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The Pentagon has said it will take up to 60 days and “over 1,000 forces” to build a floating dock and causeway off the coast of Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged territory.
US Army and Navy personnel will not set foot in Gaza during construction, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said Friday as he outlined the elaborate logistical operation to send aid into an Israeli-occupied enclave, Washington’s ally.
The emergency aid corridor plan comes amid growing frustration among Israel’s allies over its failure to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the easiest land routes to deliver assistance have been closed. In the north of the enclave, which is now under Israeli military control, around 300,000 civilians are on the brink of famine, the UN has warned.
U.S. forces will build the floating dock, which will receive aid deliveries from ships loaded in Cyprus, Ryder said. Smaller ships would carry the aid from the dock onto a causeway connected to a beach in Gaza. The aid would then be brought to Gaza, but not by American troops.
The United States would build the 1,800-foot pier and causeway into the sea, before “pushing it towards shore.” The floating structures would eventually enable the delivery of 2 million meals per day.
Ryder said the United States is “coordinating with allied and partner countries, with the United Nations and humanitarian NGOs, and with the way forward for the distribution of aid in Gaza.”
“We anticipate that more than 1,000 American forces will be needed to participate in building this capability,” Ryder said. It will take “several weeks, probably up to 60 days, to deploy forces and build the causeway and pier.”
Details of the complex, weeks-long pier construction effort came a day after US President Joe Biden urged Israel to do more to enable humanitarian assistance to Gaza, which agencies said humanitarian aid is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe as food shortages worsen.
“Israel must do its part,” Biden said in his State of the Union address to Congress on Thursday. “Israel must allow more aid to Gaza. . . humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”
According to Palestinian authorities, around 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its offensive in October. The campaign is in retaliation for the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.
The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to do more to avoid civilian casualties, but has refused to make Israel’s conduct in the war a condition for increased arms procurement.
The new pier will be needed because the Israeli army bombed a port in Gaza city in the first week of its military attack against Hamas. Meanwhile, Israel did not reopen a land crossing at Kerem Shalom, in the south of the enclave, where hundreds of trucks carrying aid to Gaza were waiting to enter.
Ryder said the United States was continuing talks with Israel and other countries in the region to secure more aid for Gaza through land crossings that have been mostly closed since Israel began its assault on the enclave in October.
“We understand [land] it is the most viable way to get meals,” Ryder said, but added that the United States is not “waiting” for truck crossings to the enclave to open. The United States dropped 11,500 meals into Gaza on Friday, bringing the total meals to 124,000.
The EU said on Friday that a first ship will depart Cyprus as early as this weekend to test the sea corridor. But European officials have said its cargo will be limited in size, allowing aid to be unloaded without a full dock.
Additional reporting by Eleni Varvitsioti in Athens and Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv