US Gaza aid pier to be permanently dismantled after operating for just 20 days – reports | The Guardian

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www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/10/u…

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A US military pier, built two months ago as a way to bring sea-borne humanitarian aid into Gaza, is to be permanently dismantled within a few days, according to a new report.

The Associated Press (AP) reported that the pier, which has had to be moved repeatedly to avoid bad weather, would be reconnected to the Gaza coastline on Wednesday but would operate for just the next few days before being disassembled by the US army and navy.

The pier scheme, first unveiled by Joe Biden in his State of the Union address in March, was always intended to be a temporary measure to complement the meagre amount of aid being allowed across land crossings by Israel, but US officials told Reuters in June it would last until August or September.

The eastern Mediterranean off the Gaza coast had been choppier in the summer months than had been expected with stormy weather making it necessary to move the pier in and out of position repeatedly.

Apart from a day’s operations to clear the backlog of humanitarian assistance on the beach, the WFP has continued to suspend its convoys pending a full security review.

Over its two months in operation, about 8,800 metric tons of aid has been unloaded off the pier, about 500 truckloads, equivalent to a single day of deliveries before the war began.


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31 Comments

A quarter of a billion well spent /S

Holy shit it was that expensive? Some defense contractor got a new yacht, I'm sure

Years ago I attended a friend's sister's wedding who was marrying the son of a defense contractor from Houston in Vegas. This motherfucker rented out multiple conference rooms at Paris for the ceremony and reception, open bar and meal for hundreds of people, rented two-story penthouse suites at MGM for the wedding party and flew all the family out to be there. He had to have blown hundreds of thousands on this ceremony that was over in half a day. That's where a majority of our taxes go, to rich parasites like this. Think of every problem that the federal government just throws money at and you'll find people like this. This is why we pay so much yet little ever gets accomplished. We're all too busy squabbling with each other while they fleece us.

They have played us for absolute fools

I always said that the aid pier was entirely performative, but that's even more pathetic than I was expecting

Not that anything I say makes one god damn bit of difference, but *I TOLD YOU SO*

What don't the Palestinians simply die so all the Israelis can build nice homes on the beach already? So selfish.

What gets me every time they talk about this pier... The ships in the photos are amphibians landing ships designed with ramps and flat bottoms so they can unload on the beach without a pier. The pier is totally unnecessary in this scenario

The amphibious ships are small and can't carry a lot. The proposed idea made a lot of sense in that it would allow larger ships to be used so less trips and less fuel per ton of aid, but the political will was just never there to keep it running or make sure it was planned thoroughly enough.

Absolutely shameful, but on the plus side military logistics students just got another case study.

Yeah, but then you're on a beach, so you need vehicles that can drive on a beach, possibly in wet sand, possibly still half in the water. Unless you're actually doing amphibious assault in enemy territory building a pier is a good idea as it makes unloading vehicles/cargo much easier and broadens the type of boats you can use for transport.

100% agreed. If they had been serious about this whole we're going to bring supplies in from the sea. Day 1 through 30 should have been amphibious vehicles. Day 30 through 60 should have been pier-based vehicles, and 60 plus should be showing massive high throughput. With UN peacekeepers at some point to prevent bombing of the aid caravans.

Those are the little boats that take things from the pier to the shore. The boats that take things over the ocean to the pier are not landing vessels. They are large ships and only have a cargo ramp, which requires a pier to unload. I looked at hundreds of pictures before writing this and didn't see one large ship with beach landing capabilities. The largest landing ship I saw was the USAV Matamoros, Runnymede-class ship with a capacity of 20 stacked containers, with no ability to load them onto trucks. It needs a pier to load trucks. Could maybe carry eight trucks already loaded, which is nothing. It operates regionally, not transoceanic.

The pier was necessary for Israeli ops tho

How so?

To rescue the 4 hostages in return for almost 300 dead Palestinians and magnitudes more of wounded people.

This right here is the correct answer.

I don't think it's credible to say that The pier was built for the Israeli rescue operations.

In fact, without the pier they still would have executed the operation. Pier was convenient, but not necessary

Wasn't it just a cover for that rescue mission?

“Rescue mission”? You mean that one where they disguised US / Israeli military as humanitarian aid to get into a refugee camp to slaughter 274 innocent people?

I get your point but it is disingenuous to ignore the fact that it was a rescue mission.

Deleted by author

Isreal borders gaza on two sides. Why would they need to land troops?

Yeah, I misremembered the extraction operation where they took out hostages using the pier: https://apnews.com/article/pier-humanitarian-aid-gaza-israel-un-2465291ca9308f9d97e3cc51a8cab6c7

And as a result I may have been uncharitable in my assessment.

Why is any of this necessary? Israeli state would like Palestinians to not exist. US state couldn’t be tied more closely. Nothing about the various exploits there are what were being asked to believe, IMO.

That's weird, you say they want Palestinians to not exist but Israel is letting in tons of food and medicine every day, more and more, building desalinization plants, and sending millions and millions of phone calls and texts to warn and evacuate people, and have not killed 99.2% of the Palestinian population.

You can't believe that, but for anyone else who might come across this:

I can't believe what, thee verifiable facts I've pointed our which fly in the face of your emotional theories?

A fundraising solicitation is not a credible source of informatipn. Your second point is a half truth and basically an urban legend that's been repeated about 1,000 times. The IDF has at no point guaranteed anyone's safety or deemed any place 100% safe. They give general instructions to avoid areas where bombing will be heavy, such as where a several miles of tunnel needs to be blown up, *and* the overriding instruction is always "don't hang out near Hamas members or tunnels." 0.8% of Palestinians just couldn't quit the terrorists though, and of course some actual innocents get caught up in the chaos. Maybe don't elect terrorists to be in charge because they do shit like start wars they can't possibly win based on ideological insanity.