WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he is directing the U.S. military to help set up a temporary port off the Gaza coast, opening a sea route for food and other aid for desperate Palestinian civilians trapped in the Israel-Hamas war, senior U.S. administration officials said.
The announcement signals further deepening U.S. involvement in the war and the escalating conflicts and tensions in the region. The move also shows the Biden administration resorting to a highly unusual workaround to deliver aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians, in the face of restrictions that U.S. ally Israel has placed on overland aid deliveries.
Meanwhile, hopes for reaching a cease-fire before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts in the coming days, appeared to have stalled. Hamas said Thursday its delegation had left Cairo, where talks were being held. The outline for the cease-fire would have including a wide infusion of aid into Gaza.
A widening humanitarian crisis across Gaza during five months of war and tight Israeli control of land borders has forced many people to scramble for food to survive and begun leading to deaths from malnutrition. In a meeting on the aid delivery crisis with Israel’s ambassador Michael Herzog, the U.S. international development director, Samantha Power, warned that blockaded Gaza “faced a real risk of famine,” her office said Thursday.
The situation is most dire in the north. Nany of the estimated 300,000 people still living there have been reduced to eating animal fodder to survive. The U.N. says one in six children younger than 2 in the north now suffers from acute malnutrition.
The U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview Biden’s announcement before his State of the Union speech, said the planned operation will not require American troops on the ground to build the pier that is intended to allow more shipments of food, medicine and other essential items from a port in the Mediterranean island country of Cyprus. They gave few other details, including how many U.S. troops would take part.
One of the U.S. officials noted that the U.S. military has “unique capabilities” and can do things from “just offshore.” They said it would likely take weeks before the pier was operational.
One of the options under consideration is for the military to provide a floating pier called a JLOTS, or Joint Logistics-Over-the-Shore, another U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss the options before a decision has been made. The large floating pier allows supplies to be delivered without having a fixed port in place, alleviating the need to have troops on a dock on shore. Ships can sail to the pier, which is secured by anchors, and dock there.
Aid moving into the pier would likely be by commercial ship or contracted vessel, the official said.
Defense Department spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement Thursday that U.S. officials and international partners were looking at options, including using commercial companies and contractors.