A floating pier and causeway that will be used to deliver critical humanitarian aid by sea to Gaza is expected to take at least one month or possibly as long as two for the US military to build and become fully operational, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Friday.
Ryder also said the construction of the pier and causeway will likely require as many as 1,000 US military personnel to complete.
The extended timeline reflects the complicated nature of the project, which is the second such extraordinary measure the Biden administration has announced in just under a week to try to alleviate the desperate humanitarian situation facing Palestinians in Gaza caused by Israel’s refusal to open additional land crossings or surge more aid by land into the enclave as it continues to fight Hamas.
The initiative will aim to augment a maritime corridor that the US, the European Commission, the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus, and the UK, have been working to open to deliver assistance directly.
Frustration in the administration is growing at the Israeli government’s seeming refusal to recognize the urgency of the humanitarian crisis, despite increasing pressure from the US. The US military pier is among a flurry of measures announced by the international community to alleviate the crisis in Gaza, where more than two million people are in need of food and the medical system has all but collapsed.
The plan for the US military to set up a floating dock, announced by President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address on Thursday night, was rolled out just days after the US began air-dropping meals into Gaza to try to help the population that the United Nations warns is on the brink of famine.
But the thousands of meals being dropped at a time by the United…
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