This photo released early April 30, 2024, by the U.S. military’s Central Command shows construction off a floating pier in the Mediterranean Sea off the Gaza Strip.
| Photo Credit: AP

A U.S. Navy ship and several Army vessels involved in an American-led effort to bring more aid into the besieged Gaza Strip are offshore of the enclave and building out a floating platform for the operation that the Pentagon has said will cost at least $320 million.

Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters the cost is a rough estimate for the project and includes the transportation of the equipment and pier sections from the United States to the coast of Gaza, as well as the construction and aid delivery operations.

Also Read: How bad is the humanitarian crisis in Gaza? | Explained

Satellite photos analysed by The Associated Press on April 30 show the United States Naval Ship (USNS) Roy P. Benavidez about 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) from the port on shore, where the base of operations for the project is being built by the Israeli military. The USAV General Frank S. Besson Jr. (LSV-1), an Army logistics vessel, and several other Army boats are with the Benavidez and working on the construction of what the military calls the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, system.

Satellite images from April 28 and April 29 by Planet Labs PBC showed pieces of the floating pier in the Mediterranean Sea, alongside the Benavidez. Measurements of the vessel match known features of the Benavidez, a Bob Hope-class vehicle cargo ship operated by the Military Sealift Command.

A U.S. military official confirmed late last week that the Benavidez had begun construction and that it was far enough off shore to ensure that the troops building the platform would be safe. Mr. Singh said on April 29 that next will come the construction of the causeway, which will then be anchored to the beach.

The U.S. military’s Central Command early April 30 published images of the floating pier’s construction online, after the AP’s publication of the satellite photos.

“The pier will support USAID and humanitarian partners to receive and deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” the statement on the social platform X said.

U.S. and Israeli officials have said they hope to have the floating pier in place, the causeway attached to the shore and operations underway by early May. The Pentagon said on April 29 the operation will cost at least $320 million. The cost was first reported by Reuters.

Under the plan by the U.S. military, aid will be loaded onto commercial ships in Cyprus to sail to the floating platform now under construction off Gaza. The pallets will be loaded onto trucks, which will be loaded onto smaller ships that will travel to a metal, floating two-lane causeway. The 550-metre (1,800-foot) causeway will be attached to the shore by the Israeli Defense Forces.

The U.S. military official said an American Army engineering unit has teamed with an Israeli military engineering unit in recent weeks to practice the installation of the causeway, training on an Israeli beach just up the coast.

The new port sits southwest of Gaza City and a bit north of a road bisecting Gaza that the Israeli military built during the current war against Hamas. The area was the territory’s most populous before the Israeli ground offensive rolled through and pushed more than 1 million people south toward the city of Rafah on the border with Egypt.

Now Israeli military positions are on either side of the port, which initially had been built as part of an effort led by World Central Kitchen out of the rubble of buildings levelled by Israel. That effort halted after an Israeli airstrike killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on April 1 as they travelled in clearly marked vehicles on a delivery mission authorised by Israel. The organisation says it is resuming its work in Gaza.

Aid has been slow to get into Gaza, with long backups of trucks awaiting Israeli inspections. The U.S. and other nations also have used air drops to send food into Gaza. The U.S. military official said deliveries on the sea route initially will total about 90 trucks a day and could quickly increase to about 150 trucks daily.

Aid organisations have said several hundred such trucks are needed to enter Gaza every day.

In the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage, Israel cut off or heavily restricted food, water, medicine, electricity and other aid from entering the Gaza Strip. Under pressure from the U.S. and others, Israel says the situation is improving, though United Nations agencies have said much more aid needs to enter.

Gaza, slightly more than twice the size of the city of Washington and home to 2.3 million people, has found itself on the brink of famine. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the fighting began, local health authorities say.

On April 28, Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the amount of aid going into Gaza would continue to scale up.

“This temporary pier will provide a ship-to-shore distribution system that will further increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” he said in a statement.

However, high-ranking Hamas political official Khalil al-Hayya told the AP last week that the group would consider Israeli forces or forces from any other country stationed by the pier to guard it as “an occupying force and aggression”, and that the militant group would resist it.

On April 24, a mortar attack targeted the port site, though no one was hurt.

U.S. military carries out its first aid drop over Gaza, amid the ongoing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Gaza City, March 2, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

U.S. military C-130 cargo planes on March 2 dropped food in pallets over Gaza, three U.S. officials said, two days after more than 100 Palestinians who had surged to pull goods off an aid convoy were killed during a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops.

Three planes from Air Forces Central dropped 66 bundles containing about 38,000 meals into Gaza at 8:30 a.m. EST, according to two of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity before a public announcement.

The airdrop is expected to be the first of many announced by President Joe Biden on March 1. The aid will be coordinated with Jordan, which has also conducted airdrops to deliver food to Gaza.

Also Read | UN warns of ‘imminent’ famine on strip

At least 115 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded in the February 29 attack as they scrambled for aid, the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said. Israel says many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic crush for the food aid, and its troops fired warning shots after the crowd moved toward them in a threatening way.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on March 1 that the airdrops were being planned to deliver emergency humanitarian assistance in a safe way to people on the ground.

The C-130 cargo plane is a widely used military jet to deliver aid to remote places due to its ability to land in austere environments and cargo capacity.

A C-130 can airlift as much as 42,000 pounds of cargo and its crews know how to rig the cargo, which sometimes can include even vehicles, onto massive pallets can be safely dropped out of the back of the aircraft.

Also Read | U.N. says 1 in 6 children are malnourished in north Gaza

Air Force loadmasters secure the bundles onto pallets with netting that is rigged for release in the back of a C-130, and then crews release it with a parachute when the aircraft reaches the intended delivery zone.

The Air Force’s C-130 has been used in years past to air drop humanitarian into Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and other locations and the airframe is used in an annual multi-national “Operation Christmas Drop” that air drops pallets of toys, supplies, nonperishable food and fishing supplies to remote locations in the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau.

Also Read | UN food agency pauses deliveries to the north of Gaza

Since the war began on Oct 7, Israel has barred entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies, except for a trickle of aid entering the south from Egypt at the Rafah crossing and Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing.

The United Nations says a quarter of Gaza’s 2.3 million people face starvation. Aid officials have said that airdrops are not an efficient means of distributing aid and are a measure of last resort.