THE US MILITARY is to set up a temporary port in Gaza so that more aid can get into the besieged territory, President Joe Biden will say in his State of the Union speech tonight.
The move will reportedly not involve any US troops on the ground in Gaza, with military personnel expected to stay offshore while “partners and allies” will be involved, senior administration officials said.
The expected announcement also underscores the acute political pressure Biden is under for his consistent support for Israel, despite the mounting Gaza death toll and humanitarian crisis. The UN has warned famine is “almost inevitable”.
“We’re not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership,” one official told reporters, amid apparent growing frustration in the White House over Israel’s failure to allow more relief into the Gaza Strip.
“Tonight the president will announce in his State of the Union address that he has directed the US military to undertake an emergency mission to establish a port in Gaza,” the official said.
“This port, the main feature of which is a temporary pier, will provide the capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of assistance each day.”
US officials said it would take a “number of weeks” until the “significant capability” was able to bring more aid to desperate Gazans.
The aid will come via a maritime corridor from the port of Larnaca, in Cyprus.
US officials were careful to stress that American troops would not be on the ground in Gaza, which has been under relentless Israeli bombardment since the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel.
They did not specify exactly how the port would work without American personnel on the ground in Gaza, but implied that “partners and allies” plus the UN and aid groups would be involved on shore.
“The US military has unique capabilities. And they can do things from just offshore that are extraordinary and so that is the concept of operations that the president has been briefed on,” a second official said.
A third official said the plan “involves the presence of US military personnel on military vessels offshore but it does not require US military personnel that go ashore to install the pier, or causeway facility.”
The Israelis had been informed and the US would work with them on security requirements, they added.
Biden has been unwavering in his support of Israel throughout the last five months of the conflict, proving diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council through vetoes and also attempting to send Israel $14.5 billion in aid as part of a bill yet to pass the House of Representatives.
Biden announced last week that the US was beginning airdrops of aid to Gaza, following an incident in which more than 100 people were killed after Israeli forces opened fire at people crowding an aid convoy in the north of the territory.
This week Israeli forces also turned away a 14-truck UN food convoy bound for Gaza. It was the first convoy attempted since the agency halted deliveries to the north of Gaza on 20 February, after its convoy of trucks faced gunfire and looting.
UN agencies have repeatedly warned that famine is imminent in the north of Gaza and said Israel is preventing aid from entering.
A Palestinian journalist writing for The Journal reported in mid-February that people had resorted to eating animal feed and even that was running out.
Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme told the United Nations Security Council recently that “Gaza is seeing the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world”.
“Conditions in northern Gaza are particularly dire,” he said, explaining that WFP food deliveries there resumed on 18 February for the first time in three weeks.
“The breakdown in civil order, driven by sheer desperation, is preventing the safe distribution of aid.”
Skau said that two Israeli crossings into Gaza should be opened to allow in food – the Karni crossing and the port of Ashdod.
“If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” he said.
Includes reporting from AFP
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