WASHINGTON — Now that the US is struggling with rough seas around Gaza, it is considering abandoning efforts to re-establish the Gaza Strip. pier that has been used to get desperately needed humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians, two US officials said Thursday.
The original plan earlier this week was to reinstall the pier for a few days to bring the last pallets of aid to the coast and then remove them for good, but the rough sea prevents this.
The White House and the Defense Department both said the pier would cease operations “soon,” but declined to provide a specific timeline. Other U.S. officials said the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command were actively discussing an early end to pier operations because weather and some maintenance issues making it much less desirable to reconnect it for even a short time.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said no final decision had been made and that if things calmed down for a while, there was a small chance they could restore connectivity for a short time.
Across Washington, officials signaled the end of what had been a mission beset by weather and security challenges but also delivered more than 19.4 million pounds (8.6 million kilograms) of relief supplies to starving Gazans. nine month war between Israel and Hamas continues.
“I expect we will wind down the pier operations in a relatively short period of time,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday. “The real issue now is not getting aid into Gaza. It’s getting aid around Gaza effectively.”
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged in a statement that U.S. military personnel “were unable to re-anchor the pier to the shore” as planned this week, and that no date has been set for reattaching it. “The pier will soon be out of use,” he said, but he did not provide a timetable.
Some aid is still at sea and in Cyprus, but officials said they are considering alternative plans to bring the aid to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The port has been seen as a likely replacement option for supplies from Cyprus to Gaza.
Despite the pier’s problems, Sullivan called the project a success.
“Look, I see any outcome that gets more food, more humanitarian supplies, to the people of Gaza as a success,” Sullivan said. “It’s additive. It’s something extra that we wouldn’t have gotten when it came. And that’s a good thing.”
The total amount of aid delivered, Ryder said, “represents the largest amount of aid transported by the U.S. military in a three-month period and the largest humanitarian response in the Middle East region.”
The continuation weather problems have forced the army to temporarily remove the pier three times since it was installed in May. And the project has also been hampered by security threats that have prompted aid agencies to halt distribution of food and other supplies in Gaza.
Aid agencies have said any amount of food for Gaza is welcome, but many have criticized the project as a costly distraction. They say the U.S. should focus on pressuring Israel to allow more aid through its borders, which has long been seen as the most productive option.
The UN has suspended all World Food Programme deliveries from the pier following an Israeli military attack on June 8 that rescued four Israeli hostages but killed hundreds of Palestinians. The UN said there were concerns that troops were using a nearby area to fly out the rescued hostages by helicopter.
Aid that flowed through the pier began piling up in the secured area on the beach, but WFP eventually hired contractors to move it to storage areas for further distribution. The Defense Ministry said this week that a significant portion of the aid had been cleared.
The Pentagon insisted throughout that the pier — a military system known as the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, capability — was intended only as a temporary solution. And it said it was set up as a stopgap measure while officials worked with the Israelis to open land routes.
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Associated Press editor Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report.