US Announces Plans For U.S. Military-Built Temporary Port For Gaza Humanitarian Aid

Biden is all set to declare in the State of the Union address on Thursday that the U.S. military will be leading an emergency campaign to construct a new pier on the coast of the Mediterranean of Gaza to permit large vessels to deliver water, food, temporary shelters, and medicine to the territory. Senior administration officials informed reporters during a conference call that the temporary pier won’t need U.S. troops to land in Gaza.

They further observed that the military possessed unique capabilities but did not elaborate on how this could work. U.N. workers, as well as other aid groups, are going to distribute the aid. The officials added that it will take several weeks to plan and execute the mission. When ready, the military will lead the operation initially, but other nations and groups will join in, the relevant officials added. The officials explained that the assistance arriving by vessel from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus must be able to fill up hundreds of truckloads each day with the aid.

The announcement came on the same day that the U.S. airdropped aid to Gaza for the third time in recent times. Aid groups have informed that airdrops alone are far from enough given the critical crisis. The failure to provide humanitarian support to Gaza has resulted in heart-breaking consequences: children dying of malnutrition, severely starving Palestinians rushing aid trucks to feed their loved ones, and hundreds of people dead last Thursday morning while attempting to receive aid from a convoy heading into Gaza City. The channels to take aid by land depend on several factors.

They include open border crossings, the presence of drivers in Gaza to get the trucks and deliver supplies to their destinations, and military approval from Israel to ensure a safe passage. However, acute aid shortages have led both Jordan and the U.S. to use airdrops to deliver aid. Per the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (abbreviated as OCHA), one-quarter of Gaza’s approximately 2.2 million individuals are just a step away from the famine.

Access to the Gaza Strip has been limited since the war started on October 7. But the officials based in Washington also mentioned that Israel had finally agreed to open a new land crossing for aid to pass into north Gaza and that the U.N. would be piloting a shipment via that crossing in the future. They mentioned that Biden would talk about ongoing work for a cease-fire in Gaza in his State of the Union speech on Thursday night.

Many family members of the hostages are likely to be in the gallery for this speech, and some met on Tuesday with Biden’s security adviser, Jake Sullivan. However, the relevant officials refused to predict if a deal on the cease-fire would be reached before the month of Ramadan starts next week. The conflict began on October 7 as Hamas headed an attack on Israel, killing 1,200 individuals and kidnapping almost 240, per Israeli officials. The Israeli response has taken the lives of nearly 30,320 Palestinians, per the Health Ministry of Gaza.

Reference: Npr.org

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