National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States would “gradually wind down its operations at the docks” in a “relatively short period of time.”
The United States has announced that it will soon end operations from its dock aimed at increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s ongoing war.
The $230 million pier has been repeatedly pulled away from shore due to weather conditions since it was first installed in mid-May, and the project has also faced problems distributing aid due to conditions on land.
“I anticipate that within a relatively short period of time we will be reducing operations on the pier,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday.
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement that “the pier will cease operations soon, with more details on this process and timeline available in the coming days.”
According to a United Nations report, 96 percent of Gaza’s population is food insecure and one in five Palestinians, or about 495,000 people, faces starvation due to Israel’s nine-month war on the territory.
While the dock has helped deliver 8,100 tonnes of aid to a staging area on the Gaza coast since it began operating in May, the 370-metre (1,200-foot) floating dock has had to be removed several times due to bad weather.
Sullivan said the dock had helped deliver food and other emergency aid to Gaza, but additional supplies are now arriving in the Palestinian enclave by land.
“The real problem today is not getting aid to Gaza, but getting it effectively throughout the Gaza Strip,” he told reporters.
Military personnel attempted to re-anchor Gaza’s temporary pier to the beach on Wednesday after technical and weather problems, but were unable to do so.
The project has also been hampered by security threats that have prompted aid agencies to halt the distribution of food and other supplies to Gaza.
Aid groups said that while any amount of food for Gaza was welcome, many criticized the project as a costly distraction, saying the United States should focus on pressuring Israel to allow more aid through the land borders, which have long been seen as the most productive option.
The UN suspended all World Food Programme (WFP) deliveries from the dock after an Israeli military raid on June 8 that freed four Israeli hostages but killed hundreds of Palestinians, citing concerns that troops had used a nearby area to evacuate the hostages rescued by helicopter.
Aid that was coming through the pier began to pile up in the secure area of the beach, but WFP eventually hired contractors to move it to storage areas for later distribution. The U.S. Department of Defense said this week that a significant amount of the aid had been evacuated.
