US military hopes to reopen Gaza pier this week

The U.S. military is expected to reopen a pier anchored to Gaza this week after rough weather has twice taken offline a system intended to deliver aid to the area.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters the U.S. does not have a specific date yet but is aiming to get it online sometime this week.

“We’re looking forward to getting it operational again soon and to delivering aid,” Ryder said. “We’re going to capitalize on the conditions, in terms of weather, to get as much aid across that pier as we can.”

The pier has faced numerous challenges after it was first set up in late May. It was operational for about a week before rough seas broke off the causeway, the part that attaches to the shore in Gaza.

The pier was repaired in the Israeli port city of Ashdod before coming back online in early June, though just days later, poor weather forced the U.S. military to remove it from the shore.

President Biden announced the pier in March as a way to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, where Palestinians are struggling to access basic necessities amid Israel’s war against the militant group Hamas.

The pier is just one corridor for humanitarian aid distribution, with land routes still considered the best way to get food, water and medicine into the strip. Still, the Pentagon has said the pier has helped deliver more than 7 million pounds of aid to Gaza.

But for the month it has been operational, it has been open for only about 10 days, with weather posing a difficult challenge. The New York Times reported this week that the embattled pier could be dismantled as soon as July, much earlier than an estimated September deadline.

Ryder said he was not aware of any plan to dismantle the pier soon.

“I’m not tracking any established timeline at this point, in terms of when the pier will stop operating, again with the caveat that this was always intended to be a temporary pier,” he said. “I’m not aware at this point of any established date of this is when we’re going to stop.”