The US military has said the installation of a floating pier for the delivery of humanitarian aid off Gaza has been completed, with officials ready to begin ferrying supplies into the territory, where much of the population faces imminent starvation owing to the continuing Israel-Hamas war.
Ordered two months ago by the president, Joe Biden, the US military transported the system overnight from the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 20 miles north of Gaza.
The US military’s Central Command said in a statement on Thursday: “Today at approximately 7.40am (Gaza time) United States Central Command personnel supporting the humanitarian mission to deliver additional humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in need anchored a temporary pier to the beach in Gaza. As part of this effort, no US troops entered Gaza. Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance are expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days.”
The full operation will involve pallets of food and other humanitarian aid being loaded on to ships in Cyprus and transported to a large floating dock a few miles off the Gaza coast, where they will be put on trucks. Smaller US naval ships will take the trucks the last few miles to the floating pier, near the end of the militarised Netzarim corridor. The trucks will be driven off the ships and along the pier roughly 500 metres to the landing zone, where the pallets will be unloaded for collection by UN vehicles.
According to officials, the delivery of food and other crucial aid is expected to start within 24-48 hours.
The installation of the dock and pier were delayed for nearly two weeks because of bad weather. Sea conditions had previously made it too dangerous for US and Israeli troops to secure the pier to the shore, US officials said.
Central Command said the UN would receive the aid and coordinate its distribution in Gaza, although it was not immediately clear which UN agency would be involved. The US has designated the World Food Programme as its partner in delivering food inside Gaza. The UN relief agency Unrwa has by far the most staff and resources in the besieged coastal territory, but Israel refuses to deal with it.
US authorities fear aid provision in a region close to famine could be overrun by hungry people, leading to chaos and putting civilians’ lives at risk. Aid agencies have previously documented rare deliveries getting mobbed by desperately hungry Palestinians.
US officials made clear that its troops would not set foot in Gaza while acknowledging the danger of operating near a war zone. The security situation would be “monitored closely”, they said, adding that the maritime route could be shut down if needed, “even just temporarily”.
Humanitarian agencies have said the famine conditions in parts of Gaza have been caused by Israeli restrictions on aid entering the territory. Officials say the population needs at least 500 daily lorry-loads of food, fuel and other essentials but have received a fraction of that amount.
The Israeli military said it had worked throughout the seven-month war “to allow and facilitate the entry and delivery of extensive humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, out of its commitment to international humanitarian law”.
The Rafah crossing to Egypt has been closed for more than a week, since Israeli forces seized control of the Palestinian side at the beginning of the offensive into the territory’s southernmost city.
The nearby Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel was “operational”, UN officials said, but continuing fighting and multiple logistical obstacles, such as a lack of staff, were limiting deliveries of aid to a bare minimum.
UN officials said on Wednesday that two trucks of fuel had reached southern Gaza, enough for aid operations for around eight hours, as well as 27 trucks of food. In the days before the Israeli offensive, the daily total was approaching 350 trucks, they said.
There are concerns that perishable food and medicines among the 80,000 tonnes of supplies waiting in Egypt to enter Gaza will soon be unusable. Another 180,000 tonnes was expected to arrive soon, officials said.
More than half a million people have fled Rafah after warnings from Israel to evacuate before a new advance by its forces towards the centre from eastern neighbourhoods. Most have moved to the “expanded humanitarian zone” along the coast, where conditions of overcrowding, poor sanitation and limited water were described as “horrific” by aid workers.
However, high demand for fuel, vehicles, wood and plastic sheeting have forced prices to levels that many cannot afford, preventing further flight from the city.
One Gaza resident, Muhammad al-Najjar, 27, said he and his family could not afford to leave Rafah despite the dangers of staying. “I was displaced to Rafah more than four months ago from [the city of] Khan Younis and my house is just rubble now. If the fighting comes here, we will not move to another area. We do not have the money to make another shelter and it would cost as much to move the one we have got. So we’ll stay here.”
Samar Abu Shamlakh, 43, said she had been displaced several times after fleeing her home in the north of Gaza and injured by an airstrike when queueing for bread at the beginning of the war. She is living with six children in a former school.
“We have enough canned food and flour, but that’s all. Sometimes I buy some vegetables, but in small quantities, like three tomatoes. We’ve used up all our savings. Here, there is not much bombardment,” she said.
“The situation at school is not bad for hygiene and electricity. There are specific workers who clean the toilets and throughout the school. As for electricity, an hour a day comes through solar panels only to charge batteries and phones. Water is also available in some small quantities. I really hope that this war will be stopped now, before tomorrow, as we are psychologically tired and exhausted. It is so difficult for our children, and that’s what is hardest to bear.”
Meanwhile, two Egyptian security sources said Egypt had rejected an Israeli proposal for the two countries to coordinate to reopen the Rafah crossing between Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and the Gaza Strip, and to manage the crossing’s future operation.
Egypt and Israel have traded blame this week over the border crossing’s closure and the resulting blockage of humanitarian relief.
Officials from the Israeli security service, Shin Bet, presented the proposal on a visit to Cairo on Wednesday, amid rising tensions between the two countries after Israel’s military advance last week into Rafah.
The Israeli plan included a mechanism for how to manage the crossing after it withdraws, the Egyptian security sources said. Cairo insisted instead that the crossing should be managed only by Palestinian authorities, they added.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
