Mortar attack on Gaza coast highlights risk to US pier mission

President Biden announced the pier’s deployment during his State of the Union address in March. With alarm mounting over famine in the war zone and little sign that Israeli officials would heed US pleas to allow more food into Gaza, Biden pledged to open a “maritime corridor” through the Mediterranean using a temporary floating pier and a steel causeway connecting Gaza. it to the coast.

Although U.S. troops will not be deployed to Gaza, U.S. officials say, security analysts have raised concerns about a range of threats, including speedboats packed with explosives, divers swimming in with mines and incoming rockets. They have also warned that if bottlenecks arise in the distribution of aid flowing from the pier, it could disrupt the entire process.

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that he had just received a briefing on security efforts for the pier and expressed confidence that risks can be mitigated through cooperation with Israeli forces and other countries . who have pledged to help protect the operation.

“Nothing we do is risk-free,” the general said during an appearance at Georgetown University in Washington.

“I strongly believe it will be protected,” he added. “That doesn’t mean there may not be a threat against it, but it is something we are focusing on.”

Senator Roger Wicker (Ms.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, doubled down on his previous criticism of the mission, saying after news of the mortar attack circulated that the plan was “poorly thought out from the start.”

“The risks to Americans will only increase,” Wicker said in a statement. “President Biden should never have put our men and women in this position, and he should immediately abandon this project before any American troops are hurt.”

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss plans for the pier, said the aid would be delivered to a location near Wadi Gaza, south of the last security checkpoint on a “control corridor” that is Israeli troops have set to split. Gaza in two and control of movements in the area.

Aid is initially expected to go north, where the risk of famine is considered greatest, but planners foresee it could eventually go in either direction, this person said.

A senior U.S. military official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity under Pentagon ground rules, said assembly of the floating pier began miles outside Gaza on Thursday. U.S. military personnel will remain at least several hundred feet offshore at all times, this official said, and that those charged with piloting military ships to the causeway would be closest to land.

The pier route, operated under the supervision of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), will begin with the delivery of about 90 trucks per day from the causeway to the coast, and will eventually expand to 150, the senior military official said. It is intended to complement other routes used to bring aid into Gaza, which he said now handle about 220 truckloads daily.

Trucks coming over the pier will be loaded and inspected in Cyprus and driven along the causeway to the beach by personnel from a country that is neither the United States nor Israel, the military official said, declining to identify who was responsible would be for what. may be the most dangerous part of the mission.

USAID has established a coordination cell in Cyprus and the U.S. military has established one in Israel at Hatzor Air Base, expecting U.S. soldiers and sailors there to help coordinate relief efforts and watch for chokepoints. A three-star U.S. Army general will oversee operations at the base.

The security is expected to include thousands of Israeli soldiers, several Israeli naval vessels and Israeli air force aircraft, the senior US military official said. The Pentagon will also take additional security measures, he added, citing the presence of U.S. destroyers in the region as an example.

Still, the mortar attack exposed the various ways in which the aid mission could be pressured or halted, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Even if militants want to avoid disruptions in humanitarian aid, they may consider it collateral damage if they damage the pier system while attacking American or Israeli personnel, he said.

Mortars are not an ideal weapon in this case because they are not very accurate, Cancian said, but if enough are fired, someone can eventually strike.

“If you go around that,” he said, “it will stop.”

Karen DeYoung and Alex Horton contributed to this report.