Supplies Arrive Gaza Via New Pier But… — USAID Chief

• Insists land routes essential for deliveries 
• Says barely 100 trucks of aid a day enter Gaza
• Nores number far less than 600 needed to address famine threat

As Israel comes under growing global pressure to allow more supplies into the besieged coastal enclave of Gaza where famine looms due to the ongoing war with Palestinian militants, Hamas, reports confirmed that aid deliveries have started arriving at a U.S.-built pier off the Gaza Strip on Friday.

The temporary floating pier was pre-assembled at the Israeli port of Ashdod and moved into place on Thursday on the shore of Gaza, which lacks port infrastructure of its own. However, the Pentagon’s Central Command said no US troops went ashore.

This is as the Head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, said the new sea corridor could not be a substitute for land crossings, warning that deliveries of food and fuel entering Gaza had slowed to “dangerously low levels”.

The White House National Security spokesperson, John Kirby, confirmed on Friday that truckloads of humanitarian aid, including food from the United Arab Emirates, sent by ship from Cyprus, had been unloaded on the Gaza coast and handed over to the control of the UN.

Kirby told reporters at a White House briefing: “Hopefully by the time we’re done here, some of that stuff will be in the mouths of some hungry people.” But the Associated Press (AP) quoted an unnamed UN official hinting that the shipment’s distribution was yet to begin as of Friday afternoon.

Also, the UK said the aid delivery unloaded on Friday included 8,400 kits that would provide temporary shelter made of plastic sheeting.

Confirming the development, the USAID Chief, Samantha Power, said the US would use the sea route to deliver “metric tons of life-saving aid, including nutrient-rich food to support thousands of Gaza’s most vulnerable children and adults; and critical supplies such as plastic sheeting for shelter, jerry cans to hold clean water, and hygiene kits”.

However, Power added: “The pier that opened today does not replace or substitute for land crossings into Gaza, every one of which needs to operate at maximum capacity and efficiency. Every moment that a crossing is not open, that trucks are not moving, or where aid cannot safely be distributed, increases the terrible human costs of this conflict.

“In the past two weeks, food and fuel entering Gaza has slowed to dangerously low levels – barely 100 trucks of aid a day entered Gaza, far less than the 600 needed every day to address the threat of famine,” Power warned. “Much more must be done to save lives and alleviate the widespread suffering.”

Israeli military operations around the southern city of Rafah have led to the closure of a nearby crossing point from Egypt and the interruption of almost all land deliveries through another southern gate at Kerem Shalom.

Meanwhile, trucks heading for the northern crossing at Erez have been ambushed and looted by Israeli extremists in recent days, with little attempt by the police to protect the convoys.

Although the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have yet to launch an attack on the centre of Rafah, the UN said on Friday that nearly 640,000 people had been displaced from the city, many of them going north to Deir al-Balah, where, it said, conditions were “dire”.

The maritime route involves shipments of aid being inspected by Israel at the Cypriot port of Larnaca, then transported by large ships to a floating dock a few kilometres off the Gaza coast. There, aid pallets are loaded onto trucks that are taken by smaller vessels into the shallow coastal waters; then the trucks drive onto a floating, 500-metre causeway to a marshalling yard dug into the sand. The route capacity is intended to be 90 truckloads of international aid into Gaza each day, eventually building up to 150 truckloads a day.

The aid is formally handed to the World Food Programme on the coast, but it is unclear how it will be distributed around Gaza. It would have to pass through an Israeli checkpoint to reach northern areas where famine is most severe.

Renewed fighting was reported in the northern areas on Friday, as Israeli tanks and planes took part in an assault on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. Residents said that Israeli armoured vehicles had reached as far as the market in the town, and had thrust as far as the market at the heart of Jabalia, which the IDF had previously claimed had been cleared of Hamas fighters.

The reports said bulldozers were demolishing homes and shops in the path of the Israeli advance, even as Reuters quoted Ayman Rajab from western Jabalia saying; “Tanks and planes are wiping out residential districts and markets, shops, restaurants, everything. It is all happening before the one-eyed world”. – With The Guardian report