Gaza resistance sources say fear is rising US pier will be used for forced displacement of Palestinians
US soldiers working on the floating pier, off the shore of Gaza, on 26 April 2024
Ahmed Omar writes in Mondoweiss on 11 June 2024:
In March 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address that the U.S. would be building a temporary “floating pier” on the Gaza shoreline to deliver humanitarian aid to the starving population in Gaza. “No U.S. boots will be on the ground,” he promised.
Since then, however, critics have raised concerns that the pier is not only being used for “humanitarian” purposes but is being employed for military activities that aid in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
An intelligence source from within the resistance in Gaza, who spoke to Mondoweiss under conditions of anonymity, says there are mounting signs the U.S. pier could also be used to forcibly displace Palestinians. This would provide an alternative to the original Israeli plan of forcing Palestinians into the Sinai, which was rejected by Egypt early on in the war.
“The floating pier project is an American solution to the displacement dilemma in Gaza,” the source said. “It goes beyond both the Israeli solution of displacing Gazans into Sinai…and the Egyptian suggestion of displacing [Gazans] into the Naqab [desert].” Instead, the source said, the U.S. pier would be used to facilitate the displacement of Gazans to Cyprus, and then eventually to Lebanon or Europe.
These concerns have been brought into sharp relief after the Israeli army committed a massacre in Nuseirat refugee camp last weekend, killing at least 274 Palestinians in order to retrieve four Israeli captives.
The U.S. pier was at the center of coverage of the massacre, as multiple news sources, videos, and eyewitness accounts from Gaza indicated that U.S. forces may have been involved in the operation and that humanitarian trucks entering Nuseirat were hiding the Israeli soldiers that carried out the massacre.