US military ends troubled temporary pier mission off Gaza coast

By Haley Britzky and Natasha Bertrand, CNN

(CNN) — The US military is ending its temporary pier mission off the Gaza coast that has been plagued with challenges after roughly 20 days of operational use, as humanitarian aid begins being brought in through an Israeli port instead.

“Our assessment is that the temporary pier has achieved its intended effect to surge a very high volume of aid into Gaza and ensure that aid reaches the civilians in Gaza in a quick manner,” deputy commander of US Central Command Vice Adm. Brad Cooper told reporters on Wednesday.

The US service members operating the pier, called the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, will soon redeploy back to the US, though Cooper did not specify when.

Cooper said the pier was operational for “a little more than 20 days” and delivered 19.4 million pounds of aid. Going forward, aid will be brought from Cyprus directly through the Ashdod port in Israel — which Cooper called a “more sustainable path” — or through land crossings into Gaza. In the last several weeks, he said, more than a million pounds of aid was delivered through the Ashdod port.

“Israel has been fully supportive of this effort,” he said. For the aid now coming through the Ashdod port, Cooper said it will be taken on trucks through the Erez crossing into Gaza.  The US military will continue to help deliver the remaining aid from Cyprus to Ashdod, Cooper said.

While Cooper repeatedly claimed that the pier had completed its mission and was successful, the effort has been plagued with issues since the pier was first anchored to the beach in Gaza in May.

The pier was announced by President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address in March.

“A temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day,” Biden said.

But the pier which cost $230 million did little to alleviate the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza as the war between Hamas and Israel, which has claimed thousands of civilian lives, continues.

It was operational for only a week before heavy seas and a North African storm broke the pier apart, forcing it to be towed to Israel for repairs. During the same storm, four US Army vessels supporting the pier were washed ashore on beaches in Gaza and Israel. It was reattached over a week later, only to have to be temporary dismantled again less than a week after that in advance of more heavy seas.

It was disconnected from the beach for a third time at the end of June, and the sea states had prevented its reattachment.

During its mission, three US service members were also injured. While two experienced minor injuries and were returned to duty the same day, the third service member was in critical condition and was transferred back to the US last month to be treated at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

Cooper said Wednesday that the soldier is no longer in critical condition but remains at the hospital.

In addition to the logistical challenges with the weather, aid delivered across the pier began piling up on the beach as the World Food Programme suspended distribution due to security concerns on the ground.

In mid-June, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) paused its operations from the pier due to security concerns. In early July, the WFP made arrangements with commercial contractors to move all of the humanitarian aid that had been offloaded from the US military’s temporary pier to warehouses, a WFP spokesperson and a US official told CNN.

That aid was moved by the commercial contractors to warehouses in order “to avoid waste or spoilage,” said WFP senior spokesperson Steve Taravella, who called it a “one-off’ process.” WFP’s distribution of aid from the pier did not resume after it was paused.

Sonali Korde, assistant to the administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, told reporters alongside Cooper on Wednesday that distribution remains a “key challenge.”

CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed reporting.

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