Biden unveils plans for aid port on Gaza’s coast as cease-fire talks stall
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden was set to announce Thursday that he is directing the U.S. military to help set up a temporary port off the Gaza coast to establish a sea route for food and other direly needed aid for Palestinian civilians trapped in the Israel-Hamas war, senior U.S. administration officials said.
The announcement signals further deepening U.S. involvement in the war and the escalating conflicts and tensions in the region. The move also shows the Biden administration resorting to a highly unusual workaround to deliver aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians, in the face of restrictions that U.S. ally Israel has placed on overland aid deliveries.
Meanwhile, hopes for reaching a cease-fire before the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts in the coming days, stalled Thursday when Hamas said its delegation had left Cairo, where talks were being held. The outline for the cease-fire would have included a wide infusion of aid into Gaza.
A widening humanitarian crisis across Gaza during five months of war and tight Israeli control of land borders has forced many people to scramble for food to survive and begun leading to deaths from malnutrition. In a meeting on the aid delivery crisis with Israel’s ambassador Michael Herzog, the U.S. international development director, Samantha Power, warned that blockaded Gaza “faced a real risk of famine,” her office said Thursday.
The U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview Biden’s announcement before his State of the Union speech, said the planned operation will not require American troops on the ground to build the pier that is intended to allow more shipments of food, medicine and other essential items from a port in the Mediterranean island country of Cyprus.
One of the U.S. officials noted that the U.S. military has “unique capabilities” and can do things from “just offshore.” They said it would likely take weeks before the pier was operational.
Defense Department spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement Thursday that U.S. officials and international partners were looking at options for the sea route, including using commercial companies and contractors.
Officials from the U.S., Europe, Israel and the Middle East have already been deep in discussions and preparations on the possibility of opening a maritime sea route for months.
Aid groups have said their efforts to deliver desperately needed supplies to Gaza have been badly hampered because of the difficulty of coordinating with the Israeli military, the ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of public order. It is even more difficult to get aid to the isolated north.