in Gaza, civilians and armed groups, is that humanitarian aid has been instrumentalized” by the parties to the conflict, said Suze van Meegen, head of Gaza operations at the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Oxfam International and some other humanitarian organizations said they are awaiting responses from the US government because it is responsible for agreements with the UN and other humanitarian groups on how the pier and aid deliveries would work.
Questions include whether Israeli helicopters and security forces used what the U.S. had promised aid groups would be a no-go area for the Israeli military around the pier, said Scott Paul, associate director of Oxfam.
The suspension of deliveries is just one of the problems that have hampered the pier, which President Joe Biden announced in March as an additional way to bring aid to the Palestinians. The US said the project was never a solution and urged Israel to lift restrictions on sending aid through land crossings as famine looms.
Sea Route First Responders arrived ashore on May 17, and work has waxed and waned since:
— May 18: Crowds overloaded aid trucks coming from the dock, stripping some trucks of their cargo. The PMA suspended deliveries from the pier for at least two days while working out alternative routes with the US and Israel.
— May 24: A little more than 1,000 metric tons of aid was delivered to Gaza from the dock, and the U.S. Agency for International Development later said that all of the aid was distributed within Gaza.
— May 25: Strong winds and rough seas damaged the pier and four US Army ships ran aground, injuring three servicemen, one seriously. Crews towed part of the floating dock in what became a two-week pause in operations.
—June 8: The U.S. military announced that deliveries resumed off project repaired and reinstalled. The Israeli military operation took place on the same day.
— Sunday: World Food Program chief Cindy McCain announced a “pause” in cooperation with the US pier, citing the previous day’s “incident” and the bombing of two WFP warehouses that injured an employee.
“WFP, of course, is taking the security measures it needs to take, and the reviews it needs to make, to feel safe and secure and to operate within Gaza,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina said. Singh this week.
The pier brought Gaza more than 2,500 metric tons (about 5.6 million pounds) of aid, Singh said. Around 1,000 tons were brought in by ship on Tuesday and Wednesday – after the WFP break – and are stored on the beach awaiting distribution.
Now the question is whether the UN will rejoin the effort.
For aid workers who often work without weapons or armed guards, and for those they serve, “the best guarantee of our safety is acceptance by communities” that aid workers are neutral, said Paul, the Oxfam official.
Palestinians already had deep doubts about the pier, given the leadership role of the United States in sending weapons and other support to its ally Israel, said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arab Center, an independent organization that researches Arab issues. -Israelis.
Distrustful Palestinians suffering in the Israel-Hamas war are being asked to take the U.S. at its word, and that’s hard to convince, said Munayyer, an American of Palestinian descent.
“So you know, perception is very important,” he said. “And for the people who are literally putting their lives on the line for humanitarian aid to circulate in a war zone, the perception puts you in danger.”
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Lederer reported from the United Nations. AP Writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Washington.
