WASHINGTON — In the coming days, the US military in the eastern Mediterranean is expected to insert one end of a colossal metal dock – the length of four US fields – into a beach in northern Gaza.
And that could be the end of the easy part of the Biden administration’s two-month, $320 million effort to open a sea route to get humanitarian aid to Gaza, fraught with dangers and uncertainties ahead for emergency response teams such as dealing with peaks and the dire situation. of starving Palestinians is becoming increasingly acute.
For President Joe Biden, the Pentagon’s new floating pier and causeway are a gamble, an attempt to sidestep the difficulties in getting aid to Gaza due to the intensification of the war and the restrictions imposed by its ally Israel to land crossings since Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel ended the conflict in October.
Aid groups are watching to see whether Israeli officials will allow a freer flow of food and other supplies through this sea route than by land, and make good on their promises to protect aid workers. They say protection for humanitarian workers has not improved and point out that aid is already piling up at Gaza border crossings, awaiting decisions by Israeli officials to distribute it.
Because land crossings could bring all the needed aid if Israeli officials allowed it, the U.S.-built pier and sea route is “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Scott Paul, deputy director of the humanitarian organization Oxfam.
“Like all land crossings, it comes down to the Israeli government’s consent” to allow aid through its screening process and ensure aid teams can safely distribute it within Gaza, Paul said.
“If Israel is comfortable with the maritime corridor functioning … then it will operate to a limited extent,” he said this week, as the U.S. military said it was waiting for bad weather to move the pier and wharf into place . “And if they don’t, it won’t happen. That’s why it’s a very, very expensive alternative.”
The Israeli prime minister’s office said Tuesday that it has allowed the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza and will continue to do so. It repeated accusations that Hamas is disrupting aid distribution by hijacking and attacking convoys. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said this month that there was only one major incident in which Hamas seized aid trucks.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Tuesday that it will continue to act in accordance with international law in distributing aid to Gaza. The country has also previously said there are no limits to aid, trying to keep border crossings open despite Hamas attacks and blaming the UN for distribution problems.
With food and aid in short supply throughout the war in Gaza, the head of the U.N. World Food Program and others say famine has spread in northern Gaza and is spreading south.
After an Israeli attack killed seven World Central Kitchen workers during an aid mission on April 1, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Biden to allow more aid and protect those workers.
Last month, truckloads of aid entering Gaza increased by 13%, said Anastasia Moran, deputy director of the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian group. But the daily average number of trucks coming through in April was still about half the average of 500 trucks per day that crossed before the war.
Moran also said that Israeli officials have denied permission for roughly two-thirds of the aid missions requested by humanitarian groups to northern Gaza, where famine is the worst.
Now Israel’s military operation in the southern city of Rafah to root out Hamas militants has closed one of Gaza’s two main border crossings, while a wave of Hamas attacks has paralyzed operations at the other crossing, disrupting the supply of fuel and aid to Gaza has been reduced.
It is unclear to what extent the lockdowns and increased fighting will affect American-led efforts to deliver food, emergency food for children and other aid brought in via the sea route. But humanitarian operations are under threat across Gaza, aid officials said.
“The entire relief operation runs on fuel,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. “So if the fuel is cut off, the relief operation will collapse, and quickly.”
Safety is another essential need for humanitarian workers – and that too is in short supply. Oxfam, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee and other organizations claim that the Israeli government has failed to implement promised changes to protect humanitarian missions in Gaza from Israeli attacks.
On Monday, an Indian personnel was killed and another injured in an attack on a UN convoy. The United Nations said on Tuesday that the convoy had been clearly marked and that its planned movements had been announced in advance to Israeli authorities. Israeli officials said they were investigating and denied they had been informed of the convoy’s whereabouts.
Around the world, the process by which humanitarian workers communicate their planned movements to combatants and receive permission to move is known as “deconfliction.”
The problem in Gaza, before and after the World Central Kitchen killings, is that Israel lets aid teams communicate their plans to the civilian Israeli agency that oversees Palestinian territory, said Paul, the Oxfam official. But unlike typical operations in other countries, relief teams typically receive no notice from that organization, no guarantee that their plans have been communicated to Israeli forces on the ground and no assurances about safety, Paul said.
“There is still no functioning humanitarian reporting or deconfliction system,” said Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian policy and advocacy for Save the Children.
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday pointed to eight Israeli attacks on shelters and convoys of aid groups, the locations of which, according to the organizations, had been communicated to Israeli authorities in advance.
The rights group quoted an aid official as saying that without the security of these teams, essential supplies would pile up without delivery, regardless of piers or shipments. Human Rights Watch did not identify the official, citing the person’s safety.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is charged with helping organize and oversee the distribution of aid within Gaza that will be brought in via the U.S. maritime route, said it would “continue to press Israel to agree to terms to ensure the safety of humanitarian aid.” actors and activities, open additional land crossings, remove barriers to the delivery of humanitarian aid and do much more to prevent the killings of humanitarians and civilians.
The UN World Food Program and other humanitarian groups will provide actual relief from the sea route, USAID said. No American troops will set foot in Gaza. The Israeli army is responsible for security on shore, which is a concern for the United Nations.
The WFP has emphasized the need for neutrality in providing aid. The sea route can supplement land deliveries, but “nothing can compete with truck convoys in terms of the scale of aid,” said Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the organization.
Even if deconfliction issues were resolved, teams tasked with delivering aid from the sea route would find Gaza a deadly place to operate, said Paul, the Oxfam official. The war has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, Palestinian health officials say.
“Even a functioning deconfliction system won’t work in a free-fire zone,” Paul said.
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AP reporters Samy Madgy in Cairo and Sam Mednick in Jerusalem contributed.