From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
US says Gaza aid pier will take more than a week to be recovered and repaired
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
The US says it will need well over a week to resume the operation of the temporary pier it built off the Gaza coast for delivering humanitarian aid after it was damaged due to severe weather conditions over the weekend.
US forces will first need to recover a portion of the pier and four accompanying army vessels that have broken off from the rest of the pier and beached on the shores of Gaza and Israel over the past several days, says Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh, adding that this process will take roughly 48 hours.
The stump of the T-shaped pier remains anchored to the Gaza shore but will now need to be removed over the next two days and towed back to Israel’s Ashdod Port so that the weather-caused damages can be repaired by US Central Command, Singh says.
“The rebuilding and repairing of the pier will take at least over a week, and following completion, it will need to be re-anchored to the coast of Gaza,” she says, declining to give a more precise timeline.
The project has come under significant criticism due to its high cost and limited success rate thus far, but Singh insists that the pier has proved “highly valuable in delivering aid to the people of Gaza,” delivering over 1,000 metric tons of humanitarian aid for civilians.
Even though the Gaza pier will not be operating for the immediate future, Ashdod Port continues to receive aid through the Mediterranean Sea and can do so at a far greater scale, as it is larger and more established. That aid is then transferred into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom Crossing as well as the Erez West and East crossings.
