Off the coast of Gaza – CBS News was among the first media outlets invited by the U.S. military to travel across the eastern Mediterranean on a military ship to see the pier built by U.S. troops off the coast of the war-torn Gaza Strip. The Tuesday visit came just as work resumed on the $230 million floating pier after rough seas made it unusable.
From the floating platform, the CBS News team could see entire neighborhoods in ruins, but the devastation in the small, densely populated Palestinian area was completely off limits to the journalists.
President Biden announced the pier project as a way to provide more humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in desperate need, as Israel devastating war against the enclave's longtime Hamas rulers is entering its tenth month.
US Central Command Award via Reuters
The American forces who built and operate the pier also do not set foot in Gaza. The pier, which rings and shakes even in calm seas, has been plagued with problems – so many in fact that it has only been fully operational for about sixteen days since it was first opened to aid shipments. At one point part of it was stranded due to bad weather.
The project has also come under intense scrutiny, especially by Israeli forces rescued four hostages during an operation in Gaza earlier this month. During the operation, an Israeli military helicopter was seen taking off from the beach in front of the pier, killing more than 270 Palestinians, according to health officials in the area.
The UN World Food Programme has suspended activities related to the pier over concerns that the project had been jeopardised.
“This is a humanitarian pier,” Col. Samuel Miller, commander of the U.S. Army's 7th Transportation Brigade, told CBS News when asked whether both the safety and integrity of the pier remained intact. “It was not part of an operation. It is focused on humanitarian relief, and that is my mission, and I will continue to march through that no matter what obstacles lie ahead in terms of obstacles.”
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Trucks carrying pallets of much-needed food aid slowly roll over the pier into the besieged Palestinian area, but only about 400 aid trucks have rolled off the structure since the project became operational two months ago. That's not nearly enough to even have a significant impact, given the scale of need among Gaza's roughly 2.3 million residents.
Before the October 7 attacks, more than 500 truckloads of aid routinely entered Gaza in a single day. Since then, the fighting has driven more than half of the area's population from their homes, many multiple times, according to the United Nations.
Almost all of Gaza's infrastructure, from hospitals to bakeries and schools, has been badly hit, if not destroyed, and food shortages are especially desperate in the northern part of the territory, furthest from aid points.
This was announced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization a statement Wednesday warning there was a “high risk of famine throughout the Gaza Strip” if the war continues and aid deliveries do not increase.
“All I know is that my goal is to get as many goods into Gaza as possible for the people of Gaza,” Colonel Miller told CBS News.
Since Israel began the war in response to the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, in which the militants killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 240 others, Israel and Egypt, which control the only functional border crossings, have been blocking international journalists from entering Palestinian territory. area.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says the war has killed more than 37,400 Palestinians, including many women and children.
Imtiaz Tyab
