Biden to order US military to construct port in Gaza to increase aid flow
“We’re not planning for this to be an operation that would require U.S. boots on the ground,” said a senior administration official.
During his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden will order the U.S. military to establish a temporary port in Gaza so more humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in need, three senior administration officials said Thursday.
The U.S. military has “unique capabilities” that allow it to construct a port or causeway without having to send forces to Gaza’s shores, said one of the officials. “We’re not planning for this to be an operation that would require U.S. boots on the ground,” said a second one. All were granted anonymity to preview the president’s announcement.
The move will help ships dock on the enclave’s coast to deliver food, water, medicine and other assistance. The Biden administration is working with governments and commercial partners to establish a maritime corridor from Cyprus to Gaza that will supplement aid already being delivered via airdrops and land routes.
The U.S. is resorting to this military mission because Israel isn’t letting in enough aid to alleviate the humanitarian crisis caused by the Israel-Hamas war plaguing 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, officials said.
Biden will also announce the opening of a third land crossing into Gaza, which the United Nations confirmed Thursday will allow aid to flow into the northern part of the territory. The U.S. continues to push on Israel to open more land routes which allow for more assistance to reach people in needed more quickly and efficiently than via other avenues.
“We’re not waiting on the Israelis. This is a moment for American leadership, and we are building a coalition of countries to address this urgent need,” said the second administration official.
While the plan is still coming together, it appears that in the short term, it won’t involve Navy ships that specialize in humanitarian relief missions.
Three amphibious ships with hundreds of Marines aboard left the Mediterranean this week to head home, wrapping up an extended eight-month deployment that cut across the Persian Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean.
The ships of the USS Bataan Amphibious Ready Group will not immediately be replaced in the Middle East due to a litany of mechanical issues suffered by the USS Boxer, which is still preparing for a future deployment in San Diego despite earlier plans to go to sea in November.
While the Boxer’s sailors and Marines are trained to perform humanitarian missions, they remain in the U.S. “because the Marines couldn’t get a ride,” a Defense Department official said.
“If the maintenance plan for the USS Boxer wasn’t completely mismanaged by the Navy for months, we could have a ship and Marines out there,” the DOD official said.
The Marines have been unable to support other missions such as the earthquake in Turkey last year because the Navy was unable to get ships and Marines to sea.
As for the maritime corridor, the plan faces a host of challenges, namely how to offload, secure and distribute the aid.
Four other U.S., European and Middle Eastern officials said many elements remain up for discussion. Smaller packages will soon come in by sea. But once a coordinated plan is in place, it would take 45 to 60 days before there’s a regular cadence of large assistance packages shipping across the Mediterranean.
The aid will initially flow through the Larnaca port in Cyprus, located about 230 miles from Gaza. It’s already fitted with high-tech screening equipment that allows Israeli officials stationed in Cyprus to check what’s inside the deliveries.
Gaza has no working port, which is why Biden has ordered the U.S. military to help establish the temporary pier. It’s unclear what role other partners will play in its creation.
The aid needs to be protected once it’s ashore, and crowds clamoring for assistance have to be managed. U.S. officials said Israel has not yet agreed to a security and crowd-control mission on the beachhead and that negotiations are ongoing, including whether Israeli forces would also be responsible for demining staging areas for the aid.
Arguably the hardest part is dispersing the aid throughout the whole of Gaza. The multinational coalition will rely on the United Nations, non-governmental organizations and other groups to ensure the assistance gets to the right places.
Gaza remains an active war zone and much of the enclave poses security risks to aid workers, which will complicate any efforts to get food, water, medicine and other assistance to those in need.
The biggest outstanding issue is who will synchronize all of these efforts.
“The goal here is to find a way to bring synergy to every one initiative,” said a third senior Biden administration official. It’s unclear if that responsibility will fall to one nation or a group of them. “We will need something like that so that we can actually build connective tissue between our planners, our development professionals, etc. to work out some of the details.”
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar are in talks with the Cypriots about how they can contribute to the maritime corridor, the official added. Officials from both governments didn’t respond to a request for comment, though there’s reporting of UAE-funded aid arriving in Gaza next week.
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.