President Biden announced the pier deployment during his State of the Union address in March. As concern grows over famine in the war zone and with few signs that Israeli officials will heed U.S. calls to allow more food into Gaza, Biden pledged to open a ” maritime corridor” via the Mediterranean Sea using a temporary floating jetty and steel causeway connecting to the shore.
Although U.S. troops will not be deployed inside Gaza, U.S. officials say, security analysts have raised concerns about a range of threats, including speedboats packed with explosives, divers swimming with mines and incoming rockets. They also warned that if bottlenecks occurred in the distribution of aid from the pier, it could upend the entire process.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that he had just received a briefing on security efforts for the pier and expressed confidence that the risks can be mitigated through collaboration with Israeli military forces and other countries. who are committed to helping protect the operation.
“Nothing we do is without risk,” the general said during an appearance at Georgetown University in Washington.
“I am convinced that it will be protected,” he added. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be a potential threat against him, but it’s something we’re focused on.”
Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, doubled down on his earlier criticism of the mission, saying after news of the mortar attack spread that the plan was “ill-conceived from the start.”
“The risks to Americans will only intensify,” Wicker said in a statement. “President Biden should never have put our men and women in this position, and he should abandon this plan immediately before any American soldiers are harmed. »
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss plans for the pier, said the aid would be delivered to a location near Wadi Gaza, south of the last security checkpoint on a “corridor of control” that Israeli forces established to divide Gaza in two and control movements nearby.
Initially, aid is expected to flow to the north, where the risk of famine is considered highest, but planners envision it could eventually go both ways, this person said.
A senior U.S. military official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity in line with ground rules established by the Pentagon, said assembly of the floating pier began Thursday, miles from Gaza. The U.S. military will remain at least several hundred yards offshore at all times, the official said, and those tasked with piloting military ships to the causeway would come closest to land.
The pier route, managed under the supervision of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will begin with the delivery of approximately 90 trucks per day from the causeway to the shore, and eventually extend to 150, the senior military official said. It is intended to complement other routes used to deliver aid to Gaza, which he said now amounts to about 220 trucks a day.
Trucks arriving at the pier will be loaded and inspected in Cyprus, and driven down the causeway to the beach by personnel from a country that is neither the United States nor Israel, the military official said, declining to identify who would be responsible for what. be perhaps the most dangerous part of the mission.
USAID has established a coordination cell in Cyprus and the US military has established one in Israel at Hatzor Air Base, in the hope that US soldiers and sailors there will help coordinate the delivery of the help and monitor bottlenecks. A three-star general in the U.S. Army will oversee base operations.
Security is expected to include thousands of Israeli troops, several Israeli navy ships and Israeli Air Force planes, the top US military official said. The Pentagon will also deploy additional security measures, he added, citing the presence of American destroyers in the region as an example.
Still, the mortar attack highlighted the various ways the humanitarian mission could be strained or disrupted, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Even if militants wanted to avoid disruptions to humanitarian aid, they might view it as collateral damage to harm the pier system by attacking U.S. or Israeli personnel, he said.
Mortars are not an ideal weapon in this case because they are not very accurate, Cancian said, but if one fires enough, one can eventually strike.
“You end this,” he said, “and that will stop things.” »
Karen DeYoung and Alex Horton contributed to this report.
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