The US-built pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip will be removed for repairs after it was damaged by rough seas, causing Washington to temporarily suspend delivering aid to starving Palestinians through the structure, the Pentagon announced on Tuesday.
The pier, which was damaged on Tuesday, will be removed from its anchored position offshore within the next 48 hours, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.
The structure will be towed to Ashdod in southern Israel, where US Central Command will carry out repairs, which are expected to take “at least more than a week” before it can be anchored again off the Gaza coast, she said.
“I can’t predict weather patterns, I can’t predict there won’t be high seas again. But from the time it was operational, it was working. And we had a sort of unfortunate confluence of weather storms that rendered it inoperable for a while,” Singh added. “Hopefully in a little over a week we will be back up and running.”
The incident highlights the many difficulties in conducting the humanitarian assistance operation through the $320 million rapid construction pier, which had only been operational for less than two weeks.
The structure, part of a maritime aid corridor for Gaza, receives goods sent from Cyprus that are loaded onto trucks, taken onto Army vessels and sailed to the pier anchored on the beach of the besieged territory.
The process is one of the limited ways food and medical supplies can reach Palestinians after many of their land crossings have been blocked or strangled by Israel in a nearly eight-month war with Hamas in the enclave.
But the effort has also been marked by challenges, including rough seas that delayed its construction, the injuries of three U.S. service members last week and four ships that broke apart at dock and ran aground in Israel and Gaza after rough seas over the weekend.
Of the injured soldiers, two have returned to duty, although the third is still in critical condition, Singh said.
She also recalled that of the four Army boats that were undocked, two were stuck on the beach in Israel, one of which has already been recovered and the other to be recovered in the next 24 hours. The remaining two ships were off Gaza beach with recovery planned over the next two days, Singh said.
Furthermore, the aid leaving the docks did not always achieve the intended objectives, with Singh recognizing that “there was a problem of self-distribution”.
The pier’s suspension comes after more than 1,000 metric tons of food aid was delivered through the pier, although U.S. officials stressed that the structure will not offset aid that could pass through land corridors. Only about 500,000 Palestinians could be fed from the dock supplies, with the Biden administration pushing to open more checkpoints for humanitarian trucks so that the remaining 1.8 million civilians can be fed.
The U.S. has continued to provide airdrops of food, but Singh said there are no current plans to increase airdrops while the pier is being repaired.
“If there is a way to transfer the aid so that we can reposition it somewhere else and be able to do an airdrop from somewhere else, that would certainly be a possibility,” she said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
