The US plans a temporary port in Gaza for humanitarian aid access |

The United States plans an “urgent” military mission to establish, in collaboration with other allies, a temporary port on the Mediterranean coast of Gaza for the entry of humanitarian aid by sea, as senior government officials announced this Thursday, specifying that Washington has collaborated “very closely” with Israel in the development of the initiative. The formal announcement will come in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address tonight before both houses of Congress. The initiative has, in principle, the support of Israel, which “fully supports” the US plan, according to a senior official cited by the Reuters agency.

The port will be able to accommodate “large ships with shipments of water, food, medicine” and structures to provide shelter for Gazans displaced by the war. The main facility will be a temporary dock that will allow the equivalent of “hundreds of additional trucks of aid daily” to be unloaded. Initially, the shipments will come from the port of Larnaca, on the island of Cyprus, the closest European Union country to Gaza (about 370 kilometers).

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The senior officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not provide details on how the port’s dock will be built. They did assure that it will not be necessary to deploy US soldiers on Gaza soil, in fulfillment of one of Biden’s strongest promises since the beginning of the conflict. They will be in structures over the sea. One of the senior officials clarified that the United States has “unique capabilities” that allow it to build this type of construction. The planning and execution of the project will require “several weeks”, approximately 45 to 60 days. In past conflicts where U.S. forces have needed to build a bridgehead, they have set up that type of structure in outer waters, from their ships, and moved it closer to the shore.

Official Israeli sources cited by the public television channel, Kaan, have confirmed that the measure has been coordinated with the country’s authorities, but have also admitted that it is part of Washington’s discontent with the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza. and distrust of Israel to increase. Senior officials in Washington have pointed out that they have been collaborating with the allied country for months “to establish this mechanism.”

The challenges are enormous. It is not only about the logistical problems of building the port itself and bringing aid. It is also a challenge how to distribute it in a strip where transportation is difficult and needs are extreme. The European Commissioner for Crisis Management and Humanitarian Aid, Janez Lenarcic, admitted this Wednesday at a press conference in Jerusalem that, in addition to a port in Gaza, a structure would be necessary to guarantee the orderly reception and distribution of aid upon its arrival. . “The scenes we have seen, of crowds of hungry people running towards the parachutes that come to land, is not the proper way to handle, receive and distribute it,” he said.

Biden will make the announcement a day after the EU indicated that it is considering establishing a maritime humanitarian corridor to introduce aid to a Gaza with serious rates of malnutrition and in which at least 10 children have died of starvation in recent days, according to the The UN World Health Organization, which denounced on Tuesday that the deterioration of the nutritional status of its population in the five months of war “is unprecedented worldwide.”

The sea is the only means that remains in the face of problems by land and air. Israeli obstacles, the lack of distribution means and the chaos that prevails in deliveries have reduced road deliveries by half compared to December and January, when they were already below those necessary to face the humanitarian crisis. Both hungry citizens and mafias seeking to resell them on the market are raiding the convoys. Israeli ultranationalist groups are also concentrating on the crossing to try to prevent it from entering, in a position that the majority of the population approves, considering that it benefits Hamas or that it should be used to force the handover of the hostages, according to polls. Dropping it from the air – as several countries have done in recent weeks, such as Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France and the United States – represents a meager patch, because the quantities are small.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will travel to Cyprus this Friday to study the maritime project, which has gained momentum following the death of more than a hundred Gazans last week, while pursuing an aid convoy. , some of them by shots from Israeli soldiers, who opened fire on unarmed civilians. Images of injuries, desperation and blood-stained food have heightened international concern about the humanitarian crisis, caused primarily by Israel’s decision to use hunger as a weapon of war.

The United States maintains that it continues to pressure Israel to increase the influx of aid by land. “The president has instructed us to examine all options and not wait for the Israelis. We are looking for any possible channel to send assistance to Gaza. We will do it by air, by sea, by land, whatever, to get as much help as possible,” said one of the sources.

Senior officials have indicated, in fact, that Israel is preparing the opening of a new access point, directly north of Gaza (the most malnourished area), which will allow “aid to flow directly to the population in the north that is in desperate need of assistance.” “It was at our request,” they say. Commissioner Lenarcic already reported that he had perceived “openness” in his Israeli interlocutors towards the idea of ​​enabling new access for aid.

The new port would be a key piece in the panorama for Gaza that the United States is preparing for the temporary ceasefire of at least six weeks between Israel and Hamas, in which it mediates together with Qatar and Egypt. The truce would allow the distribution of humanitarian assistance to be increased and improved, and even the return to the north of those displaced from that area, although most of their houses are damaged or destroyed, as Hamas requests in the negotiations that took place this Thursday in Cairo. still impasse and they will not be resumed until Sunday. “Everything we are doing, including this new mission, is important to establish the conditions in Gaza so that people can end up returning to their places of residence,” noted one of the US representatives.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made it clear again this Thursday that, whether the truce goes ahead or not, the army will invade Rafah, where the majority of Gazans, more than one million, are concentrated today. “I want to tell you clearly that the army will continue to operate against all Hamas battalions throughout the Strip, which includes Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas. Whoever tells us not to operate in Rafah, he tells us to lose the war. And that is not going to happen,” he declared at a military graduation ceremony.

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