US completes construction of Gaza aid pier, but weather preventing installation
Pentagon says ready ‘in the near future’ to move dock, which IDF troops will anchor to shore so no American boots are on the ground
The US military has completed construction of the Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it is currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
The pier — which the US military started constructing last month and which will cost at least $320 million — is aimed at boosting deliveries of desperately needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza, which has been ravaged by the Israel-Hamas war that was triggered by the terror group’s October 7 attack.
“As of today, the construction of the two portions of the JLOTS — the floating pier and the Trident pier — are complete and awaiting final movement offshore,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists, using an acronym for Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore — the official name for the pier capability.
“Today there are still forecasted high winds and high sea swells, which are causing unsafe conditions for the JLOTS components to be moved. So the pier sections and military vessels involved in its construction are still positioned at the port of Ashdod,” Singh said.
US Central Command “stands by to move the pier into position in the near future,” she added.
The vessels and the under-construction pier were moved to the Israeli port due to bad weather last week. Once the weather clears, it will be anchored to the Gaza shore by Israeli soldiers to keep US troops off the ground.
Aid will then be transported via commercial vessels to a floating platform off the Gaza coast, where it will be transferred to smaller vessels, brought to the pier that will be anchored to shore, and taken to land by truck for distribution.
Plans for the pier were first announced by US President Joe Biden in early March as he pressed Israel to ramp up the amount of aid entering Gaza. As part of Israel’s efforts to increase the flow of aid, last week it reopened the Erez Crossing, which was largely destroyed in the October 7 terror onslaught.
Meanwhile, the White House said that the closing of Rafah and the other main crossing, Kerem Shalom, was “unacceptable” and needed to be reversed.
On Tuesday morning, the IDF took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, saying it did so as part of a “pinpoint operation” aimed at pressuring Hamas and preventing it from using the crossing for terror purposes, which the military said intelligence indicated it had been doing.
Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing after Hamas fired rockets at it on Sunday, killing four Israeli soldiers and wounding others. The US said on Tuesday that it was assured by Israel that Kerem Shalom would be reopened on Wednesday.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing Tuesday that “no one should think that the completion of this pier and the opening of that route is in any way a replacement for Kerem Shalom and Rafah being open.”
“Getting that pier finished is not a sufficient means to close other gates. It’s not a sufficient reason to operate in the south and disrupt the delivery of humanitarian systems, because even when that pier is open, the amount of aid it can deliver a day — somewhere around 100 trucks — in no way can replace what needs to come into Gaza through these other gates.”
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
