US floats aid plan while providing arms

WASHINGTON: The United States has a history of using its military to get food, water and other humanitarian relief to civilians during wars or natural disasters. The walls of the Pentagon are decorated with photographs of such operations in Haiti, Liberia, Indonesia and countless other countries.

But it is rare for the US to try to provide such services for people who are being bombed with tacit US support.

President Joe Biden’s decision to order the US military to build a floating pier off the Gaza Strip that would allow aid to be delivered by sea puts American service members in a new phase of their humanitarian aid history. The same military that is sending the weapons and bombs that Israel is using in Gaza is now also sending food and water into the besieged territory.

The floating pier idea came a week after Biden authorised humanitarian airdrops for Gaza, which relief experts criticised as inadequate. Even the floating pier, aid experts say, will not do enough to alleviate the suffering in the territory, where residents are on the brink of starvation.

Nonetheless, senior Biden officials said, the US would continue to provide Israel with the munitions it is using in Gaza, while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians under bombardment.

So the Pentagon is doing both.

For decades, the Army Corps of Engineers, using combat engineers, has built floating docks for troops to cross rivers, unload supplies and conduct other military operations. Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick S. Ryder said the army’s 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, near Norfolk, Virginia, would be one of the main military units involved in the construction of the floating pier for Gaza.

The dock would be built and assembled alongside an army ship off the Gaza coast, Ryder said. The ship would need armed escorts, particularly as it got within range of the coast.

A US Army official said that typically in these operations, a large vessel sat off the shore of the desired location, and a ‘‘roll-on-rolloff discharge facility”– a big floating dock– was constructed next to the ship to serve as the holding area. Cargo driven or placed on the dock would be loaded onto smaller boats and moved to a temporary pier or causeway anchored ashore.

The 550-metre two-lane causeway would be built by army engineers, flanked by tugboats and driven, or ‘‘stabbed’’, into the shore. Cargo aboard the smaller navy boats could then be driven onto the causeway and onshore.

Ryder insisted the military could build the causeway and stab it into the shore without putting any American boots – or fins – on the ground in Gaza. He said it would take up to 60 days and about 1000 US troops to move the ship into place from the US and to build the dock and causeway.

After the ship arrived offshore, it would take about seven to 10 days to assemble the floating dock and the causeway.

‘‘This is part of a full-court press by the United States to not only focus on working on opening up and expanding roads via land, which of course are the optimal way to get aid into Gaza, but also by conducting airdrops,’’ Ryder said.

The floating pier will allow for the delivery of ‘‘upward of 2 million meals a day’’, he said. Gaza has a population of about 2.3 million.

Ryder acknowledged that neither the airdrops nor the floating pier would be as effective as sending aid by land, which Israel has blocked. ‘‘We want to see the amount of aid going via land increase significantly,’’ he said. ‘‘We understand that is the most viable way to get aid in.’’ But he added: ‘‘We’re not going to wait around.’’

The US would work with regional partners and European allies to build and maintain the corridor, officials said, noting the idea for the plan had originated in Cyprus.

On Thursday, Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian and reconstruction co-ordinator for Gaza, welcomed the Biden announcement. But she added: ‘‘At the same time, I cannot but repeat: air and sea is not a substitute for land, and nobody says otherwise.’’

The Biden humanitarian efforts in Gaza so far ‘‘may make a few people in the United States feel good’’, said Robert Ford, a former US ambassador to Syria. But he added: ‘‘This is applying a very small Band-Aid to a very big wound.’’

The humanitarian aid would probably be gathered in Larnaca, Cyprus, 388 kilometres from Gaza, officials said. That would allow Israeli officials to screen the shipments first.

While the temporary port would initially be military-run, Washington envisioned it eventually being commercially operated, a Defence Department official said.

Two diplomats briefed on the plans said the port would be erected on Gaza’s shoreline slightly north of the Wadi Gaza crossing, where Israeli forces have erected a major checkpoint.

Meanwhile, the salvage vessel, Open Arms, plans to tow a barge with 200 tonnes of food, mostly funded by the UAE. The supplies were sourced by charity World Central Kitchen, which is working with Spanish non-governmental organisation Proactiva Open Arms. WCK said it had another 500 tonnes of supplies in Cyprus, which would be dispatched in future missions.

The central problems, however, remain unsolved. Aid officials say that delivering supplies by truck is far more efficient and less expensive than bringing them to Gaza by boat. But trucks are still unable to deliver goods amid Israeli shelling and ground fighting, which is fierce in southern Gaza.

And delivering assistance by sea may not prevent the chaos that has accompanied deliveries.

More than 100 people had died in Gaza last month, health officials said, when hungry civilians rushed at a convoy of aid trucks, leading to a stampede and prompting Israeli soldiers to fire at the crowd.

On Saturday morning, US military cargo planes dropped emergency aid into Gaza for the fifth time in recent days. US Central Command said in a statement that American C-130 aircraft had dropped bundles with parachutes containing 41,400 meals and 23,000 bottles of water.

The New York Times