The $320 million temporary floating pier built by the US military off the coast of Gaza is being dismantled, an epic Biden Administration failure.
Touted by US President Joe Biden during his 2024 State of the Union address as the means to “enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day,” the dock has functioned for a total of just 10 days since it began operations.
“I’m directing the US military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters,” told lawmakers.
“No US boots will be on the ground,” the president promised.
“But Israel must also do its part,” Biden added sanctimoniously. “Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure that humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the cross fire. To the leadership of Israel I say this.”
The announcement caught US Navy personnel completely by surprise, including the president’s promise that the pier would be operational by early May.
US Navy personnel are hugely resourceful and responded immediately to the president’s order. But due to the unrealistic deadline they faced, they had no time to figure out how to keep the pier operational, given the maritime conditions in which it would have to function, once it was built.
However, at the end the pier was useless because it was not really designed to endure the challenges posed by Mediterranean Sea winds and waves. Within days the pier broke apart, with pieces carried by the waves — and by the Navy vessels sent to retrieve them — to the Israeli port city of Ashdod.
At the end, the entire project was simply an expensive disaster, and not solely due to the difficulties encountered by the floating pier.
Humanitarian Aid Still Isn’t Free for Civilans
Once the humanitarian aid was offloaded to special warehouses on the Gaza shore after its arrival on the pier, independent contractors and United Nations agencies were supposed to pick it up and deliver it to Gaza civilians.
That didn’t happen.
In fact, almost none of the humanitarian aid that arrived via the pier ultimately made it to its destination for the same reason humanitarian aid delivered via the land crossings since the start of the war never reached the civilians for whom it was intended.
The trucks were — and still are — intercepted and hijacked by Hamas operatives and Gaza gangs, who take what they need for themselves and then sell the rest to allied merchants who make a profit selling the aid at premium prices to civilians in the Gaza markets.
It’s Not a Lack of Aid; It’s a Distribution Problem
Humanitarian aid has been “surged” to Gaza for months and Gazans are not starving, as has been documented recently by United Nations itself.
A UN committee of experts said in a recently released report that there is “no supporting evidence” to conclude that there is a famine in Gaza.
UN: ‘No Supporting Evidence’ of Famine in Northern Gaza
Gaza merchants are still receiving imported goods, including food and other essentials. The markets are bursting and bakeries are producing millions of pitas and loaves of bread each day.
The free food, water, fuel and medicine that was intended to reach Gaza civilians is only trickling to the population, however.
UN agencies tasked with picking up the aid and distributing it within the enclave are simply overwhelmed by the flood and cannot keep up with the daily arrivals.
As of June 18, more than 1,000 humanitarian aid trucks are still waiting for collection by UN aid agencies on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing, according to the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, COGAT.
We've taken many steps to assist the @UN aid agencies with the collection of aid from the Gazan side of Kerem Shalom, including a tactical pause on the "Folat" route.
Despite that, over 1,000 aid trucks are waiting to be collected. pic.twitter.com/R8wgIGNWTZ
— COGAT (@cogatonline) June 18, 2024
On Tuesday (June 18), 305 trucks carrying humanitarian aid were inspected by Israeli officials and transferred to Gaza, including 289 trucks via Kerem Shalom and 16 trucks via the Erez Crossing.
But only 100 aid trucks were collected on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom by UN aid agencies, COGAT reports.
It’s been the same story for months.
Israel Followed Biden’s Orders. Cairo Didn’t.
Israel has been deeply responsive to White House commands. When ordered to ramp up delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces created more crossings into northern Gaza (Gates 96 and 98), complete with brand-new paved access roads, in addition to the existing Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings and the Nitzana inspection station.
Egypt, on the other hand, flipped America the bird, so to speak.
The Rafah crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt was instantly shut down by Cairo as soon as Israeli forces wrested control over the Gaza side of the passage from Hamas terrorists. Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel was irrelevant, as were its diplomatic ties with the United States.
Cairo has been making good money from the “coordination fees” and “import-export taxes” imposed on hapless Gazans by Egyptian officials and Hamas operatives for use of the crossing. Egypt was unhappy over the loss of revenue that followed Israeli control over the Gaza side of the crossing.
Egypt is no friend to the average Gazan, and since the start of the war has done everything in its power to ensure that residents of the enclave would be forced to stay there, rather than escape the conflict and set up temporary shelter in the nearby Sinai.
Nevertheless, Egyptian government’s hatred of Gazans still doesn’t come close to Cairo’s hatred of Jews. Faced with a choice, Cairo simply chose neither and no amount of American pressure has changed Egypt’s intransigence. No aid is entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
Reality Check
The construction of the fancy American pier made for great optics, but in was never really unnecessary. At the end, it was a colossal failure that cost millions which could have been better spent.
The saga should serve as a reality check for the Biden Administration, and for others deluded into thinking that Hamas terrorists have any concern whatsoever for their civilian brothers and sisters.
For Hamas, Gazans are either fellow fighters in the mission to destroy Israel, or tools to be used to sucker naive Western nations into supplying them with whatever they need for their survival to fight another day.
Bottom line: The US and other helping nations must reach the understanding that until the IDF is allowed to complete the mission of eliminating the Hamas terrorist organization and its terrorist allies, humanitarian aid supplies flooding into Gaza are helping only Hamas and its allies.
