During the State of the Union address, President Biden stated:
Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.No U.S. boots will be on the ground. A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.And Israel must do its part. Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the crossfire. They’re announcing they’re going to have a crossing to northern Gaza.
The Gaza pier plan will not work.
The problem with aid distribution is that Hamas keeps trying to disrupt it so Israel would be blamed for the resultant suffering. They are hijacking aid, shooting into crowds, instigating riots and in general trying to make it look like Israel cannot keep the peace the way Hamas could.
Bringing the aid into Gaza has not been the primary problem; getting it to the people safely has been. It is a lot easier to disrupt delivery than to do the logistics of distribution.
The IDF is good at logistics but this is an entirely different problem. Hamas is turning even food distribution into a military action where civilians must be protected from their own purported people who can pop up from tunnels and shoot at them to start the next stampede easier than they can shoot the IDF.
The World Food Programme acknowledges the danger, which is why it was forced to stop doing it themselves.
On Sunday, as WFP started the route towards Gaza City, the convoy was surrounded by crowds of hungry people close to the Wadi Gaza checkpoint. First fending off multiple attempts by people trying to climb aboard our trucks, then facing gunfire once we entered Gaza City, our team was able to distribute a small quantity of the food along the way. On Monday, the second convoy’s journey north faced complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order. Several trucks were looted between Khan Younes and Deir al Balah and a truck driver was beaten. The remaining flour was spontaneously distributed off the trucks in Gaza city, amidst high tension and explosive anger.
There have been rumors about an Egyptian truck driver beaten to death trying to bring in aid.
It isn't only Hamas trying to frustrate aid to Gazans. The Palestinian Authority already rejected the plan to bring in goods by ship when Cyprus and Israel agreed to that plan in December.
It is insane that the IDF, which is doing everything possible to feed Gazans under these circumstances, is routinely portrayed as the devil in news stories and NGO reports.
Logistics is not as exciting as combat, but they are what makes things happen. It takes time and a lot of people to build a program like this where Hamas doesn't take all the aid for itself.
Apparently, it isn't even easy to airdrop food by parachute without killing people. If such a comparatively simple task is fatal, how much more difficult is it to transport and distribute food safely to millions of people?
If only there were reporters who could actually dig into the complexity of the problem - but there aren't.
And one has to wonder why.
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