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A US effort to deliver aid to the besieged Gaza Strip using a makeshift pier in the Mediterranean will soon be wound up after American troops tried and failed to reattach it to the shore this week.
The US installed the pier earlier this year after the UN warned that Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza and restrictions on trucked aid supplies into the strip threatened widespread starvation across the enclave’s civilian population.
But bad weather halted the marine facility in late June, the third time waves had disrupted its operations since it was completed on May 17.
US officials said on Thursday that they planned to end the project for good.
“I do anticipate that in relatively short order we will wind down pier operations,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said “technical and weather-related issues” prevented troops from the US military’s Central Command from re-anchoring the pier to the shore on Wednesday.
The pier, support vessels and equipment were returned to Israel’s Ashdod port and would remain there until further notice, US officials said.
The US delivered more than 8,100 metric tonnes of humanitarian aid via the pier — equivalent to about 500-600 truckloads of aid in total. Gaza was receiving about 500 trucks of aid a day before the war.
American officials conceded that the project fell far short of its initial goals.
US President Joe Biden announced the pier during his March State of the Union address, amid intense criticism for support for Israel’s war in Gaza. The US also parachuted some aid into Gaza.
Sullivan said the pier was no longer needed because getting aid into Gaza was no longer the main challenge for Gazans facing famine conditions.
“The real issue right now is not about getting aid into Gaza,” he said. “It’s about getting aid around Gaza effectively.”
He also pushed back on criticisms of the project, which was largely out of service since it launched in May.
“I see any result that produces more food, more humanitarian goods getting to the people of Gaza as a success,” Sullivan said. “It is something additional that otherwise would not have gotten there when it got there.”
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