Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder on Friday told reporters that “in addition to US military humanitarian airdrops and the US government’s efforts to continue sustaining and expanding assistance going in by land, as President Biden announced last evening, the Department of Defense will undertake an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in Gaza, working alongside like-minded countries and partners.”
Ryder also mentioned that up to 1,000 US military personnel may be needed to complete the construction of the pier and causeway, over two months.
“The department is moving quickly to deploy its joint logistics over-the-shore capability to provide an expeditionary pier to enable the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza,” Ryder continued. “JLOTS is a unique capability maintained by the Department of Defense whereby US Army and US Navy forces are organized, trained, and equipped to conduct joint ship-to-shore operations where fixed port facilities are inadequate or unavailable.
“Simply put, they’ll establish a temporary offshore maritime pier that allows for shipping vessels to transfer cargo to smaller vessels to transport and offload cargo to a temporary causeway for the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
“Now, we’re in the process of identifying, sourcing, and in some cases, preparing forces to deploy, but I can confirm that elements of the Seventh Transportation Brigade Expeditionary out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia have been tasked to support,” Ryder said.
“In essence, what you’ll have here is a floating pier that is offshore, that will be able to receive commercial vessels that have aid,” Ryder continued. “That aid will be offloaded onto the floating pier and then transloaded onto Navy support vessels.”
Those vessels will then take it to the floating causeway. For example, you can see here – and then offloaded onto the causeway – in this case, which essentially is approximately 1,800 feet, or 500 meters, long, and it’s two-lane, and then transported onto land and then distributed into Gaza.,” he said.
Q: “How much will this cost? And if Israel is going to be engaged in the security on land, why not just open the existing – there are ports just north of Gaza – Ashdod, Ashkelon – and there are entrances into Gaza. Why not just use those existing ports and have Israel look at what’s going through and bring it in? It seems like this is a lot of work for 60 days out when there are people starving, frankly.”
Gen. Ryder: “Well, as I highlighted at the top, I mean, this is part of a full-court press by the United States to not only focus on working on opening up and expanding routes via land, which of course are the optimal way to get aid into Gaza, but also by conducting airdrops. And now, as the President has said, not enough aid is getting in. And so, this is a capability that we have, it’s a capability that we are going to execute and enable us to get upwards of two million meals in a day.”
A reporter noted, “It seems like you’re taking no boots on the ground awfully literally. Since the troops will be pretty close. They’ll be in the water surrounding Gaza, right? So how far exactly will they actually be from the shore?”
Gen. Ryder: “I don’t have a foot count for you but again they’re not going to go on the shore is the bottom line.”
Q: “Is it actually servicemembers that are going to be constructing the pier or is it contractors?”
Gen. Ryder: “This is a US military capability. So again, we’ll have much more detail to provide, but as I mentioned at the top here the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) maintains this capability. And so there will be an active military component to it.”
