THE US MILITARY has begun construction of a “temporary pier” off the besieged Gaza Strip’s coast to boost shipments of desperately needed aid, the Pentagon has said.
Plans were first announced by US President Joe Biden in early March as Israel had been accused of holding up deliveries of assistance by ground.
Yesterday, Biden signed a law authorising $13 billion in additional military assistance for close ally Israel and $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza.
UN and humanitarian officials have repeatedly stressed that sea or air deliveries are far less efficient than increasing the volume of aid allowed into Gaza on land routes from Israel and Egypt.
CNN reported that a senior military official confirmed yesterday that they are “on track to begin delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza from the sea in early May”.
Speaking in March, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said that once established, the pier “could provide more than two million meals to the citizens of Gaza per day”.
The pier would allow ships to transfer cargo to smaller vessels to transport and offload onto a temporary causeway for delivery to Gaza, said Ryder, who repeated Biden’s promise that there would be no US troops on the ground in Gaza.
Elsewhere, global concern has mounted over the looming Israeli operation against Hamas militants in Rafah, where much of Gaza’s population has sought refuge from more than six months of conflict.
Aid groups warn any invasion would add to already-catastrophic conditions for Gaza’s 2.4 million people.
Israeli officials have vowed to enter Rafah, near the Egyptian border, but even before any ground operation the area has been regularly bombed.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said Israel’s war cabinet was meeting yesterday “to discuss how to destroy the last battalions of Hamas”.
Citing Egyptian officials briefed on Israeli plans on Rafah, the Wall Street Journal has said Israel was planning to move civilians to nearby Khan Yunis over a period of two to three weeks, before gradually sending troops.
Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad told AFP that Israel “will not achieve what it wants” in Rafah, warning that an invasion “will undoubtedly threaten the negotiations” and show “that Israel is interested in continuing the war”.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin undertook an official visit to the Middle East this week, during which he visited Cairo in Egypt, the Rafah border crossing and Jordan.
Speaking to reporters in Jordan on Wednesday, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said he is also “worried about the prospects of an Israeli invasion of Rafah”.
He said he is hearing that Israel is contemplating an invasion of Rafah, adding that such a move would be “catastrophic”.
During his official visit to the Middle East this week, Martin took a tour of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza.
Several Israeli media outlets, citing unnamed officials, said the cabinet discussed a new plan for a truce and hostage release, ahead of a visit planned for today by an Egyptian delegation.
Qatar, Egypt and the United States have mediated truce and hostage-release talks, so far without success since a one-week halt to the fighting in November.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, the Tánaiste said that he is “very pessimistic about the prospect of a ceasefire” in Gaza.
“The sense we have from the engagements I’ve had since Monday is negative in respect of the early prospects of a ceasefire,” he said, adding that he hopes he is wrong.
“We do seem to have gone backwards in respect of the ceasefire.”
The conflict began with an unprecedented Hamas attack on 7 October that resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel vowed to destroy Hamas, with a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,305 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
With reporting by Niall O’Connor (from Jordan) and -© AFP 2024
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