The U.S. military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a U.S. defense official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 U.S. service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.
Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The cost has not just risen. It has exploded,” Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters, when asked about the costs.
No we don’t. There is 0 reason to build a humanitarian relief pier in Gaza. Most of Gaza’s border is our “close ally” in this conflict. The other border is willing to aid to pass through their territory. Both countries are advanced, and have more than enough logistical infastructure to facilitate all the aid transfers that are nessasary.
The land corridor is more than capable of facilitating aid deliveries. The pier is a PR stunt to make it look like we are working on the problem.
Israel has been making military targets of aid distribution through land routes. If that were an effective method then there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands if not millions of starving Palestinians, and then we wouldn’t need to send the naval vessels.
Your comment reeks of ignorance of the state of the world.
I’m aware of that. What I’m not aware of is how a pier helps. Israel has not conducted strikes in Egypt, or in Israel, so Israeli strikes are not a reason to have aid avoid either of those countries. The Israeli strikes have hit aid groups traveling within Gaza. It doesn’t matter if aid gets to gaza at a land border, or an sea border. It still needs to be transported within Gaza, so it still has all of the same problems.
Israel controls the land borders, yes even the one at Egypt, and they’re not allowing sufficient aid trucks through. The sea pier bypasses that chokepoint. Plus after we’ve built it the United Nations and other countries can also use it to deliver aid outside of Israel’s control. It could also be used as a way out that neither Egypt nor Israel can block off.
That pier represents a lot more than just a few trucks of food from the United States.
Israel will also control the pier. The US is operating in close coordination with Israel, and of the 2, Israel is the only one who will have boots on the ground. The IDF already surrounds the pier. All aid flowing through the pier needs to be inspected by Israel before departing from Cyprus, then will need to pass through another set of Israeli checkpoints after being unloaded in Gaza before being distributed.
Hmmm, that’s not ideal. I retract my previous comment.
If Israel makes military targets of the US Navy then that’s going to be real “fuck around and find out” territory. Helping from afar was inadequate, so now we’re going to be helping in person.
The last time Israel attacked a US Navy ship “by mistake”, they paid a few million in reparations in total, facing no retaliation. Let’s see if that changes.
There is a simple method of solving that problem, just have US military vehicles in the convoys with orders to return fire at everything shooting at them.
How is mobilizing US Military land vehicles across the middle east any logistically different than sending 10 naval vessels? If anything that would be more costly. Plus, they’ll just get caught up at the checkpoints set up by Israeli military the same as the other convoys. Because, generally, starting gunfights is frowned upon, so instead they fall back on beaurocracy.
Time. The US military prides itself on being able to mobilize worldwide in hours. So instead of taking months to construct a dock, which the starving people of Gaza don’t have, they could take hours to get some people there.
Nobody is arguing money here, if anything, less money into the region, specifically Israel, would be nice. Time is the elephant in the room.
Not if they have orders not to stop, and US diplomatic channels hammer that home before they get there. If the US used actual pressure, Israel would fold like a house of cards, just as they did last time.
Even the bureaucracy would be enough. The US could tell Israel that they won’t get a penny if they continue this course of action any day, and Israel would back down, as they did before. They don’t so they don’t.
The US is doing worse than fuck-all, it’s actively trying to put all its diplomatic power into running cover for Israel’s genocide, and Israel is humiliating the US in turn, while taking their money. Moreover, the whole thing could influence the US elections in a way that would result in a US dictatorship. It’s mind-bogglingly insane.
Lmao, land convoys are NOT faster than the Navy for supplying food and water. I can’t even begin to understand your position if you think something so silly.
Skipping the bureaucracy is better than dealing with the bureaucracy. The fact that your message is inconsistent by saying the naval ships aren’t enough, but instead intentionally getting stalled at the border would be enough, seems ridiculous.
The land aid convoys are already there, Israel is holding them up. The construction of the docks is supposed to take three months. If the US did nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, the aid would already be there, since the last time the US told Israel to back off, they did.
Driving a truck into Gaza is much, much faster than building a dock for ships. You seem to be misunderstanding the situation. The problem with ships is that they can’t dock right now. It’s like saying “trains would be better than trucks”, which is true, except there are no train tracks yet.
The US could put two diplomats on a plane, today, have them land near Gaza, today, have them get in one of the trucks, today, and tell Israel that they will get no more money until Palestine is fed, and also that the diplomats are going to step on the throttle, will not step on the brakes, and if they get shot at, the wing of US fighters circling overhead will shoot back at the IDF, and bomb some Israeli airbases for good measure.
This could all be done today. The dock won’t be ready for months, during which countless people, mostly kids, will starve to death. What the US does instead of this is that they threaten the ICC that if they dare to say that those kids dying is Israel’s fault, they will sanction the judges, while they supply the weapons with which Israel is waging its genocide.