How Gaza pier will make a difference in hunger crisis

By mzaxazm


The U.S. military says it has finished installing a temporary floating pier off the coast of Israel, a vital step toward delivering desperately needed food to Gaza.

The pier will be used as a route into the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip, which doesn’t having a working port of its own and has seen land routes blocked by war.

Why We Wrote This

The United States recently completed a floating pier to deliver crucial humanitarian aid to Gaza. The effort also brings logistical and security challenges for U.S. forces.

The primary staging ground for this delivery of humanitarian aid via sea will be a floating road-and-dock system. Civilian contractors who are not American citizens will be driving the trucks along a causeway and onto the beach. 

Initially, the pier will bring an estimated 90 truckloads of humanitarian aid into Gaza each day. Once it’s fully operational, that number “should jump to about 150 truckloads,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense, or enough food for roughly 2 million meals per day. 

The Pentagon has repeatedly emphasized that there will be no U.S. boots on the ground as part of the Gaza pier operation, which involves some 1,000 American service members. 

The U.S. military says it has finished installing a temporary floating pier off the coast of Israel, a vital step toward delivering desperately needed food into Gaza.

The pier will be used as a route into the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip, which doesn’t having a working port of its own and has seen land routes blocked by war.

Strong winds and high sea swells initially prevented the U.S. military from emplacing the pier. It was anchored to a beach in Gaza at about 7:40 a.m. Gaza time on Thursday, according to U.S. Central Command. 

Why We Wrote This

The United States recently completed a floating pier to deliver crucial humanitarian aid to Gaza. The effort also brings logistical and security challenges for U.S. forces.

How will the pier work? 

The primary staging ground for this delivery of humanitarian aid via sea will be a floating road-and-dock system that the U.S. Defense Department, in its affinity for acronyms, has dubbed Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS.

The first key component of the structure is a floating platform 72 feet wide and 270 feet long that’s located roughly 3 miles off the coast of Gaza. 

This is where ships leaving Cyprus loaded with humanitarian aid collected by the U.S. Agency for International Development and other international partners will dock. Next, cargo will be deposited onto trucks parked aboard U.S. Army watercraft waiting at the floating platform. 



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