Troubled US Gaza aid pier mission is officially over
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The $230 million floating pier has been described as largely ineffective.
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US Army soldiers stand next to trucks arriving loaded with humanitarian aid at the US-built floating pier Trident before reaching the beach on the coast of the Gaza Strip, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (AP)
The US military's troubled mission to deliver urgently needed aid to Gaza via a temporary pier has concluded, a senior American officer announced on Wednesday, as international organizations warn of imminent famine in the north of the Palestinian territory amid the starvation campaign carried out by the Israeli occupation.
US President Joe Biden expressed disappointment with the pier's performance, which has been repeatedly detached from the shore due to bad weather since its initial installation in mid-May, significantly limiting its operational time.
"The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete. So there's no more need to use the pier," Vice Admiral Brad Cooper informed journalists.
"It's now transitioning... to a port in Ashdod," Cooper confirmed, which "offers a more sustainable path."
The deputy head of the US Central Command claimed that deliveries from Cyprus to Ashdod, and then on to northern Gaza, have already begun, with more than a million pounds of aid moving via that route in recent weeks.
He hailed the roughly 20-day pier effort as a "historically unprecedented operation to deliver aid into an active combat zone without any US boots on the ground."
The pier was damaged by bad weather in May and had to be removed for repairs. It was reattached on June 7 but relocated to Ashdod on June 14 to protect it from anticipated high seas, a situation that recurred later in the month.
Aid distribution upon reaching land has also been problematic. The UN World Food Programme suspended deliveries of aid that arrived via the pier last month to assess the security situation after two of its warehouses in Gaza were struck by rockets, injuring a staff member.
This day coincided with a massacre, which resulted in the killing of 274 Palestinians, carried out by Israeli occupation forces to retrieve four captives who were held by the Palestinian Resistance in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
The director of the Government Media Office in Gaza had highlighted in a press conference that the humanitarian situation is dire in the northern regions of the Strip, where the floating US pier, purportedly established to ease the situation, has failed to mitigate the worsening famine.
He pointed out that the US pier was used during the Nuseirat massacre, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries.
The $230 million floating pier has been described as largely ineffective, with Georgios Petropoulos, head of the UN humanitarian coordination office in Gaza, labeling the US operation "a failure".
During the limited period that the pier was operational before the storm, roughly 27 trucks departed per day, with plans for 150, knowing that the Gaza Strip needed at least 600 trucks per day to avoid famine.
Biden announced the pier project during his State of the Union address in March as "Israel" delayed land deliveries of assistance. The Pentagon has claimed that the project helped pressure the Israeli government to open more aid routes.
"The deployment of this pier has... helped secure Israeli commitment to opening additional crossings into northern Gaza," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists last week.
But Biden told a news conference last week that the pier had not worked as well as he had hoped.
"I've been disappointed that some of the things that I've put forward have not succeeded as well, like the port we attached from Cyprus – I was hopeful that would be more successful," the US president said of the project.
Read more: Russia says US should urge an end to Gaza blockade instead of pier
