The Pentagon's troubled mission to move aid through a temporary pier in Gaza may already be over as officials are now wavering on the possibility of reattaching the pier in the war-torn region after weather forced its removal for a fourth time last month.
The Pentagon's top spokesman, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said that the military's efforts to reinstall the pier failed this week and that a "re-anchoring date has not been set." It was the latest in a series of setbacks for the monthslong, Army-led effort to offer relief to starving Palestinians caught in the middle of Israel's brutal offensive against Hamas.
In speaking with reporters Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh went further and framed the reinstallation as an open question. "If a re-anchoring does happen ... we would read that out to you," she said.
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On Thursday, Ryder already confirmed that "the pier will soon cease operations." If it cannot be reinstalled, that means the mission -- which kicked off in April but quickly became mired in operational issues and, subsequently, political wrangling -- could already be over.
The pier helped bring the first truckload of aid onto the shores of Gaza on May 17 and has been operable for a total of about 20 days since.
"We are not shying away from the fact that there have been higher sea states that have, at times, disrupted delivery of aid and have made it harder to get aid in," Singh admitted to reporters.
Shortly after the fleet of ships carrying all the equipment for the Army's Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, mission set off from the East Coast of the U.S. in April, one of the ships carrying supplies was forced to turn back to port after experiencing a fire in its engine room.
Then, one of the small Army ships got held up in Tenerife -- a small island that is part of the Canary Islands cluster off the west coast of Africa -- leading to concerns about the readiness of the Army's fleet of watercraft.
Then came the weather delays. High seas caused the first of the many weather-related delays as the pier was being set up, and experts noted that the pier was being asked to operate in an area and under conditions for which it wasn't designed.
Once the pier was up and running in May, there were more issues. After about a week of operations, Pentagon officials conceded that some of the first truckloads of aid were not even making it to the Palestinians because the vehicles carrying the aid to local warehouses were being looted.
Then, a storm broke apart the pier and forced its first removal for repairs. That storm also beached several Army boats on the Gaza shore for hours.
By the end of June, the pier had been removed three times over weather and high seas.
Yet, despite being repeatedly sidelined, Singh told reporters that nearly 20 million pounds of aid had been delivered to the beach at the end of June, making the pier the second-highest volume of aid from any entry point into Gaza at that point.
While the amount of aid appears large, it is hardly enough to feed the more than 2 million Gaza residents for any substantial amount of time.
Singh argued that the pier's mission, despite the problems and relatively low amount of aid delivered, managed to lay important groundwork for future aid deliveries.
"The deployment of this pier has also helped secure Israeli commitment to opening additional crossings into northern Gaza," Singh stressed and noted that there have also been more trucks moving from Jordan directly into northern Gaza.
The mission also developed the port of Cyprus so that aid can now be inspected there and delivered directly into Gaza through Israel's Ashdod port and crossings in the north, she added.
Regardless of whether the pier is put back one last time or not, Signh also said that the Pentagon is committed to getting all the aid for the JLOTS mission -- aid that is currently waiting in Cyprus -- to the citizens of Gaza.
"Whether that be through the port of Ashdod or through the temporary pier -- no matter what -- the aid that was assembled, we'll get to the people who need it most," she said.
According to Singh, the Pentagon is also working on a plan that is "in a proof-of-concept stage right now" to get aid into Gaza through Ashdod, possibly using American vessels.
"We're working that ... with the Israeli government. When we have more, we will certainly share whether that involves U.S. ships or commercial ships," Singh said.
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