Since the publishing of this blog the pier has been the centre of ongoing drama of the use of this port. It has been reopened and closed again due to hampered plans.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that it has suspended the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza via its floating pier after separate incidents in which four U.S. military vessels were beached, one U.S. service member was critically injured, and sections of the structure were ripped free in bad weather. The damage will require the U.S. military to disassemble pieces of the pier attached to the Gazan shore, rebuild them in the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod, then transport them back to the Gazan shore and reconnect them, said a Pentagon spokeswoman. It is perhaps unfortunate that the U.S. insisted on building a weak temporary pier rather than a permanent structure for the delivery of its aid supplies by sea. Thus far the USA has delivered one thousand tons of aid by sea (the equivalent of fifty truckloads).
The Safeena mission, the inaugural sea-based humanitarian aid delivery to Gaza, arrived at the Strip’s coast on a Friday (15th March) afternoon. It began offloading 200 tons of food brought from Cyprus by the Open Arms ship, which is run by a Spanish non-profit organization usually involved in rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea. The Open Arms vessel departed from Larnaca, Cyprus on a journey that took up to few days. Since Gaza lacks a functioning port, World Central Kitchen (WCK), a food relief initiative created by Spanish-American chef José Andrés, the US charity behind this mission, has constructed a jetty to receive aid.
The project was described as having significant “complexity,” as both parties repeatedly warned in recent days. Beyond political and weather-related barriers, the distribution technique was problematic since Israel prevented the tugboat’s passengers from getting in touch with the Gaza populace. At a fresh operation supported by WCK and the governments of Jordan, Cyprus, and the United Arab Emirates, a second ship was being stored at the port of Larnaca carrying an extra 400 tonnes of food supplies.
After sailing for 72 hours from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus, the Open Arms arrived south of the capital on Thursday night (14th March), reopening an access route that had been blocked since 2007 when Israel imposed a land, sea, and air blockade that became more stringent following the October 7 attack, and the Islamist movement Hamas took control of Gaza.
The UN has warned that Gaza is on the verge of famine due to severe aid shortages. Although the most efficient way to deliver aid to Gaza is by road, aid agencies report that Israeli restrictions are allowing only a small fraction of the necessary supplies to get through. Israel has expressed support for the establishment of a maritime corridor and stated that it is facilitating aid transfers to Gaza while continuing its military operations against Hamas.
A spokesperson for World Central Kitchen (WCK) had announced that the organization will distribute 200 tons of food, equivalent to about 500,000 meals, to Gaza. The besieged area is home to over 2 million Palestinians. The spokesperson added that WCK is collaborating with thousands of local contractors and volunteers to organize and distribute the aid. This aid dispatch occurred as Cyprus, the European Commission, the United States, the UAE, and the United Kingdom work together to establish a maritime corridor for delivering aid directly to Gaza.
The ship, typically a search and rescue vessel operated by the NGO Open Arms, is repurposed to transport pallets of food aid. To facilitate the transfer from the barge and the ship to land, a temporary jetty is constructed in Gaza. The ship will tow a large barge loaded with pallets containing rice, flour, beans, lentils, and canned meats. World Central Kitchen (WCK) reported that it has provided over 35 million meals in Gaza since October, employing nearly 400 locally hired staff for its operations.
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which is in charge of regulating Israeli activity in the Palestinian territories, announced that Israel had taken part in the ship’s inspection process. However, they did not provide a time or location for the inspection. Aid organisations have accused COGAT of restricting entry to Gaza arbitrarily or without cause. COGAT is in charge of checking aid entering Gaza.
While maritime and air-dropped aid into Gaza is “helpful,” they can’t replace truck-delivered aid, roads have been the traditional method that have been used in the past, and there are three roads that enter Gaza, north to south, with only one road currently operational, relief is slowed. Delivering aid by ship also comes with its own complications. One of the problems and complications, will be the logistics of offloading boats onto a beach, and then onloading onto trucks, that this will have to be done in an area which is “prone to insecurity.”
As Israel continues to restrict the entry of aid via land crossings, countries are now trying to get aid into the conflict zone via air and sea routes. The US, Jordan and the UAE and several others have carried out airdrops into Gaza in recent days despite warnings from aid organizations that they are a dangerous and inefficient way of transporting aid. Once aid arrives in Gaza, it is transported via two routes: Salah Eddine Street and Al-Bahr Street.
The Israeli siege on Gaza has drastically reduced the entry of essential supplies, leaving Palestinians facing starvation, dehydration, and hunger. While Israeli authorities claim there is “no limit” on the relief that can enter Gaza, humanitarian groups have repeatedly warned that Israel’s restrictions on land crossings are severely hampering aid distribution efforts. Northern Gaza is on the brink of famine due to insufficient aid deliveries, according to the head of the UN World Food Programme. The number of children dying from malnutrition and dehydration is increasing.
Humanitarian workers and government officials working to deliver urgently needed aid to Gaza report a consistent pattern of Israeli obstruction. A number of humanitarian and government officials have stated that the Israeli agency controlling access to Gaza has imposed arbitrary and contradictory criteria, complicating the aid effort.
The US effort
The U.S. military anchored a temporary pier on Gaza’s coast, establishing a new entry point for humanitarian aid (an important policy which was at the very heart of NCF’s initiative). The flow of supplies through land borders has largely ceased since Israel’s incursion into Rafah. The aid distribution plan involves delivering supplies to the northern part of Gaza one day and to the southern part the following day. The establishment of the maritime corridor is occurring at a crucial juncture, particularly since the Rafah border crossing to Gaza has been shut for over a week, obstructing the flow of aid. This crossing served as Gaza’s sole link with Egypt, as all other border points in the strip are under Israeli control.
As of Thursday 16th May morning, aid would have to be loaded onto trucks and begin moving ashore “in the coming days.” U.S. officials had previously announced that the floating pier and causeway were completed the week before, but weather conditions delayed their installation.
Israel has long opposed the establishment of a seaport for Gaza, citing security concerns. As the humanitarian crisis in the territory has worsened in recent months, with severe shortages of food, medicine, and other essentials, the U.S. military had announced plans in March to build a temporary pier to facilitate aid shipments via the Mediterranean Sea.
On Thursday May 9th, the American ship Sagamore departed from Cyprus for Gaza, carrying humanitarian aid. The aid was transferred to a smaller vessel awaiting the pier’s installation. Over the next two days, the U.S. military and humanitarian groups had aimed to load three to five trucks from the pier and send them into Gaza as a test of the process outlined by the Pentagon, stated General Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Initial inspections are being conducted before trucks begin bringing aid to the shore after the U.S. military finished installing a floating pier off the Gaza Strip early on Thursday. After Hamas attacked Israel in October, the U.N., the U.S., and foreign humanitarian organisations have reported that Israel is allowing just a small percentage of the regular pre-war food and supply deliveries into Gaza. Food supplies in southern Gaza are almost completely exhausted, fuel supplies are dangerously low, and reports from aid organisations, the World Food Programme, and USAID confirm that hunger is severe in northern Gaza.
