The US military is entering a new phase of relief operations in Gaza

The United States has a history of using its military to provide food, water and other humanitarian aid to civilians during wars or natural disasters. The walls of the Pentagon are adorned with photographs of such operations in Haiti, Liberia, Indonesia and countless other countries.

But it is rare for the United States to try to provide such services to people bombarded with tacit American support.

President Biden’s decision to order the US military to build a floating pier off the Gaza Strip so that aid can be delivered by sea puts US military personnel in a new phase of their history of humanitarian assistance. The same army that sends the weapons and bombs that Israel uses in Gaza is now also sending food and water to the besieged area.

The idea of ​​a floating pier came a week after Mr Biden authorized humanitarian airborne landings on Gaza, which were criticized as inadequate by aid experts. Even the floating pier, aid experts say, will not do enough to alleviate suffering in the area, where residents are on the brink of starvation.

Nevertheless, senior Biden officials said, the United States will continue to supply Israel with the munitions it uses in Gaza as it tries to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians bombed there.

So the Pentagon does both.

For decades, the Army Corps of Engineers, with the help of combat engineers, has built floating docks where troops can cross rivers, unload supplies and conduct other military operations. Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said Friday that the Army’s Seventh Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, near Norfolk, Virginia, would be one of the key military units involved are involved in the construction of the floating pier for Gaza.

The dock will be built and assembled next to an army ship off the coast of Gaza, General Ryder said. The ship will need armed escorts, especially if it comes within range of the coast, Defense Ministry officials said, adding that they are working to ensure its protection.

A US military official said these operations typically involve a large ship being moored off the coast of the desired location, and a “roll-on-roll-off discharge facility” – a large floating dock – being built next to the ship to serve. as a waiting area. Cargo driven or placed on the dock is loaded onto smaller Navy boats and moved to a temporary pier or causeway anchored to shore.

The 1,800-foot-long, two-lane temporary levee is being built by Army engineers, flanked by tugboats and driven, or “stabbed,” into the shore. Cargo on board the smaller naval boats can then be driven up the dike and onto land.

General Ryder insisted Friday that the military could build the causeway and insert it into the coast without putting American boots — or fins — on the ground in Gaza. He said it would take 60 days and about 1,000 U.S. troops to move the ship into place from the east coast and build the wharf and causeway.

After the ship arrives offshore, it will take about seven to 10 days to assemble the floating dock and causeway, a Defense Department official said.

“This is part of an all-out push by the United States to focus not only on opening and expanding land roads, which is of course the optimal way to get aid into Gaza, but also on conducting air drops” , he said. Ryder said.

The floating pier will enable the delivery of “more than two million meals a day,” he said. The Gaza Strip has approximately 2.3 million inhabitants.

General Ryder acknowledged that neither the airborne landings nor the floating pier would be as effective as sending aid by land, which Israel has blocked. “We want to see a significant increase in the amount of aid coming through land,” General Ryder said. “We understand this is the most viable way to get help.”

But, he added, “we’re not going to wait.”

The United States will work with regional partners and European allies to build, finance and maintain the corridor, officials said, noting that the idea for the project originated in Cyprus.

On Thursday, Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, welcomed Biden’s announcement. But speaking to reporters after briefing the Security Council, she added: “At the same time, I cannot but repeat: air and sea are not a substitute for land, and no one is saying otherwise.”

Biden’s humanitarian efforts in Gaza so far “might make a few people in the United States feel good,” Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said in an interview. But, he added, “this is putting a very small band-aid on a very large wound.”

The humanitarian aid will likely be collected in Larnaca, Cyprus, about 130 nautical miles from Gaza, officials said. That would allow Israeli officials to first screen the shipments.

Although the temporary port will initially be operated by military personnel, Washington envisions it will eventually be operated commercially, the official said.

Officials did not elaborate on how aid delivered by sea from the coast would be transferred further into Gaza. But the help is partly distributed by the Spanish chef José Andrésfounder of the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, which has served more than 32 million meals in Gaza.

Two diplomats briefed on the plans said the port would be built on Gaza’s coastline, just north of the Wadi Gaza border crossing, where Israeli forces have built a key checkpoint.

However, the central problems remain unresolved. Aid officials say delivering supplies by truck is much more efficient and cheaper than bringing them to Gazans by boat. But trucks are still unable to deliver goods amid Israeli shelling and ground fighting, which is fierce in southern Gaza.

And delivering aid by sea may not prevent the chaos associated with deliveries.

More than 100 people in Gaza were killed last month, health officials there said, when hungry civilians rushed a convoy of aid trucks, sparking a stampede and prompting Israeli soldiers to fire into the crowd.

The U.S. military has dropped aid in the Middle East and South Asia during previous conflicts, even during wars in which the United States was directly involved.

In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered military planes to drop food and water to tens of thousands of Yazidis trapped on an arid mountain range in northwestern Iraq. The Yazidis, members of an ethnic and religious minority, were fleeing militants who threatened genocide.

In 2001, President George W. Bush ordered British and American forces attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan to drop daily rations to civilians trapped in remote areas of the country.