According to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, the US-built Gaza pier needs to be completely removed and repaired, which will take at least a week.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the U.S.-built temporary pier, battered by strong winds and waves and used for the delivery of food aid to malnourished Palestinians for less than two weeks, will be withdrawn off the Gaza coast and repaired.
According to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, the pier will be removed from the beach over the next two days and transported to Ashdod, in southern Israel, where U.S. Central Command will rebuild it. The pier in Gaza will need to be anchored back into the beach after the repairs, according to her, will take “at least over a week.”
“From when it was operational, it was working, and we just had sort of an unfortunate confluence of weather storms that made it inoperable for a bit,” Singh said. “Hopefully just a little over a week, we should be back up and running.”
One of the few routes by which free food and other supplies are reaching Palestinians, who the U.N. claims are in danger of starvation due to the almost eight-month-old conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, is via the dock, which is used to transport humanitarian material arriving by sea.
Due to fighting nearby as Israel presses into Rafah, the two main crossings in southern Gaza, Rafah from Egypt and Kerem Shalom from Israel are either closed or generally inaccessible for the United Nations. Most of the humanitarian aid that has entered Gaza in the last three weeks has come through the pier and two crossings with Israel in the northern part of the territory.
This latest setback for the $320 million pier comes after three U.S. service members were hurt and four vessels were beached because of strong waves since it barely started operating two weeks ago. According to Singh, two of the service personnel had minor wounds, but the third is currently in serious condition.
Additionally, deliveries were stopped for two days last week when a Palestinian man was shot dead and crowds rushed assistance vehicles leaving the pier.
Even after strong waves on Saturday caused four Army boats that were transporting relief pallets from commercial ships to the pier to become unmoored, the pier remained completely operational. The Gaza beach is anchor-bearing, and the system provides a lengthy causeway for trucks to drive rescue supplies onto the shore.
On the Israeli coast, two of the ships became stranded. With assistance from the Israeli military, Singh stated that one has already been found and the other will within the next twenty-four hours. She claimed that the other two boats, which were abandoned on the beach in Gaza, should be found within the next two days.
After the new maritime route started to gain traction and more than 1,000 metric tons of food aid were supplied, the pier was suspended.
U.S. officials have reiterated again and time again that more checkpoints for humanitarian vehicles need to be opened and that the pier cannot handle the amount of aid that Gaza’s desperate residents require. The pier could feed 500,000 people in Gaza at full capacity, and open land crossings are essential for the remaining 1.8 million, according to U.S. officials.
Although food airdrops from the United States are planned, they too will not be sufficient to meet all demands.
Aid supplies cannot pass through the crossing in the southern city of Rafah, which is a vital supply of food and fuel for Gaza, due to an intensifying Israeli attack. Humanitarian organizations claim that Israeli military activities make it difficult for them to fetch aid there for distribution, despite Israel’s claims that it is bringing help in through another border crossing, Kerem Shalom.
Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that Biden’s $320M Gaza pier has detached and drifted onto an Israeli beach, highlighting setbacks in the US humanitarian aid initiative, including injuries to US soldiers and complications in aid delivery.
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