Thursday, Oct 31, 2024

Inside the Gaza Pier Disaster

 

 

Was the Pier Meant to Enable Terrorist Allies to Gain Access to Gaza?

 

 

U.S. officials announced last week that the ill-fated Gaza Pier, built by the United States military over a 60-day period to serve as a “maritime corridor” for the transfer of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, will be removed after less than 20 days operation.

Despite the extensive hype surrounding the project, beginning with President Biden’s announcement of a “historic humanitarian endeavor” at his State of Union Address, the floating pier suffered a string of engineering flaws, weather setbacks and aid distribution obstacles that totally impaired it.

The epic failure of the pier, which cost more than $300 million to build and engaged the expertise of over a thousand U.S. servicemen, has been downplayed by a Pentagon spokesman who said the port was always intended to be “a temporary project to supplement aid distribution through land routes into Gaza.”

Countering the description of “temporary,” however, a senior government official told a press briefing back in March, “We look forward to the [Gaza] port transitioning to a commercially operated facility over time,” according to a government website.

The question is, who might benefit from a commercially operated maritime facility? Certainly not the Israelis with their numerous land ports that are bigger and safer, who have no need for a cumbersome maritime pier fraught with logistical challenges.

The only parties who stand to benefit from such a facility are “terrorist groups and their allies seeking to end Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” writes political commentator Daniel Greenstein in a brilliant op-ed in JNS.

A sea-borne port that could bypass Israeli monitoring and surveillance (after Israel’s anticipated withdrawal from Gaza) “would enable the moving of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip, as well as supplies for the reconstruction of Gaza as part of a new Palestinian State,” suggested Greenstein.

The writer questioned the U.S. rationale behind the building of the pier. “If the Biden administration really believed that Gazans were starving right now, what would be the purpose of spending two months building a pier to deliver aid? A program with a two-month lead time will not help people who are starving right now. It would be a grim joke.”

“The Biden administration does not really believe that people in Gaza are starving, let alone starving to death, otherwise it would be doing more than air dropping 11,000 meals and promising to have meal delivery running in 60 days,” Greenstein argued.

He also contested the administration’s claims that it needs this port “to enable humanitarian partners to safely distribute lifesaving aid throughout Gaza.”

The claim that this was about safety makes no sense since the United States has pledged not to put “boots on the ground,” nor to provide security for the aid deliveries, the op-ed stated.

Greenstein concluded that the temporary pier setup was about “bypassing Israel to provide a gateway to Gaza that Israel isn’t supposed to control.”

 

Biden’s ‘Trojan Pier’
“The pier was not only about bypassing Israel, but also Egypt,” Greenstein argued in his op-ed. “The administration’s vision was that the new arrangement would allow it to directly move materials into Gaza without having to get permission from either Israel or Egypt. And that’s a major victory for the terrorists.”

[Greenstein aptly titled his op-ed “Biden’s Trojan Pier for Gaza,” alluding to the legendary hollow statue of a horse presented as a gift to the city of Troy by the scheming ancient Greeks. Greek soldiers concealed themselves inside the Trojan horse, gained entry into the unsuspecting city and once inside, perpetrated a massacre.]

“The ‘Trojan Pier’ was not about delivering aid, but about giving the terrorists a gateway to the world,” the writer said. “And when that gateway is in place, the world will burn even faster.”

This point of view was mirrored in part by retired US Army Major General Paul Eaton in an interview with the Financial Times.

‘Why are we doing something so hard — moving goods through the sea at such difficulty?” wondered Eaton. “Why did aid need to travel hundreds of kilometers by sea from Cyprus, for unloading onto an expensive, complex floating pier, when the Israeli port of Ashdod lay just an hour’s drive north? Why don’t we just do what we’ve been doing all along and provide the support to Gaza overland?”

The retired general then answered his own question. “The United States wasn’t successful in pushing the Israeli military which controls the entry points into Gaza to allow full access via the land crossings.”

The Biden administration therefore resorted to an incredibly expensive, inefficient workaround, to circumvent the Israelis. But that proved to be a total waste of time and a colossal failure.

 

A Windfall for Hamas

Confronted back in March by a reporter’s question about whether Hamas might open fire on American forces or the aid deliveries, a Pentagon spokesman shrugged it aside.

“I mean, that’s certainly a risk but if Hamas truly cares about the Palestinian people, then one would hope that this mission to deliver aid would be able to happen unhindered,” he argued with a straight face.

The Pentagon official emphasized that American forces would not be on the ground, and would not be in a position to secure the aid deliveries or stop Hamas or other terrorist groups from seizing them.

“So even if the port project goes perfectly and more aid flows in, it doesn’t really solve what happens to the aid once it hits the shore,” noted National Review editor Philip Klein in an op-ed. “Who is preventing it from getting looted, hoarded by Hamas, and sold on the black market for prices that are unaffordable to those most in need?”

These words turned out to be an accurate forecast of imminent events. “Close to three-fourths of the humanitarian aid transported from the extravagant floating pier built by the U.S. military was stolen en route to a U.N. warehouse,” reported Reuters on May 21.

“Hamas steals aid to supply its troops, fill its coffers, and maintain its political control,” affirmed the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) article. “Recent reporting by one of Israel’s top journalists suggests Hamas may have earned $120 to $200 million taxing aid or selling it on the black market.”

 

Mortar Attack

No doubt to ensure its access to the aid, a terror group linked to Hamas warned “against deploying any forces on the coast of the Gaza Strip, threatening that foreign forces would be “legitimate targets for our people and their resistance.”

The warning was followed by a mortar attack linked to Hamas that damaged American engineering equipment and left one person injured.

The mortar attack occurred as United Nations officials were touring the site with Israeli troops on the coast of central Gaza, the IDF said. The UN officials were rushed to a shelter by Israeli troops amid the attack.

“This is an accident, a very serious accident waiting to happen,” Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at FDD, told Voice of America.

Bowman, who is also a U.S. Army veteran, said that efforts to feed those in desperate need are “laudable,” but security concerns remain unanswered while the plans are still being developed.

“The kind of terrorists, the kind of person – I hesitate to use that term – that would wage the October 7 terror attack, use human shields and hold innocent men, women and children as hostages, those are the very same people that will not hesitate to attack those trying to bring food and water to hungry and thirsty people,” Bowman said.

 

A Congressional Letter to President Biden

The mortar bombardment validated the concerns of a dozen GOP members of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) who in a letter to President Biden, led by Sen. Member Roger Wicker, demanded answers about the Gaza pier from the Biden administration.

Outlining the many pitfalls of the scheme, including that no provisions were made to secure distribution and to block Hamas from looting the aid and use it to continue fighting, Wicker called on the President to cancel the mission.

“We are gravely concerned that the Department of Defense has given too little consideration to the likelihood that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations would attempt to attack the U.S. personnel deployed to this mission,” the lawmakers wrote.

“As has been widely reported in the press, armed gangs are attacking aid convoys crossing into the strip. Your decision to build a pier for Gaza merely creates another port of entry that will be backlogged,” the letter continued, arguing that the plan “ignores the most basic cause” of the humanitarian crisis — the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel.

The humanitarian challenges in Gaza would end “as soon as Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders,” the letter asserted.

Wicker added in a Washington Examiner op-ed that “one would be hard-pressed to find a more dangerous and illogical election-year gimmick from our commander in chief [than the Gaza pier].”

The senator slammed the project for being poorly planned, alleging that “no one has figured out” how the aid will be distributed, that it creates a “static target” for Hamas and other terrorist groups, and that the U.S. lacks the forces to properly protect its personnel.

Over the next few weeks, as the debacle of the pier played out, many of the ominous predictions in the GOP letter to Biden unfortunately materialized.

 

Bizarre Problems Plagued Gaza Pier

Highlighting the string of operational failures the plagued the pier, it became evident that the structure “apparently could not even withstand modest sea gusts,” wrote the FDD.

“It seems anytime there was even a hint of a storm, authorities didn’t want the pier at sea so it had to be dismantled” and towed back to the Ashdod port,” the article said.

The writer went on to describe bizarre problems that impaired the floating pier, including parts of the pier breaking off from the main structure and washing ashore on Ashdod beach, while the next day, a US landing craft also became stuck on the beach trying to free the “tug section.”

After two days of trying to extricate the landing craft, the crew finally pulled it free, but the “tug section” remained in the sand. “It is not clear if it has yet been freed,” the article stated.

“Under the original design of the pier, aid was supposed to be delivered onto a massive platform off the coast of Gaza and then moved down an 1,800 foot-long causeway which was anchored to the beach, where it was supposed to be picked up by aid organizations for distribution within Gaza,” detailed a National Review article.

However, as mentioned above, “a storm in the Mediterranean Sea severely damaged the causeway a little more than a week after it began operating, with sections floating off into the ocean,” the article noted.

A short video livestreamed on May 27 captured images of the pier moored off the coast of Gaza. Other sections of the pier that were initially anchored to the coast appeared to be missing.

Reading the press releases put out by the Pentagon about the series of mishaps and setbacks that rendered the pier dysfunctional, one is struck by the eeriness of how the forces of “nature” seemed to conspire against the structure.

Almost anything that could possibly have gone wrong went wrong, including support ships unexpectedly losing power and drifting off course and getting beached in shallow waters.

“The Defense Department is working to recover three of four vessels connected with the aid pier in Gaza, after rough seas caused the motorized sections to run aground,” the Pentagon announced at the time.

“The vessels, which are used to stabilize the pier broke free from their anchors and beached ashore after suffering a loss of power,” Pentagon Press Secretary Singh told reporters.

The spokesman added that in addition to the vessels running aground, “rough seas and a North African weather system earlier today caused a portion of the (floating) pier to detach from the causeway currently anchored into the Gaza coastline.”

The damaged pier was then removed for repairs at the Israeli port of Ashdod, brought back to the Gaza beach and re-anchored. But the mishaps were far from over, and the structure had to be dismantled another three times ahead of stormy weather and rough seas.

Despite these setbacks, Pentagon spokesman Major General Ryder boasted in a statement that over 5000 tons of humanitarian assistance had made it to the beaches of Gaza by early June. (This is equivalent to just a single day’s worth of the aid that flowed into the Strip before the war,” attested the Guardian.)

Questioned later about the distribution effort, Ryder conceded that the aid was mostly looted once humanitarian aid workers tried to distribute it. When asked whether any aid had actually made it to the Gazans for whom it was intended, Ryder admitted, “I do not believe so.” (National Review)

*****

Anatomy of a Disaster

The following description of the Gaza Pier debacle appeared on the official website of Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., on June 28.

The pier, at the cost of over $300 million, was under construction or in planning phases for 68 days. Then, it was operating for 11 days before breaking apart and being paused for 10, Wicker’s scathing memo began.

“Earlier this month, it resumed for three days, then paused for three days, and it was again shut down for another four days because of difficult sea states.

“It was then redeployed another time for eight days before shutting down. In total, the pier appears to have been offline or under construction more than four times as long as it has been operational,” the memo continued.

“How long until the White House approves a federal disaster declaration for this mission? President Biden’s unworkable pier went from being the crown jewel of his State of the Union to barely being able to stay above water,” Senator Wicker wrote. “This tragic waste of our military’s time is what happens when politics is put ahead of practicality.

“The window has closed for this disastrous project to make any meaningful difference,” the senator declared.

His statement reflected pathetic facts on the ground. As of June 28, the Department of Defense informed the Senate Armed Services Committee that “of the 6,206 metric tons of humanitarian assistance that had been moved into Gaza via the floating pier, 5,228 metric tons – more than 84 percent –“remains in the yard ashore awaiting transfer and distribution.” Much of it is by now spoiled and unusable.

*****

 

End of the Charade

The Gaza pier aid situation further deteriorated in June when the United Nations suspended deliveries from the pier, a day after the famed IDF hostage rescue. As a result, food and other supplies brought through the pier into the secure area on the beach piled up for days, beginning to rot in the intense heat.

‘The pier’s mission is coming to an end; it will soon cease operations,” the Pentagon’s Ryder said in a statement last Wednesday. He said efforts would be made to re-anchor the pier one final time, only long enough to move humanitarian supplies which have accumulated in Cyprus and on the offshore floating dock since June 28, “when the pier went out of commission due to weather conditions.”

To the embarrassment of the U.S. military and the Biden administration, however, the efforts to re-attach the floating pier failed and the structure was once again towed to Ashkelon.

Ryder downplayed the mission’s sweeping failures and sought to save face, saying the pier was always meant to be “just a temporary solution.” He made no acknowledgment of the bizarre setbacks and continuous foul-ups which, despite the military’s best engineers and highest grade equipment, caused the pier project to implode.

Similarly, media outlets offered no buzz about the extraordinary string of mishaps and reversals that providentially nullified the “Trojan Pier,” a potentially grave threat to the state of Israel.

 

Twitter
WhatsApp
Facebook
Pinterest
LinkedIn

LATEST NEWS

Hitlerizing

  The first time I heard someone being called Hitler, my heart stopped. I was in Williamsburg, right near the elevated subway tracks on Broadway.

Read More »

NEWSLETTER

Subscribe to stay updated