Boat Open Arms, of the Spanish NGO of the same name, set sail this Tuesday morning towards Gaza from the port of Larnaca, in Cyprus, inaugurating a maritime corridor to bring aid to the Strip and try to alleviate the serious humanitarian situation since the attacks of last 7 October. The mission, named Operation Safeena (boat in Arabic), is highly complex due to the challenges that have arisen since it began to take shape, more than two months ago. “I had no doubt that we could open the sea route. The most difficult thing was diplomatic and the easiest thing was to get to Gaza,” reveals its main promoter, chef Jose Andrés, founder of the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK), during a telephone conversation. The difficulties are numerous, which is why the cook insists that nothing should be taken for granted and that there are multiple variables that could make the mission fail, also of a technical and logistical nature.
However, even if the maritime corridor is successful and allows a sustained flow of humanitarian aid ships, this is not the most effective way to alleviate the serious situation in the Strip, with unprecedented levels of malnutrition. Opening the land crossings that Israel has blocked would be more operational, if we compare the amount of aid that a ship like the Open Arms with which it entered by land before the blockade. Weight and volume is what determines the load a truck can carry. The maximum weight allowed by one of the trailers that move around the Gaza border is 20 tons, report logistics sources that usually work with shipments. Thus, the 200 tons of food carried by the Open Arms It is equivalent to a dozen trucks. The flow of these vehicles that arrived in the Strip when living conditions were not affected by five months of war was about 500 a day. Right now, with hundreds of thousands displaced and famine on the rise, even that half a thousand would not be enough to meet the needs of the 2.3 million Gazans.
The diplomatic work has been carried out by José Andrés himself, who is also a sports and nutrition advisor to the White House. For two months he held countless meetings in Israel, Egypt, Jordan… to obtain the necessary permits, mainly from COGAT – the body of the Israeli Ministry of Defense that manages civil affairs in Gaza and the West Bank – and the Palestinian National Authority. He not only got them on his side; He also achieved the support of the Government of Cyprus, King Abdullah II of Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, which has also co-financed the mission together with WCK.
While the diplomatic issue was being unraveled, the technique was being worked on. One of the first questions was how and where to move the 200 tons of aid, since the Open Arms It doesn’t have that ability. The solution came as a platform 20 meters long by 10 meters wide. In this kind of sidecar, tied to the ship with steel cables, 200 tons of non-perishable food sail, including cans of tuna, flour, rice and legumes, distributed on 130 pallets. Gerard Canals, operations coordinator for Open Arms, explains that although the cargo has been arranged in a way that guarantees stability, the waves affect it much more than the ship. “It is a square in the middle of the sea and is not designed for sailing long distances, and especially in bad weather, but the Open Arms It is a tugboat, it is specially designed for this task,” he describes.
The weather has indeed been another of the challenges. It was the reason why the ship’s departure, initially scheduled for last Saturday, was delayed. The limit for setting sail was that the waves did not exceed one and a half meters in height, according to Canals. He Open Arms, A ship that the NGO usually uses to carry out maritime rescue work for migrants in the Mediterranean departed when it was determined that the conditions were going to be adequate to make the trip without losing the cargo. “Even so, you have to go very slowly because this barge is not a device designed to navigate fast, it is simply to carry cargo in quiet areas, near the port, near the coast…”, warns the coordinator. Therefore, she sails at an average speed of three knots, about 5.5 kilometers per hour, or in other words: three times slower than her usual cruising speed. Considering that Gaza is about 280 miles from Cyprus, the mission will not reach its destination for at least three days.
Another problem has been how to deposit aid in Gaza when there are no ports left standing. For this reason, WCK has been building a breakwater for weeks with rubble and remains of bombed buildings and with some cranes and construction machines that still work. Its location has not been revealed for security reasons.
About 25 people who belong to the staff of this NGO work on the project. To access it, they must obtain prior permission from the Israeli authorities, who keep the area cordoned off. “The sand, the tide, the wind, the machines, the permits, having enough gasoline for the cranes and tractors, having enough cement…”, lists José Andrés when asked about the difficulties they are encountering there. “This is still a pilot program. Once we have a breakwater, the idea is to build a bigger one,” explains the chef.
To unload the load it has been necessary to resort to creativity, because the condition sine qua non What Israel has imposed is that the crew not maintain any contact with the population of Gaza. For this reason, the two Open Arms semi-rigid boats will push the barge to the breakwater, where WCK personnel will be waiting to tie it up and unload the pallets with the help of the machines they have there. Then, this will be introduced into trucks, which in turn will go to the 60 kitchens that the NGO has in the Strip or to other aid distribution points.
From a logistical point of view, the platform also solves the problem of depth: the Open Arms It needs a draft of between four and five meters to navigate, so the tug would run aground on the coast if it got too close. Once again, the platform has been the solution because its depth does not exceed one meter and 20 centimeters, which will allow you to get closer to the breakwater.
A real solution
The problem of Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza is not a logistical issue, but a political one, acknowledge sources from humanitarian organizations working in the enclave, who prefer to remain anonymous. They explain that they do not have a specific list from Israel that specifies which materials are not authorized for access. This lack of information, together with the arbitrariness of the decisions, complicates the entry flow.
The Israeli authorities put up all kinds of obstacles to allow access to equipment and objects necessary to confront the humanitarian crisis in the Strip, as different organizations and the Palestinian authorities themselves have repeatedly denounced. After waiting up to a month at the gates of the enclave for the introduction of a shipment to be admitted, if the Israeli inspection detects a single object that it does not consider suitable, all the material is sent back to Egypt, the Ministry of Transportation said on Tuesday. Health, dependent on Hamas.
The Strip has seven border crossings, six with Israel and one with Egypt, of which only the latter and one with Israeli territory are partially open. The arrival of aid through these points by truck is faster, cheaper and more accessible than by sea, through the corridor from Cyprus, or by air, as is the case with aid dropped by parachute from airplanes.
“Without an official list of restricted objects, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reports that it has been repeatedly prohibited from importing electricity generators, water purifiers, solar panels and other medical equipment,” warns the Ministry of Health. The ban on these materials can make the difference between “life and death” for thousands of patients, among whom there are some with chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes or epilepsy, the text adds. MSF sources acknowledge that the obstacles and blockages of material to which the Palestinian authorities refer exist and add the specific case of oxygen concentrators to help the sick breathe.
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