Biden’s Gaza port is not enough

President Joe Biden has announced that U.S. troops will build a temporary port to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip by sea. That’s welcome, but utterly inadequate. Like the airdrops of food that Biden previously announced, it looks to me more like a photo op than an all-out effort to address a humanitarian crisis that the United States has helped to create.

Biden strongly has backed what he acknowledged is an “over the top” war by Israel in Gaza, supplying weapons for Israel and protecting it diplomatically at the United Nations. So we’re for the war, but we’re also now mounting a relief effort to ease its consequences.

The port can indeed be helpful, but The New York Times quotes officials as saying that setting it up may take more than a month or two. And 20 people in Gaza have died from malnutrition and dehydration, with hunger at “catastrophic levels,” according to the U.N.

When children are acutely malnourished, deaths can accelerate quickly, and the port may come too late for many of them. Likewise, airdrops are better than nothing, but they are small. The first airdrop involved 38,000 meals, or a single meal for less than 2% of Gaza’s population.

The advantage of a naval delivery is that ships can deliver much more assistance than airdrops. But aid workers say that the real problem is that Israel has an inspection process that impedes delivery into Gaza by truck and then targets civilian police officers (because they are affiliated with Hamas) so they are unwilling to protect aid deliveries.

The U.N. reports that Israel has sometimes attacked and blocked its aid convoys, even if it previously cleared the delivery with Israeli authorities.

Airdrops and a seaport don’t solve those distribution problems. It’s not entirely clear how aid coming into the port will be trucked across Gaza to the places where hunger is greatest, or who will protect convoys, or how final distribution will be managed. Israel apparently will continue to inspect assistance coming in by sea, which does not inspire confidence.

It’s true that Hamas has stockpiled food that it could share and that Hamas could end the war by giving up.

But the United States doesn’t have influence over Hamas. It does have leverage over Israel, as its arms supplier and diplomatic protector.

Will Biden be willing to use his leverage to pressure Israel into expediting food assistance into Gaza? That means no longer vetoing U.N. resolutions, slowing down military aid and speaking directly to the Israeli people.

That’s the best hope to avert starvation.