The U.S.-built temporary pier taking humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians will be removed from the coast of Gaza to be repaired after getting damaged in rough seas and weather, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Over the next two days, the pier will be pulled out and sent to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, where U.S. Central Command will repair it, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters. She said the fixes will take “at least over a week” and then the pier will need to be anchored back into the beach in Gaza.
The pier, used to carry in humanitarian aid arriving by sea, is one of the few ways that food, water and other supplies are getting to Palestinians who the U.N. says are on the brink of famine amid the nearly 8-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The setback is the latest for the $320 million pier, which only began operations in the past two weeks and has already had three U.S. service members injured and had four of its vessels beached due to heavy seas. Deliveries also were halted for two days last week after crowds rushed aid trucks coming from the pier and one Palestinian man was shot dead. After that, the U.S. military worked with the U.N. and Israeli officials to select safer alternate routes for trucks, the Pentagon said Friday.
It was a rush job. I’m not surprised things were missed.
That said it’s an extraordinary amount of money spent when the simpler solution would have been to tie continued Israeli funding with opening the Rafah crossing (and providing protection for the goods).
“Ocean waters can be rough” is a big fucking thing to miss when building a floating pier.
If it’s DoD, most of the capabilities for quick pier building only need to last long enough to get gear and personnel on land.
Fun story: in WW2 a concrete mixing ship was converted to an ice cream machine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge
This wasn’t supposed to be that quick though, was it? I thought this was going to be the primary way aid was going to get into Gaza. It could potentially need to last a very long time.
Who can say? Could equally have been either a temporary solution, or just a really shoddy “permanent” solution by the lowest bidder.
I’m inclined to think temporary just for speed, potentially (ideally) with plans in place for something more long term.
An alternative purpose of a temporary structure could be also be to not piss off israel (for some reason, they care about that) by giving Palestinians access to a stable port.
In the original announcement, it was stated as temporary.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3702062/pentagon-press-secretary-air-force-maj-gen-pat-ryder-holds-a-press-briefing/