WASHINGTON — The US military has halted deliveries of humanitarian aid to the coast of the Gaza Strip after a temporary floating pier suffered significant damage due to bad weather and high tides, a US official told Al-Monitor.
Part of the causeway system that had been anchored into the shore came unmoored, the official said.
It remains unclear exactly when the pier system broke down. US Central Command said on Saturday that “heavy sea states” had dislodged four US Army vessels from their moorings, but that the pier itself remained “fully functional.”
“The vessels broke free from their moorings and two vessels are now anchored on the beach near the pier. The third and fourth vessels are beached on the coast of Israel near Ashkelon. Efforts to recover the vessels are under way with assistance from the Israeli Navy,” CENTCOM’s statement read.
Why it matters: Northern Gaza is facing “full-blown famine,” the head of the United Nations’ World Food Program said on May 6, though experts say the effects are likely spread throughout the Palestinian enclave.
USAID initially estimated the pier would enable the delivery of some 290 metric tons of international humanitarian aid per day before logistics were fully up and running, eventually potentially reaching some 430 to 750 metric tons per day.
After more than a week of delays that US officials attributed to high sea swells, the pier was installed earlier this month. But initial deliveries fell far short of the US government’s projections, and distribution was impeded last week after people overran a number of aid trucks leaving the onshore distribution facility controlled by the Israeli military.
Biden administration officials have repeatedly pressed Israeli leaders, and more recently Egyptian officials, to ensure the flow of cross-border humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying the pier is meant to augment, not replace, the overland shipment of humanitarian aid.
The context: US President Joe Biden authorized the military in March to construct the pier on Gaza’s coast in order to surge international humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave in a bid to stave off looming famine.
The Biden administration has resisted calls to directly pressure Israeli leaders to halt the war, instead pushing for renewed rounds of cease-fire to persuade Hamas to release the hostages and Israeli leaders to pause their campaign.
The talks have so far failed to prevent an Israeli military invasion of Rafah, despite Biden saying in March that this would be a “red line” for his administration.
The US administration withheld a single shipment of 2,000-pound and 500-pound air-to-ground munitions to Israel last month, a symbolic gesture amid continued US approvals for future arms transfers. The White House signaled that additional arms shipments were already under review and would be withheld if Israel launched a major operation into Rafah’s population centers.
The Israeli military began encircling Rafah in early May. More than a million people have fled the southern Gaza enclave since, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees said Monday.
