Rough seas, damaged equipment and weak security spell end for US aid pier in Gaza

The ambitious project to supply Palestinian enclave with relief was intended to last until September

A ‘Joint Logistics Over the Shore’ exercise at Fort Story, Virginia, showcasing a capability deployed to bring aid to Gaza. Photo: US Army

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The US will soon dismantle its floating Gaza aid pier after only 20 days of operations since it began to allow the delivery of supplies on May 17.

The pier was seen by critics as having little hope of supplying the required aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave where 2.3 million people faced famine.

Experts said Gaza – which needs a minimum of 4,000 tonnes a week of food aid a week, according to the UN – could not hope to have its needs adequately met through the structure.

However, US admiral Brad Cooper said at the onset of the mission that the pier was never intended to replace land crossings.

At the end of its operational life, the pier delivered 8,800 tonnes of aid to Gaza but huge challenges lingered even when the supplies reached the shore. Thousands of tonnes of aid built up in warehouses, amid concerns for the safety of distributing organisations such as the World Food Program, due to heavy fighting, and Israeli bombardments.

Construction of the floating pier

Critics of the project, announced by President Joe Biden in early March, said it amounted to little more than a “power projection” by Washington, to show the world its military could build a temporary port within months, about 10,000km away from the US.

Other critics said it took pressure off Israel to open land crossings, by far a more efficient way of delivering aid.

Israeli forces at Gaza’s borders have insisted on highly strict and time-consuming inspections of aid lorries, forcing supplies to trickle into Gaza over land at a level significantly below requirements.

This has led a number of countries to drop aid by parachute in a hugely expensive, low volume and a last-ditch effort.

Others warned that it could drag US forces into conflict, with Hamas saying it would consider any American soldiers in Gaza as occupiers.

Washington promised that none of its forces would be onshore but the site came under mortar attack, with short-range US air defences – to protect against drone and mortar attacks – seen metres from the beach.

Rough seas

The project was dogged by a number of problems from the onset.

It relied on a branch of the US military, rather than the navy, known as Army Watercraft Systems, which experts said was underfunded.

This was thought by some analysts to be the cause of the poor state of readiness of some of the decades-old ships on the mission, with two of the vessels encountering technical problems at sea, including an engine fire, en route to Gaza.

When the pier was assembled and began operations, the US army was optimistic it would reach a peak of 450 tonnes a day carried by about 90 lorries, part of an aid pipeline from Cyprus.

Aid officials said Gaza typically registered pre-conflict volumes of between 500 and 700 lorries of aid, of all kinds, each day.

While 150 lorries is the absolute maximum capacity of the pier in ideal circumstances, it could have allowed the transit of about 14,000 tonnes of aid a month.

The precedent for such large cargo was in Haiti in 2010 after a hurricane destroyed ports. A floating pier there helped to deliver 8,400 shipping containers of aid, or more than 176,000 tonnes, to the disaster area.

However, such piers are vulnerable to rough weather as they are only designed to operate safely in “sea state 3”, in which waves reach a height of up to 1.25 metres.

High winds that battered Somalia forced the cancellation of the construction of a pier for aid use in 1992.

By May 25 this year, rough seas had halted the operations of the Gaza pier, with three soldiers injured, one seriously, during the movement of aid over the choppy waters.

A month later, mortar shells were fired at the aid-staging ground – apparently aimed at nearby Israeli troops.

However, more controversy occurred on June 9, when operations at the pier were suspended, amid a row between the UN and Israelis over the efficient distribution of the aid, and accusations that the US had allowed Israel to evacuate rescued hostages using the pier.

The US denied the accusation – which spread after the Israelis rescued four hostages held by Hamas, sparking a fierce gun battle and leading to the deaths of 274 Gazans, many of them in air strikes.

Israeli forces and witnesses released video of hostages being taken on to army helicopters metres away from the pier.

There was yet another setback at the end of June as the pier had to be removed for a week and towed to Ashqelon, Israel, for repairs after parts of the structure were swept away.

Amid these setbacks, it is now winding down ahead of its planned end of operations, which had been originally set for September.