Pentagon suspends aid to Gaza after construction of Gaza pier goes bumpy and ‘high seas’ disrupt operations

The Pentagon will temporarily halt aid deliveries to Gaza via a US-built, $320 million makeshift pier that has been damaged by rough weather and sea conditions in recent days.

“Today, due to high seas and a North African weather system, a portion of the Trident Pier broke away from the pier currently anchored off the Gaza coast,” Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Tuesday. “As a result, the Trident Pier was damaged and portions of the pier will need to be rebuilt and repaired.”

In the less than two weeks since the operation began, there have been setbacks at the pier, including three injured U.S. service members, one of whom remains in critical condition. The Pentagon said it was working to recover several vessels that were stranded near the pier.

Over the next 48 hours, the Trident pier will be “removed from its anchored position on the coast and towed back to Ashdod, where the US Central Command will carry out repairs,” Ms Singh added, noting that the repairs would take more than a week and that the pier would then have to be re-anchored to the Gaza coast.

The Pentagon said the pier had proven “extremely valuable” in delivering aid and would be re-anchored so aid to Gaza could resume.

“To date, over 1,000 tons have been delivered from the pier to the staging area, from where they will be redistributed by humanitarian organizations and handed over to the Palestinians,” Ms. Singh added, noting that the Pentagon hopes to get aid to Gaza as soon as possible.

Asked about aid that has not yet been delivered through the pier but is due to be delivered over the next week, Ms Singh said some of it will be “loaded onto ships” so they can come through once the pier is re-moored, while the future of some of the aid will be determined in talks with USAID about how it will get to Gaza. Although the pier is “effective,” she said, land routes are “the most efficient way” to transport aid.

“You put a lot of money into it and then it didn’t last, it lasted less than two weeks,” said one participant at the press conference, asking whether “poor planning and inferior quality” of the materials could have contributed to this.

“Over 1,000 tons of aid have reached the people of Gaza, so I don’t think it’s a total loss,” Singh replied, adding that it was important to provide aid “by all means possible.”

Last week, however, a Pentagon official said that hundreds of tons of aid that were supposed to be delivered to the Gazan population through the pier never reached their intended recipients. Much of it, a Pentagon spokesman said, was looted from food trucks leaving the staging area or seized by Hamas terrorists.

“If you want to call it a failure, I’ll leave it up to you. What I can tell you is that we don’t control the weather,” she said, adding that “an unfortunate, unique set of events with high seas and another storm” was the cause of the inoperability.