It has cost $230 million, plus another $22 million to repair it. But since it was launched a month ago, the expensive floating dock built by the US military in Gaza has barely managed to deliver 3,500 tons of humanitarian aid.
This is the equivalent of about 120 trucks, a figure that pales in comparison to the nearly 500 aid trucks that entered the Gaza Strip daily before the war, according to the UN.
“It has been a failure”
The “humanitarian maritime corridor” that US President Joe Biden announced with great fanfare last March and which came into operation on May 17 has been a failure, denounce humanitarian aid organizations, which have already They warned from the beginning that the best way to deliver the much-needed aid was through the three land crossings that connect Gaza with the outside world.
The dock, which was named “Trident”, consists of a floating platform and walkway that are anchored to the beach and allow humanitarian aid arriving by boat from Cyprus to be disembarked and transported by trucks to the coast.
However, the pier has been marked by controversy and misfortune from the beginning.
The day after it became operational, the World Food Program (WFP) had to suspend the unloading of aid because the trucks were attacked by thousands of Palestinians, who took part of the cargo.
“Catastrophic famine conditions”
The UN has been warning for months of the serious food crisis in Gaza, which has already suffered more than 8 months of war, in which more than 37,000 people have died.
A significant part of the population is also living in “catastrophic conditions of famine,” as denounced by the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Some 8,000 children under 5 years of age have been diagnosed with acute malnutrition, according to the WHO, and at least 32 deaths from hunger have been recorded.
Israel imposed a tight blockade of the Gaza Strip after the Hamas attack on October 7, in which some 1,200 Israelis died and more than 240 were taken hostage.
The government led by Benjamin Netanyahu has slowly allowed the entry of food, water, fuel and medicine through the Rafah border crossings, which connect with Egypt, and Kerem Shalom, in the south of the Strip.
This is aid that is not enough to alleviate the shortage of everything in Gaza.
The temporary dock had to be able to handle 90 trucks a day in the first phase and up to 150 when it was fully operational. However, only 15 trucks arrived in the first two days, according to the WFP. In the next three days they received nothing.
A week after launching the floating dock, a storm destroyed it and ran four US Army vessels aground, so the landings were suspended.
It cost $22 million to repair it and it reopened on June 8. However, less than a week later it had to be undocked again and taken to the port of Ashdod, in Israel, to protect it from a new storm, according to the US military itself.
He New York Times It is estimated that the dock has been operational for just 10 days.
In all this time, 3,500 tons of aid have been downloaded, according to the Pentagon press secretary, General Pat Ryder. If a 40-foot container, the most common, usually carries a load of about 29 tons, it could be calculated that in a month just over 120 aid containers have arrived this way.
“Humanitarian theater”
“The pier is humanitarian theater. It is more about political optics than humanitarian substance,” Jeremy Konyndyk, president of the organization Refugees International, criticized in X, when the installation was launched.
A month later, the criticism continues to intensify. “The temporary dock built by the US military on the coast of Gaza has proven to be a resounding fiasco in terms of assistance to the most vulnerable civilians,” he wrote in the pages of Le Monde the historian and professor at Sciences Po, Jean-Pierre Filiu.
The analyst recalled that the viability of the project had generated serious doubts not only among specialists in the field of humanitarian logistics but also within the US government itself, and that the position of humanitarian organizations was always that “only the unblocking by Israel land access to Gaza can stop the spread of hunger and epidemics in a population that is literally on its last legs.”
Since its construction, the pier has also aroused the suspicion of many Palestinians.
Conspiracy theories have spread on social media about whether the floating dock is part of the Israeli military operation that was launched in retaliation for the Hamas attack on October 7.
Palestinians die after freeing hostages
Many saw in the initiative a US military collaboration with Israel, and an event on June 8 added fuel to the fire of the conspiracy.
That day, an Israeli military operation to free 4 hostages held by Hamas killed more than 270 Palestinians who were around the building in which the hostages were hidden.
In the withdrawal, the Israeli soldiers, instead of returning from the place from which they had arrived, crossing the border between Israel and the Strip, chose to head to the beach. There, a military helicopter landed next to the floating dock built by the US and picked up the freed hostages and the commando that carried out the operation.
For the UN and aid organizations operating in Gaza, the maneuver, so close to the dock and the roads used to unload humanitarian aid, not only endangered their workers, but may make some Palestinians think that His impartiality is in question.
“The safety of our humanitarian workers depends on all parties and communities on the ground trusting their impartiality,” warned Faraq Han, spokesman for the UN Secretary-General.
The PMU, in fact, suspended its operations to review security plans, and aid was piling up on the beach.
They could dismantle the pier
The US military has categorically denied that the pier or its troops were part of the operation to rescue the hostages, and has disconnected the withdrawal of the pier, which occurred on June 14, with the decision of the UN agencies to suspend that supply route.
According to spokesman Pat Ryder, the Trident will be operational again this week when sea conditions allow. But according to him NYTthe floating dock could have its days numbered.
US officials have reportedly assured organizations operating in Gaza that the pier could be dismantled ahead of schedule, possibly in early July, according to the newspaper.
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