‘Smokescreen’: officials voice concern over US plans for Gaza aid pier
Bags of flour to be distributed by UNRWA in Rafah
Julian Borger reports in The Guardian on 24 April 2024:
A giant floating pier is due to be completed in the next two weeks in the eastern Mediterranean from where it will be pushed towards the Gaza shore, but there is growing uncertainty over how useful the US project will be in containing a famine.
There are concerns in the humanitarian community that Israel has co-opted the pier plan, which Joe Biden touted as a way to bring about a “massive” increase in aid to Gaza, with one aid official saying the project was in danger of becoming a “smokescreen” for the planned invasion of Rafah.
US officials had said the pier was due to be in position by early May, after being built by engineers working off US naval vessels. However, a Pentagon spokesman, Maj Gen Pat Ryder, said that, while all the required ships were in place, the US military was still waiting for all the accompanying arrangements for delivering aid to be made before starting work on the pier and causeway.
“As I understand it, as of right now there has been no physical construction of the temporary pier or the causeway,” Maj Gen Ryder said on Tuesday, adding the military had to be sure “all of the pieces are in place and that you can begin operating”. Ryder insisted: We’re still, based on all indications, on track to see an operating capability by the end of this month or early May.”
However, there is still a lack of clarity over how the aid will be distributed once it reaches Gaza. According to several aid officials, the current plan is to anchor it not off northern Gaza, where the threat of famine is most severe, but at a point halfway up the strip where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have a stronghold.
That would mean that food aid brought in via the dock would still have to pass through an IDF checkpoint at the Netzarim corridor, a military road that bisects the strip, and which has been a choke-point stopping humanitarian deliveries reaching the north.
Some UN and other humanitarian officials fear that the aid will be diverted south to camps set up for the more than 1 million people now sheltering in Rafah. The IDF wants them to move out so that it can conduct an offensive against Hamas units in Gaza’s southernmost city.