How Joe Biden’s temporary port in Gaza will work – and the huge challenges it faces
Gaza’s beaches will soon become the focal point of a major new humanitarian relief operation to get food and supplies to the besieged territory by sea.
With Washington increasingly frustrated with Israel over the small amount of aid getting in through Gaza’s land borders, Joe Biden has said the US military will establish a temporary port on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.
The objective is simple – to “enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day”.
But establishing the infrastructure necessary to achieve such an aim is anything but – especially given that it will be done without any American “boots on the ground”.
How will it work?
Aid supplies are beginning to pile up in the Cypriot port of Larnaca, about 240 miles across the Eastern Mediterranean from Gaza. Barring Egypt or Lebanon, which both border Israel, Cyprus offers the shortest route from another country to Gaza.
Under the plan, aid will reportedly be inspected and loaded on ships in Cyprus before being dispatched for Gaza.
The first, largely symbolic shipment, was expected to leave Larnaca on Friday on a small vessel belonging to Open Arms, the Spanish NGO. The maiden voyage will deliver food aid from World Central Kitchen, a charity founded by José Andrés, a Spanish-American chef and restaurateur.
The NGO said it had several tons of food and water on board to deliver. In the absence of a port in Gaza, amphibious craft will be used to ferry the supplies ashore, Axios reported.
Neither Mr Biden nor Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, have so far offered precise details of the plan to create a Cyprus-Gaza sea route for aid. But US media have reported that a rapid deployment unit will be in charge of building a floating pier near Gaza’s shore.
The pier will be installed by the Virginia-based 7th Transportation Brigade, but the ships have not yet left the United States, CBS reported.
Unnamed US officials say the plan will take at least 30 to 60 days to implement, involving hundreds or even thousands of US troops operating on ships near the shore.
What’s the difficulty with the plan?
While building the pier is a significant undertaking, even for a military superpower like the United States, it is only one part of the problem. What comes next after the aid arrives presents an even bigger challenge.
Inside Gaza, conditions could hardly be worse. Aid warehouses and lorries have been attacked, and many roads and buildings have been destroyed by IDF bombs and bulldozers.
While some details have emerged about the construction of the pier, how the aid will be distributed once it arrives is much less clear.
When dealing with deliveries of aid by land, aid groups such as UNRWA or the Norwegian Refugee Council rely on large teams on the ground to get the supplies into the hands of those that need them.
But aid groups contacted by The Telegraph were unable to say who would be responsible for unloading, guarding and distributing shipments that arrive by sea.
There was no clarity either on who would provide the necessary logistical infrastructure – such as lorries and warehouses – to make the operation possible.
“Who’s going to be responsible for unloading, and distributing and getting the aid to the people in need in northern Gaza in particular? You need trucks, you need infrastructure and you need deconfliction? I have no answer for that,” said Shaina Low, of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Aid groups are also sceptical about a months-long mission to establish a maritime corridor, saying the need for aid is immediate given the severity of the situation in northern Gaza, where at least 15 children are reported to have died of starvation last week.
“It’s going to be complex and costly to get this temporary port up and running and this could take weeks or even longer, and this simply is not time that people in Gaza have,” Ms Low added.
Riham Jafari, ActionAid’s co-ordinator for the West Bank and Gaza, said she did not believe the sea corridor was the answer.
“The sea post and airdrops are not a solution: the solution lies in a ceasefire and safety for land crossing of the border, through which a huge amount of aid can be delivered.”
Sea and air ‘no substitute for land crossings’
Sigrid Haag, the UN’s senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, praised international efforts to ramp up aid deliveries but said the sea route and airdrops were “not a substitute for what we need to see arrive by land”.
It was up to Israel to allow more aid to come in, she told reporters in New York.
“(Israel) has made it very clear to me there is little willingness, that there is concern over domestic sensitivities when crossings were to open,” Ms Haag added.
Far-Right Israelis and settler groups have been rallying outside the Kerem Shalom crossing which links Israel with the south of Gaza, trying to block aid trucks from entering the enclave.
The aid groups also raised concerns that new, creative solutions for delivering aid may be taking the pressure off Israel to fulfil its obligations in allowing an uninterrupted flow of aid into the area.
“The primary party preventing the delivery of aid is Israel. The United States is Israel’s greatest ally and yet they’re resorting to airdrops rather than using the more cost-efficient means,” Ms Low said.
“In some ways it absolves Israel of its international obligations to either provide or facilitate access to humanitarian aid.”
