WASHINGTON (AP) — The pier built by the U.S. military to bring aid to Gaza is being removed due to weather to protect it, and the U.S. is considering not re-installing it unless aid begins flowing out into the population again, several U.S. officials said Friday.
While the military has helped deliver desperately needed food through the pier, the vast majority of it is still sitting in the adjacent storage yard because of the difficulty that agencies have had moving it to areas in Gaza where it is most needed, and that storage area is almost full.
Honestly, this was a ludicrously cost-ineffective way to transport aid. We built the thing remotely, floated it in, and it was only there for a few weeks before a storm caused damage and grounded multiple ships. We repair it. Then the UN decided that they weren’t going to use it for delivery because one of their warehouses had been hit (just dump it on the beach at Rafah, guys, if you don’t want to use the warehouses, has to be better than not bringing it in).
In retrospect it was never about delivering aid, it was a piece of infrastructure they could use to ‘rescue’ those 4 hostages.