By Palestine Chronicle Staff
A US official has said that the building of a floating pier off Gaza’s coast was an “ill-conceived political calculation,” calling it “an embarrassment” for the Joe Biden administration, the Reuters agency reported.
“The pier was an ill-conceived political calculation by the Biden administration,” Republican Mike Rogers, who leads the Pentagon’s oversight committee in the House of Representatives, told Reuters.
The pier mission, touted to deliver urgently needed humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip, formally ended last week.
The report cites a former US official and a current US official as saying that the Biden administration first considered the pier’s construction in late 2023, but concerns were raised that the sea could become “too rough” for such a project.
As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsened, the “idea came up again” in early 2024, with a former senior administration official having said “We sort of reached a point where it seemed appropriate to take more risk because the need was so great.”
However, the report said, the resulting pier mission which involved 1,000 US troops, “did not go well.”
Enormous Cost
It delivered “only a fraction of the promised aid at a cost of nearly $230 million, and was from the start beset by bad luck and miscalculations, including fire, bad weather and dangers on shore” from the ongoing war, said Reuters.
The initial proposal included “a limited number of US troops on the ground, temporarily, to attach the pier to the shore,” according to the former official. But the White House was opposed to deploying US forces to Gaza and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asked for the proposal to be reworked.
Israeli forces later carried out the installation, after being trained to do so, the former official said.
A US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, however, told Reuters, “boots on the ground was never a consideration.”
Challenges
The report said current and former officials described Central Command as “extremely confident” the pier mission would be a success, with one former official saying “From Day 1, they were consistent in saying: ‘We can do this’”.
The project however was beset with problems; such as a fire breaking out in the engine room of the navy ship transporting part of the pier system, challenging weather and rough seas which broke the pier just nine days after it became operational on May 16.
The pier had to be moved to the Israeli port of Ashdod for repairs but “bad weather” kept the pier “inoperative for all but 20 days,” said the report.
Three US soldiers were injured “in support of the pier in May, with one medically evacuated in critical condition,” said the report.
Failure to Deliver
A total of only 19.4 million pounds of aid were moved into Gaza via the pier equating to about “480 trucks” of aid delivered from the pier. The United Nations says about 500 truckloads of aid per day are needed to address the humanitarian needs of the Gazan population, the report emphasized.
The pier also came under criticism following allegations that it could have been used by the Israeli army during the military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The operation led to the killing of 274 Palestinians and three Israeli captives as well as the release of four others.
Reprinted from The Palestine Chronicle
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