The United States has historically used its military to provide food, water and other humanitarian assistance to civilians during wars or natural disasters. The Pentagon’s walls are decorated with photos of such missions in Haiti, Liberia, Indonesia and countless other countries.
But it is rare for the United States, with tacit U.S. support, to try to provide such services to people who are being bombed.
President Biden’s decision to order the U.S. military to build a floating pier off the Gaza Strip that would allow aid to be delivered by sea puts American soldiers in a new phase of their humanitarian aid story. The same military that sends the weapons and bombs that Israel uses in Gaza is now also sending food and water to the besieged area.
The floating pier idea came a week after Mr. Biden approved humanitarian airdrops for Gaza, which aid experts criticized as inadequate. Even the floating pier will not be enough to ease suffering in the area, where residents are on the brink of famine, according to aid experts.
Nonetheless, senior Biden officials said, the United States would continue to supply Israel with the munitions it uses in Gaza while trying to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians being bombed there.
So the Pentagon is doing both.
For decades, the Army Corps of Engineers has used combat engineers to build floating docks where troops can cross rivers, unload supplies and conduct other military operations. Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said Friday that the Army’s Seventh Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary Brigade), based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis near Norfolk, Virginia, will be one of the key military units involved in the construction of the floating Piers for Gaza.
The dock will be built and assembled along with an army ship off the coast of the Gaza Strip, General Ryder said. Defense Ministry officials said the ship will require armed escort, especially if it comes within range of the coast, adding that they are working to ensure its protection.
A U.S. Army official said such operations typically involve a large ship off the coast of the desired location and a “roll-on-roll-off unloading facility” – a large floating dock – set up next to the ship as a holding area. Cargo carried or placed on the dock is loaded onto smaller naval boats and transported to a temporary pier or causeway anchored on land.
The 1,800-foot-long, two-lane temporary causeway will be built by Army engineers, flanked by tugboats and driven, or “stabbed,” into the bank. The cargo aboard the smaller naval boats can then be moved onto the causeway and ashore.
Gen. Ryder insisted Friday that the military could build the dam and pierce the bank without putting American boots — or fins — on the ground in Gaza. He said it would take up to 60 days and about 1,000 U.S. troops to move the ship into place from the East Coast and build the dock and seawall.
After the ship arrives offshore, it will take about seven to 10 days to construct the floating dock and causeway, a defense ministry official said.
“This is part of a judicial effort by the United States to focus not only on opening and expanding roads by land, which is of course the optimal way to get aid to Gaza, but also on conducting air drops.” said General Ryder.
The floating pier will enable the delivery of “more than two million meals per day,” he said. Around 2.3 million people live in the Gaza Strip.
Gen. Ryder acknowledged that neither the airdrops nor the floating pier would be as effective as delivering aid by land, which Israel has blocked. “We want to see a significant increase in the amount of overland assistance,” said General Ryder. “We understand that this is the most viable way to get help.”
But he added: “We will not wait.”
The United States will work with regional partners and European allies to build, finance and maintain the corridor, officials said, noting that the idea for the project originated in Cyprus.
On Thursday, Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, welcomed Biden’s announcement. But speaking to reporters after briefing the Security Council, she added: “At the same time, I cannot help but repeat: air and sea are not a substitute for land, and no one says otherwise.”
Biden’s humanitarian efforts in Gaza so far “might make some people in the United States feel good,” Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said in an interview. But he added: “This is putting a very small Band-Aid on a very large wound.”
The humanitarian aid is expected to be collected in Larnaca, Cyprus, about 210 nautical miles from Gaza, officials said. That would allow Israeli officials to check the shipments first.
While the makeshift port will initially be operated by the military, Washington expects it to eventually become commercially operated, the official said.
Officials did not elaborate on how aid delivered by sea would be transported from the coast to Gaza. But the aid is being distributed in part by Spanish chef José Andrés, founder of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which has served more than 32 million meals in Gaza.
Two diplomats briefed on the plans said the port would be built on the Gaza coast just north of the Wadi Gaza border crossing, where Israeli forces have set up a major checkpoint.
However, the central problems remain unresolved. Aid workers say delivering aid by truck is far more efficient and cost-effective than transporting it to Gazans by boat. But despite heavy Israeli shelling and ground fighting in southern Gaza, trucks are still unable to deliver goods.
And delivering aid by sea may not prevent the chaos that has accompanied the deliveries.
More than 100 people were killed in Gaza last month, health officials there said, when hungry civilians stormed a convoy of aid trucks, sparking a stampede and prompting Israeli soldiers to fire on the crowd.
The U.S. military has airdropped aid in previous conflicts in the Middle East and South Asia, even in wars in which the United States was directly involved.
In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered military aircraft to drop food and water to tens of thousands of Yazidis trapped in a barren mountain range in northwestern Iraq. The Yazidis, members of an ethnic and religious minority, were fleeing militants who threatened genocide.
In 2001, President George W. Bush ordered British and American troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan to airdrop daily rations to civilians stranded in remote areas of the country.
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2024-03-10 01:59:49
www.nytimes.com