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US port to increase Gaza aid won’t need boots on the ground, officials say

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The US military will establish a temporary port on the Gaza coast to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered territory, Joe Biden is to announce.

The US president is to make the announcement in his State of the Union address in the coming hours.

The plan – which an Israeli official has reportedly said Israel “fully supports” – will provide capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of aid each day.

It will allow more shipments of food, medicine and other essential items into Gaza, US administration officials have told Sky News’ partner network NBC News.

The operation will not require American troops to be on the ground, and Israeli officials could screen the goods at the city’s port, the US officials said.

The port is expected to take a number of weeks to plan and execute.

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A desperate policy decision that Biden hoped never to have to make

This is a significant announcement but details are scant. The timing reflects the urgency of the humanitarian situation but it’s also about politics.

‘Port’ is a somewhat misleading word to describe what the Americans intend to construct. It will take the form of a temporary pier or causeway that will allow aid to be offloaded from ships to trucks for distribution.

Importantly, American officials tell us that US boots will not be on the ground in Gaza but that the causeway can be installed from offshore. No more detail has been revealed.

All of this leaves plenty of unanswered questions and exposes deep failures in diplomatic leverage that the United States has over Israel.

Who will build the infrastructure that will be needed on the land end of the pier? Who will distribute the aid once it is offloaded?

Who will manage crowd control and prevent stampedes which will be inevitable without considerable policing of the mass of people. How long will all this take?

Like the airdrop announcement last week, the port announcement represents a desperate policy decision that President Biden hoped never to have to make.

Read more of Mark’s analysis here

Shipments will come via Cyprus enabled by the US military and a coalition of partners and allies, US officials also told NBC.

Earlier this week, EU officials were in Cyprus to discuss the establishment of a maritime aid corridor with a platform at Larnaca on the island.

Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250.

More than 100 hostages were released in November in exchange for 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

The number of Palestinians killed has reached more than 30,700, according to the Hamas-led health ministry in Gaza.

The territory is facing a worsening humanitarian catastrophe, with aid groups warning that it has become nearly impossible to deliver supplies within most of Gaza.

Analysis from the US:
The desperate decision Biden hoped to avoid

Image:
There is a scramble for aid in Gaza

Image:
Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Rafah. Pic: Reuters

Many Palestinians, especially in the devastated north, are scrambling for food to survive.

Sir Mark Lowcock, former head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has told Sky News that without far more aid, there will be an “explosion” in the number of people dying.

“The death toll from starvation and related diseases is going to be larger than the 30,000 people who are estimated to have been killed already by the bombs and the bullets,” he said.

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