On the coast of Gaza – CBS News was one of the first media outlets invited by the US Army to travel across the eastern Mediterranean Sea aboard a military ship to see a pier built by American forces on the war-torn coast of the Gaza Strip. Tuesday’s visit came as operations resumed on the $230 million floating dock, after it was thrown out of commission by rough seas.
From the floating platform, the CBS News team could see entire neighborhoods in ruins, but the devastation in the small, densely populated Palestinian enclave was off limits to reporters.
President Biden announced the dock project as a way to get more humanitarian aid for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are in dire need, just as Israel is. war destroys against the enclave’s long-standing Hamas rulers for the 10th month.
The US forces that built and operate the docks also did not enter Gaza. The wharf, which clangs and shakes even in calm seas, has had problems – many, in fact, only about 16 days since it opened to help with shipments. At one point part of it was beached by bad weather.
This project has also been intensively studied, especially after the Israeli forces rescued four hostages in an operation in Gaza earlier this month. Israeli military helicopters were seen flying from the beach in front of the pier during the operation, which health officials in the area said killed more than 270 Palestinians.
The UN World Food Program has suspended operations involving the docks over concerns the project has been compromised.
“This is a humanitarian pier,” Col. Samuel Miller, commander of the U.S. Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade, told CBS News when asked if the safety and integrity of the pier remained intact. “This is not part of any operation. It is focused on humanitarian aid, and that is the mission, and I will continue to march through it, no matter what is in front of us obstacle-wise.”
Trucks carrying pallets of food aid are slowly crossing the docks and entering the besieged Palestinian territories, but since the project went into operation two months ago, only about 400 aid trucks have rolled through the structure. None of that is enough to have a significant impact, given the scale of the need among Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million people.
Before the October 7 attack, more than 500 aid trucks would routinely enter Gaza a day. Since then, the United Nations says more than half of the region’s population has been displaced from their homes, many multiple times, by the fighting.
Virtually all of Gaza’s infrastructure, from hospitals to bakeries and schools, has been severely affected, if not destroyed, and especially in the north of the area, farthest from aid entry points, there is a desperate shortage of food.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization issued a statement on Wednesday warning of a “high risk of famine in the entire Gaza Strip” if fighting continues and aid deliveries do not increase.
“All I know is that my goal is to get a lot of supplies to Gaza for the people of Gaza,” said Col. Miller told CBS News.
Since Israel launched the war in response to a Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, in which militants killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 240 others, Israel and Egypt, which control the only functional border crossing, have barred international journalists from entering the area. . Palestinian territories.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says the war has killed more than 37,400 Palestinians, many of them women and children.