US To Close Controversial Gaza Pier (Worthy News Investigation)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON/GAZA/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – The U.S. military’s humanitarian pier off the coast of wartorn Gaza will close, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration confirmed Thursday, following an outcry over the $230 million project.
U.S. military officials said the 1,200-foot (370-meter-long) floating structure was removed multiple times due to bad weather and concerns about aid distribution.
Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder added that the military “unsuccessfully” tried to “re-anchor” the pier this week.
No new date was set for re-anchoring on Thursday, but Biden administration officials said the effort “will soon end.”
While the pier has brought in 8,100 metric tons to Gaza since it started in May, little was given to Palestinians despite Hamas-run authorities and the United Nations reporting “famine.”
By late last month, 8,332 pallets had been delivered via the pier, but about 84 percent were reportedly sitting on Gaza’s coast in a marshaling area waiting to be picked up by the United Nations for distribution.
U.N. aid workers cited security concerns due to ongoing clashes between the Israeli military and Hamas fighters as the main reason for the aid delivery difficulties.
MAN-MADE DISASTER
Israel says Hamas, which it views as an Islamist terror group, purposely creates a humanitarian disaster by confiscating aid.
And some Hamas-supporting aid workers seem reluctant to distribute parcels to needy Palestinians, according to a Worthy News assessment.
Well-informed critics questioned President Biden’s decision to use taxpayers’ money and already stretched military resources for a perceived shaky project.
They point out that the operation has also been complex, involving about 1,000 U.S. military personnel.
The Pentagon estimated the first 90 days of operation would cost about $230 million. Additionally, three U.S. service members suffered non-combat injuries while deployed on the operation.
With problems mounting in a presidential election year, the Republican lawmaker leading the U.S. House Armed Services Committee recently wrote to the Biden administration, formally demanding it shut down the pier as the operation was
ineffective, risky, and a waste of money.
“I urge the Administration to immediately cease this failed operation before further catastrophe occurs and consider alternative means of land and air-based humanitarian aid delivery,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers wrote in the letter.
‘PRO-HAMAS LEFT’
Some commentators agreed. The pier “was done solely for political purposes,” wrote The Western Journal, a conservative American online newspaper.
The project was part of “the Biden re-election team’s hopes of easing criticism from the pro-Hamas left in American politics that the president is helping Israel too much in its battle for existence against Islamist savagery,” the controversial paper added in a commentary.
Despite the pier difficulties, a recent report by the key Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) organization found that much aid is still being delivered. The IPC said there is no famine yet in Gaza, despite predicting in March that a full-blown famine would break out in the territory between March and July 2024.
The study found that assumptions about the amount of food that would enter the territory turned out to be wrong and that the food supply to Gaza increased instead of decreased during recent months. “In this context, the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring,” the report stressed.
The IPC—connected to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations—is seen as a neutral and highly credible organization for evaluating where famines might be occurring worldwide.
However, it warned that the food insecurity situation in Gaza remains catastrophic, with “a high and sustained risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip.”
The IPC cautioned that the “probable improvement in nutrition status,” which occurred in April and May, “should not allow room for complacency about the risk of famine in the coming weeks and months.”
However, the study added that with the war ongoing, “extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip.”
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