The Performative Humanitarianism of the U.S. Floating Pier in Gaza

The showcasing is the point

Soldiers with the 7th Transportation Brigade ready the USAV Monterrey for the Gaza pier mission. Photo By: Joseph Clark, DOD

The humanitarian pier being constructed off the coast of Gaza showcases American ingenuity at its finest.

Gaza has no seaport, so the United States is building one from scratch. The plan is to establish a maritime corridor linking warehouses of food and humanitarian goods in Cyprus to people in Gaza who face imminent famine.

This is a monumental logistical undertaking. The waters off the coast of Gaza are too shallow for large ships to traverse, so the US military is constructing a floating pier two miles from shore. Large ships will offload their cargo onto this vast floating pier, where it will be reloaded onto smaller vessels.

Another challenge arises because these smaller ships have no place to land. The US is therefore building a landing dock, but it cannot be built on shore, which is a warzone. So military engineers are constructing this dock at sea, and then ferrying it to land where Israeli forces can anchor it to the shore. Trucks will meet those smaller ships at this pier, then carry aid to warehouses throughout Gaza for distribution.

In all, about 1,000 US personnel are at work constructing this makeshift system of piers at a cost of about $320 million. When it is up and running, officials say it can deliver as much as 150 truckloads of goods to Gaza each day.

This would be an engineering marvel. But if the goal is to ramp up aid to besieged Gazans facing imminent starvation, the whole project makes little sense. There is a perfectly usable port just twenty miles from northern Gaza, where the needs are most acute. The UN has been begging Israel to open the Ashdod port to humanitarian aid, but these requests have been mostly rejected. It was not until April 17 that the first delivery of aid was permitted through this port. Eight truckloads of flour from the World Food Program were brought into Gaza from Ashdod. (But even here, Israel forced the WFP to take the long route. Rather than entering northern Gaza directly, Israel routed these trucks to a crossing in the far south).

In many ways, these maritime corridors are beside the point. There is no shortage of trucks filled with food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies waiting to deliver aid to Gazans. Trucks are massing at the border of Israel, Egypt, and Gaza, trying to enter through two crossings in Rafah, southern Gaza. However, they are only being let through in a trickle. Despite some improvements in recent days, the problem remains the same: Israel is not allowing in a sufficient amount of aid through land routes.

Before the war — and before most of the population became entirely reliant on food aid — about 500 trucks were permitted each day. The current average number of trucks entering Gaza is still far below pre-war levels. "The number of drivers and trucks cleared by Israel to use the fence road is insufficient to meet demand, causing delays and fewer aid deliveries than planned," said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in its most recent report on humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Cindy McCain aptly described the absurdity of this situation: "People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food," the World Food Program executive director said in February.

From a humanitarian perspective, the floating pier is a solution to a problem that does not exist. There is plenty of aid ready and waiting to get into Gaza. It’s just stuck on the wrong side of the Gaza border.

On the other hand, if the purpose is to demonstrate a commitment to humanitarian relief for Gazans then constructing a pier from scratch is a perfect companion to humanitarian air drops.

This is humanitarianism for show, not impact.

But it gets worse. Even if you take Biden administration officials at their word — that constructing a humanitarian pier is driven by a sincere imperative to get aid to Gaza by any means necessary — there is mounting evidence to suggest that this pier project may be doing more harm than good.