Gaza coast to deliver aid

gineering unit in recent weeks to practice the installation of the causeway, training on an Israeli beach just up the coast.

The new port sits southwest of Gaza City and a bit north of a road bisecting Gaza that the Israeli military built during the current war against Hamas. The area was the territory’s most populous before the Israeli ground o ensive rolled through and pushed more than 1 million people south toward the city of Rafah on the border with Egypt.

Now Israeli military positions are on either side of the port, which initially had been built — as part of an e ort led by World Central Kitchen — out of the rubble of buildings leveled by Israel. That e ort halted after an Israeli airstrike killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on April 1 as they traveled in clearly marked vehicles on a delivery mission authorised by Israel.

Scaling up aid

Aid has been slow to get into Gaza, with long backups of trucks awaiting Israeli inspections. The U.S. and other nations also have used air drops to send food into Gaza. The U.S. military o¦cial said deliveries on the sea route initially will total about 90 trucks a day and could quickly increase to about 150 trucks daily.

On Sunday, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Daniel Hagari said the amount of aid going into Gaza would continue to scale up. “This temporary pier will provide a ship-toshore distribution system that will further increase the £ow of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” he said in a statement.

However, high-ranking Hamas political o¦cial Khalil al-Hayya said last week that the group would consider Israeli forces — or forces from any other country — stationed by the pier to guard it as “an occupying force and aggression,” and that the militant group would resist it.

On Wednesday, a mortar attack targeted the port site, though no one was hurt.