The U.S. Built a $320 Million Pier to Get Aid to Gazans. Little of It Has Reached Them.
Challenges to distributing food, water and other supplies continue; good alternatives to ground crossings prove elusive
WSJ
An ambitious U.S. effort to get aid into Gaza via a floating pier in the Mediterranean Sea has gotten off to a sluggish start, facing many of the same logistical challenges that have throttled broader attempts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The Pentagon spent $320 million and engaged 1,000 soldiers and sailors to open a major maritime corridor last week, delivering on President Biden’s promise in March that the U.S. military would install a temporary dock off the Gaza coast for cargo ships to unload food, water and other supplies. Fourteen ships from the U.S. and other countries are involved in a mission supported by humanitarian groups and several nations including Israel.
But in the first week of operations, only 820 tons of aid was delivered through the pier, of which around two-thirds reached distribution points within Gaza, the Pentagon said Thursday. That is roughly equivalent to 71 truckloads—far below the initial target of 90 truckloads a day, and about 15% of the estimated minimum daily need for a population of more than two million people facing crisis-level acute food insecurity.
The dock suffered another setback Saturday, when four boats attached to the pier detached during heavy seas, according to the U.S. military. Two were recovered and anchored nearby, and two floated northward toward the Israeli coastal city of Ashdod, the military said. The Israeli military is helping the U.S. recover the vessels, according to the U.S. military and an Israeli military official.
Around a dozen trucks from the pier never made it to their destinations inside Gaza, according to United Nations officials, who said that desperate Gazans commandeered the aid and that the trucks couldn’t use alternative routes due to Israeli restrictions—familiar problems plaguing aid operations in the strip.
“It is not flowing at the rate that any of us would be happy with, because we always want more,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday, adding that the U.S. was working to get “necessary security arrangements in place” to prevent looting.
One step to improving aid to Gaza came Friday when Biden secured a commitment from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to resume shipments of U.N.-provided assistance for civilians in the southern part of the strip.
That aid is funneled through Egyptian territory to the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel. Egypt had been holding back that assistance to try to pressure Israel to end its Rafah operation. Another border crossing at Rafah remains closed.
U.S. officials have said that the floating pier, soon after achieving its initial target, would expand capacity to enable 150 trucks a day to enter Gaza, assisting at least 500,000 people a month. Sullivan denied that the current lower levels indicated poor planning, blaming it instead on “a dynamic environment.”
The pier has begun operating at a critical time in the nearly eight-month war, with Israeli military advances in Rafah obstructing passage through the two southern border crossings, which were the conduits for most of the aid entering the Gaza Strip. The maritime corridor—and a continuing air-drop campaign—was meant to supplement ground deliveries, which are cheaper and more efficient. If the sea route is able to ramp up and the Rafah campaign drags on, though, the pier could potentially provide a vital lifeline to a population facing famine.
Humanitarian aid from donors arrives in Cyprus by air or sea. At Larnaca port, it is screened and packaged onto shipping pallets. The pallets are then loaded onto large military or commercial vessels which transport them some 200 miles across the Mediterranean Sea.
The large vessels arrive one at a time at a large floating platform constructed by the U.S. military that is anchored a few miles off the coast of Gaza. Here, the pallets are placed on trucks which drive onto smaller U.S. military vessels that can reach closer to the shore.
The smaller vessels shuttle between five and 15 trucks at a time to a smaller floating pier, which the U.S. military constructed and the Israeli military affixed to the Gaza coast. The trucks drive several hundred feet down a causeway onto the beach, where the pallets they are carrying are transferred onto a separate set of trucks for onward delivery.
In a marshaling zone on the beach that is protected by the Israeli military, aid workers coordinate the deployment of the second set of trucks to warehouses and distribution points across Gaza.
The maritime corridor is a cumbersome system with multiple potential bottlenecks. Food, medical supplies and other goods from around the world are sent by air or sea to the island nation of Cyprus, where the aid is screened and packaged onto shipping pallets in the small port of Larnaca. A large military or commercial ship then transports the pallets some 200 miles across the Mediterranean Sea to a floating platform built by the U.S.
There, the pallets are put into trucks, which are driven onto smaller military vessels that carry them about 6 miles to a floating U.S.-built causeway secured to the beach by Israeli army engineers. The trucks drive a few hundred feet down the causeway and onto the beach. In a zone protected by Israeli soldiers, aid workers transfer the pallets onto a separate fleet of trucks that are used by aid groups to complete the final leg to warehouses and distribution points inside Gaza.
Weather poses a particular threat. Choppy waters in the Mediterranean Sea could damage the pier and make it unsafe for people to be on it, military officials have warned. Storms delayed installation of the pier for several days and could interrupt operations again. The summer is expected to be mostly calm, but if the pier survives until September it will likely have to stop operations around then and be dismantled.
The pier is an “extraordinary measure” by the U.S. government, said Michelle Strucke, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for global partnerships including humanitarian affairs and disaster response. But she said it was rendered ineffective by distribution issues on the ground and Israel’s lack of an effective deconfliction system to protect aid operations from military activities. Israel says it doesn’t target aid workers, and after a deadly incident last month the defense minister said the military would coordinate directly with aid groups.
The complex pier operation also adds a dangerous new dimension to Washington’s involvement in the Gaza war, which includes supplying Israel with billions of dollars of weapons. While U.S. officials say American forces won’t step foot in Gaza, the pier pushes them to the edge of a chaotic battlefield. Engineering work on the pier came under mortar fire a month ago by “various terrorist organizations,” according to the Israeli military.
Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, has said it would treat U.S. forces at the pier as an occupying force. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are hostile to the U.S. and have launched drones and missiles at ships in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza, say air-defense systems make the pier a military base. Both are implicit threats to attack.
Three U.S. troops have been injured at sea already, said Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy head of U.S. Central Command. Two of them have returned to duty, and one is being treated at an Israeli facility, he said without providing details. A U.S. defense official described the third troop as seriously wounded.
The danger to aid workers—more than 260 of whom have been killed over the course of the war, according to the U.N.—was highlighted last month when seven workers from World Central Kitchen, a charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on their convoy as it was delivering aid from a makeshift pier the group had built to receive sea deliveries.
The Israeli military controls the major ground arteries, and aid groups say their convoys often get held up at checkpoints for hours despite having pre-cleared the route. Israel says it is doing everything it can to ensure aid reaches Gaza.
The lack of a clear authority on the ground to secure aid distribution poses other problems. In a February incident, more than 100 people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire during a stampede of people rushing to get aid from a convoy. Aid groups assess that a surge of aid providing consistent supply for many days is the only way to reassure desperate people and convince them to allow trucks to transit safely.
Months of insufficient aid deliveries to Gaza, following Israel’s launch of the war in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, have pushed parts of Gaza into famine. More aid began entering in April after the U.S. and other foreign governments pressured Israel to open new ground crossings and ease restrictions on existing ones.
But after Israel launched military operations in Rafah this month, the level of aid deliveries collapsed, and southern Gaza is now at increased risk of famine. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees suspended food distribution in Rafah on Wednesday because of inadequate supplies and insecurity.
