How the US’s $230mn Gaza pier became a ‘colossal failure’

The $230mn floating pier, built by the US, was meant to be an ingenious if complex workaround to the inability of even US President Joe Biden to convince Israel to streamline the stuttering flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

But broken apart by the modest winds of the Mediterranean summer, shuttered for most of its two-month lifespan, and now mothballed before the end of its planned deployment, the project has become a symbol of international impotence in the face of Israeli intransigence.

It was supposed to stave off famine in Gaza, urgently. But in its two months of on-off operation it delivered supplies equivalent to just a couple of days’ worth of the aid that flowed into the enclave before the war.

After its high-profile debut — Biden announced it himself in his March State of the Union address, and embedded US television crews broadcast its assembly by hundreds of US military personnel — it ran headfirst into the same problems that the UN and other aid agencies have begged Israel to resolve since Hamas’ attack on Israel triggered the war on October 7.

What little aid was delivered — fewer than 600 trucks, according to Financial Times’ estimates — piled up on the shore and rotted in the summer sun.

Churned-up roads, lawlessness and the unpredictability of Israeli checkpoints within Gaza made delivery across the final few kilometres to Palestinians nearly impossible.

“If you’re a hungry Palestinian on the receiving side, this is an unmitigated disaster,” said Paul Eaton, a retired US army major general who oversaw a similar deployment of the so-called JLOTs, or Joint Logistics Over-The-Shore, in Somalia in 1992.

He added: “Why are we doing something so hard — moving goods through the sea at such difficulty? Why don’t we just do what we’ve been doing all along since Gaza became a walled enclave, and provide the support overland?”

It is a question many humanitarian agencies have asked, though often in private to avoid angering the US government.

Why did aid need to travel hundreds of kilometres by sea from Cyprus, for unloading on to an expensive, complex floating pier, when the Israeli port of Ashdod lay just an hour’s drive north, and the Israeli military controls several entry points into Gaza?

“The US wanted to show that it was doing something to aid the humanitarian effort, and yet it wasn’t successful in pushing Israel to do the most obvious necessary thing — which is to allow full access via the land crossing, or allow access from Israeli and West Bank markets,” said Tania Hary, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that has brought a court case against the Israeli military over aid.

“So it put in this incredibly expensive, inefficient workaround that ended up proving to be a completely disastrous waste of money, and a colossal and embarrassing failure on top.”

The pier was damaged at least three times by wind and waves, the US military said. Some parts floated up the coast, washing up on the beaches of Tel Aviv. At one point, ships intending to reach the pier were rerouted to Ashdod port, where the aid travelled by road to Gaza, said Hary — a far more efficient route.

Aid agencies have warned for months that the enclave faced full-blown famine unless Israel facilitated the smooth entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza — its obligation under international and Israeli law — and created conditions for supplies to be distributed to the population of 2.3mn.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition includes extreme right-wing lawmakers who have denied evidence of food and medicine shortages in Gaza, and have sought to use aid supplies as leverage to pressure Hamas to release the roughly 120 hostages still in its captivity.

Rightwing Israeli protesters have blocked aid trucks near Gaza; others have ambushed suppliers driving from Jordan through southern Israel.

But aid groups say the biggest chokehold has been Israeli restrictions, ranging from unpredictable hours of operation at the border crossings — often disrupted by new bouts of fighting — to the extensive scanning of trucks by inspectors at Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt, and the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing.

The latter was used before the war to bring in at least 500 to 600 truckloads a day of aid, about as much as the pier supplied in two months.

After Israel took control of the Rafah crossing in early May, aid supplies slowed: in June, fewer than 1,300 trucks entered Gaza, according to UN data. Israel’s military this week said the UN was undercounting trucks and that the number was far higher, including 5,000 additional trucks in May alone.

Aid agencies have also struggled to distribute aid in the lawless enclave, where fuel is scarce and roads have been destroyed by bombardments.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 200 Palestinians working for the UN’s main relief agency, according to UNRWA, as well as World Central Kitchen aid workers.

Eaton said humanitarian supplies in Somalia were transported in a “cocoon of security” created by US forces, allowing for efficient distribution by aid agencies. In Gaza, the Israeli military has said that once the aid crosses into Gaza, the UN and aid agencies are responsible for it.

Looting is widespread, and chaotic fighting has closed off more transport routes. Even a late-night February convoy secured by the Israeli military turned bloody, after at least 100 Palestinians were killed in a stampede that followed gunshots fired by IDF personnel trying to prevent looting.

US officials were careful to note that the floating pier was meant to complement, not replace the supply of aid by truck. But it was seen as a way to bypass those problems. Supplies scanned in Cyprus would be offloaded in Gaza and marshalled into an area secured by Israeli troops.

From there, US officials hoped it could quickly be distributed across Gaza’s north, the area worst affected by food shortages.

But after Israeli troops were filmed using the area beside the pier to evacuate a rescued hostage on June 8, the UN paused its pick-ups, saying it needed to assess whether the area’s use in a military operation placed humanitarian workers in danger.

Aid is not the only area in which the US has sought to influence Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza to little avail.

Washington had repeatedly urged Netanyahu not to launch a large-scale ground offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than 1mn people had taken refuge, before Israel sent in troops in May. It has also tried to push Israel and Hamas, so far unsuccessfully, to agree a deal for the release of Hamas-held hostages and a pause in fighting.

The US military said on Thursday it was unlikely to reattach the pier, given that the weather is due to worsen. Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, said the real issue now was “getting aid around Gaza effectively”.

He also pushed back on criticisms of the project. “I see any result that produces more food, more humanitarian goods getting to the people of Gaza as a success,” Sullivan said.

In the end, just over 8,000 tonnes of aid was offloaded from the pier in two months of interrupted operations — about 600 trucks’ worth, according to FT estimates. Gaza needs some 700 trucks each day, aid agencies say.

“If you total the number of days the pier was operational, it was barely a fraction of what could come in through the land crossing,” said Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children International.

“The pier was an expensive distraction from the actual problem — Israel is not allowing in unobstructed, unfettered assistance,” she said.

“Land routes are the most effective and safest way to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza.”

Data and satellite visualisation by Aditi Bhandari