How do you build a floating Pier capable of holding thousands of tons of supplies right next to an active War Zone in just a few weeks that's not some theoretical question it's what the US and its partners are doing right now off the coast of Gaza it's seen as the latest extreme War cor to get more food water and supplies into Gaza after weeks of.
Failed attempts to get Israel to open its land borders to more Aid the leadership of the israelit say this humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority the US claims it could eventually deliver up to 2 million meals a day using this new gear.
So how exactly will it work and how much impact will it actually have on those who need it okay let's start with the why if the US wants to send Aid by SE to Gaza why does it need a floating Pier to do it the situ has deteriorated for a couple of reasons and we're at the point that we are.
Because there is a bottleneck historically Gaza received International shipments from two main sea ports there's the ashad port in Israel but after the attack on Israeli citizens in October the country blocked its borders with Gaza for security reasons and since then virtually no Aid has made its way from that port to the Palestinian people.
There's also the L AR port in Egypt that Port is getting International shipments but all of them are subject to intense Israeli Security checks to ensure they're free of weapons or anything else Hamas militants could use leading to long lines of hundreds of trucks often waiting weeks to enter there used to be three entrances into the Gaza Strip.
Israel controlled two of them and Egypt controls one of them now only one out of the three is partially functioning people are actually starving to death and the only seap port in Gaza itself is more like a fishing Marina than a port the rest of the Gaza coastline is basically just a flat narrow beach with extremely shallow water making it pretty.
Much impossible to dock a cargo ship the location of this new project hasn't yet been disclosed but based on what we know so far the US plan is this to build two temporary structures off the coast first that floating Pier which is like an island in the ocean anchored to the seabed and second a 550 M Long Causeway essentially a massive floating Road.
Linked to the shore and secured to the ground ships will F aid from the Pier to The Causeway and trucks can then drive up on the causeway and haul the aid onto land it sounds like a massive undertaking and it is expected to take about a thousand troops to complete but the US does have the supplies and the expertise to make it work the United.
States is probably the only country in the world that can actually uh do this kind of operation and we've developed the capability because of our uh Global commitments the US military already has the material to build these floating structures they use a bunch of long narrow pieces of Steel that can be locked together it's kind of like a.
Giant Lego system that's ready to be dispatched whenever a seport is damaged or blocked or the Army needs to offload Cargo in some remote area they call this a jots operation or joint Logistics over the shore jots was created with a military operation in mind but it has been used for humanitarian assistance also in 2010 for example the US helped.
Build a series of peers and causeways in Haiti after a massive earthquake destroyed much of the capital PTO prance home to the Island's biggest Seaport much of the help Haiti needs arrives here at the Port of P of Prince the docks were badly damaged in the earthquake US military engineers and civilian contractors have put some of it.
Back in working order as you can see in this video posted by a US Marine member building a Causeway also requires machines to dig through the sand and Anchor It To The Shore and of course someone will need to coordinate the deliveries once they reach land that part according to the US will involve Partners on the ground that so far.
Haven't been named this is one of the big questions about how this capability will operate when we talk about a partner force that the Pentagon won't even mention I who who are they is it the Egyptians is it the qataris is it the Saudis is it the Israelis is it the jordanians we don't know a US crew is currently on its way to Gaza with the.
First batch of equipment according to defense officials it's unclear exactly how long that will take meanwhile there's another key piece of this puzzle that's also being worked out and that's how to actually get all of these shipments to that floating Pier that part involves almost a dozen other International Partners we are launching.
This Cypress Maritime Corridor together Cypress is the closest EU member to Gaza about 370 km Away by sea the plan is for Israeli officers to set up shop in the port of larica so they can inspect every single a shipment before it gets sent over to Gaza they're saying that they need to make sure that anything that enters into the Gaza Strip is not uh.
Quote unquote dual use and what they mean by that is they don't want food items or Aid items or metal to get into the wrong hands in the Gaza Strip the EU president and the president of Cypress have been working on this together for months now and this week they were able to get an okay from Israel to send the first boat from Cypress to Gaza the Open.
Arms ship and its 200 tons of supplies are traveling through an untested route one that could take two days and face other dangerous obstacles the EU is calling it a pilot project to test out the route and for now the ship is expected to pull into a makeshift dock built by the Open Arms charity on a beach in Gaza because the reality is it.
Could still be weeks if not months until that us Pier is up and running the first major risk in all of this is security Biden has reassured the American public over and over no us boots will be on the ground but even Pentagon officials admit there is still a chance Hamas will try and Target US.
Forces offshore I just don't think Hamas is going to say well let's get this in because this is probably a good deal and let's not attack Americans the good news is that Hamas does not have the specific capabilities to attack ships but as we've with the houthis in the Red Sea if you shoot enough missiles and Rockets sooner or later one of them will connect.
And according to military experts the US troops they're sending aren't generally trained to engage in combat they've mobilized a transportation unit an engineer Unit A th000 Personnel they didn't mobilize an infantry battalion so you have basically people that know how to build a bridge know how to build a floating platform In Harm's Way with.
They they'll have weapons but the Rules of Engagement will not not allow them to defend themselves the US says it's working with Israel on a defense strategy but the details aren't clear and so far Israel has yet to confirm that directly in this field you kind of expect everything and anything um hope for the best expect the worst but always.
Be ready the other major question in all of this is what happens to the aid once it reaches land how do you actually get it to the people that need it you know how the mechanics of doing that will be difficult because of course you'll need to do a lot of shuttling most of gaza's population isn't concentrated near the ocean it's estimated almost half are now.
Living in camps like this near the Egyptian border many of the Roads connecting them to the coast are crumbling Israel's bombardment has left Gaza in Ruins with 70% of the enclaves infrastructure either damaged or completely destroyed and as desperation grows simply transporting a truck full of food is becoming more and more.
Dangerous there are images that you see of Palestinians who see an a truck they'll climb on top of the a truck they'll open up the box and while they're on top of the truck and the truck is moving you'll see them open to start eating I mean that's how desperate the situation has become though us officials haven't put a.
Price on the effort initial estimates run in the tens of millions of dollars and almost everyone agrees trucks Crossing land borders are still by far the cheapest and most efficient way to deliver Aid leading to a lot lot of questions about why exactly the US is choosing this route this is more for the American Consumer you know to see that.
The administration is doing something I don't think it's going to be effective at all but at this point as virtually everyone in Gaza struggles to find food and the U warns that more than half a million people are now at risk of starving anything helps
