The US military moored a temporary dock on the Gaza coast on Thursday, creating a humanitarian aid access point to the enclave, where the flow of supplies across the land border is hindered. has largely stopped since Israel began attacking Rafah last week.
U.S. Central Command said the aid would be loaded onto trucks and begin moving ashore “in the coming days.” in a statement Thursday morning. American officials have last week said the floating dock and causeway had been completedbut those weather conditions delayed their installation.
Israel has long opposed building a seaport for Gaza, saying it would pose a security threat. As the humanitarian crisis in the territory has grown in recent months, with severe shortages of food, medicine and other basic needs, U.S. troops in March announced a plan built a temporary dock to transport aid across the Mediterranean.
An American ship carrying humanitarian aid, the Sagamore, depart for Gaza from Cyprus last week, and the aid was loaded onto a smaller ship awaiting dock installation. According to Central Command, the United Nations will receive aid and oversee the distribution of goods in Gaza, which said no US troops will set foot in the territory.
Over the next two days, U.S. military and humanitarian teams will aim to take three to five trucks from the dock and send them to Gaza as a test of a process set by the Pentagon, General Charles Q. Brown, Chairman of this Agency said. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“It will probably take another 24 hours to make sure everything is ready,” he told reporters Thursday on a flight to Brussels, where he was attending a NATO meeting. “We have deployed security forces, we have contract truck drivers on the other side and there is also fuel for those truck drivers.”
Officials said the Pentagon hopes the dock operation will bring in enough aid for about 90 trucks a day, a number that will increase to 150 trucks when the system reaches maximum operating capacity.
During Thursday’s briefing, Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said supporting the temporary dock project was a “top priority.” He said the Israeli Navy and the 99th Division are supporting the effort by sea and land.
Aid groups say the devastation in Gaza after seven months of Israeli bombing, strict Israeli inspections and restrictions on crossing points are limiting the amount of aid that can enter Gaza. Israel asserts that these restrictions are necessary to ensure that neither weapons nor supplies fall into the hands of Hamas.
in one meeting on WednesdayDan Dieckhaus, director of the US Agency for International Development, emphasized that the maritime aid corridor is intended to complement overland transport, not replace it.
The Pentagon does speak that the dock could help provide up to two million meals a day.
An aid group, World Central Kitchen, built one temporary wharf in mid-March to deliver aid by sea to Gaza for the first time in nearly two decades. But those efforts came to an abrupt halt in early April after seven of the group’s workers was killed in an Israeli attack.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad And Helene Cooper Report contributions.
