JERUSALEM - The Israeli army said April 27 it hoped a pier to deliver aid to Gaza would be ready by early May, as it pushes ahead with its assault on the Palestinian territory.
Israel’s more than six-month offensive has triggered a humanitarian crisis, and it has faced growing pressure to enable more aid deliveries as the UN warns of imminent famine.
On April 25, the Pentagon said the US military had begun construction of the pier meant to boost aid deliveries, also saying it was set to be operational in early May.
“We will be working with our partners on this endeavour... in the upcoming weeks, hopefully to make it fully functional early May,” Israeli army spokesman, Major Nadav Shoshani, told an online briefing on April 27.
Earlier this week a senior US military official said the aid would first come to Cyprus, where it would be screened and prepared for shipment.
Maj Shoshani insisted “there will be no American boots on the ground, so once the aid gets to the land, the international organisations are going to be the ones carrying them out”.
A British defence source meanwhile said a British ship to house hundreds of US troops building the pier had set sail from Cyprus.
The pier will initially facilitate the delivery of 90 truckloads of aid a day, later rising to 150 trucks, according to US estimates.
Plans for the pier were first announced by US President Joe Biden in early March as Israel had been accused of holding up aid deliveries on land.
The United States, Israel’s main ally and weapons supplier, has expressed growing public frustration with Israel over its conduct of the Gaza war.
The UN has warned that “famine thresholds in Gaza will be breached within the next six weeks” unless massive food assistance arrives.
UN agencies have said maritime deliveries alone cannot deliver sufficient aid to ward off the threat of famine and have called on Israel to open up more border crossings for road convoys.
Maj Shoshani said: “Over 25,000 trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war. Over 16,000 of them contained food”.
According to the UN’s humanitarian office Ocha, almost 23,000 trucks have entered Gaza since Oct 7. Before the war, around 500 truckloads of aid were entering Gaza every day, it said.
The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented Oct 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,388 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry. AFP
