Biden's $230 million Gaza pier quietly shuts down, US senator labels project 'national embarrassment'
The U.S. military has started shutting down operation of the hugely expensive and troublesome pier into the Gaza Strip, citing difficulties with distribution as a key factor in the decision.
"This chapter might be over in President Biden’s mind, but the national embarrassment that this project has caused is not. The only miracle is that this doomed-from-the-start operation did not cost any American lives," Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said in a statement issued after the project's closure. "I have been calling for an end to this election-year gimmick since its primetime inception at the State of the Union."
"While I am glad it has finally concluded, we cannot buy back the $230 million needlessly spent, and significant questions remain about the Biden administration’s poor planning for this mission," Wicker stressed.
President Biden, during his State of the Union speech in March, pledged to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip to increase the delivery of humanitarian aid to the territory as millions remain displaced while Israel continues to hunt Hamas.
The Pentagon announced that the completion of the piers – one that would remain several miles offshore while the other acted as a causeway onto the Gazan shore – were completed around May 9 but faced difficulty during deployment over the following week.
The Pentagon estimated the cost of the pier's construction at roughly $230 million, with many congressional members publicly criticizing the effort: Wicker previously told Reuters that the operation had proved to be a "dangerous effort with marginal benefit."
Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital in an interview in May that the project was "unnecessarily putting our people in harm's way. It's costing a lot. It's pulling assets that should be used elsewhere, and I just don't think it's going to accomplish anything near what he's promised."
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The U.N. halted distribution from the pier in the first weeks of June, citing the need for a "thorough assessment of the security situation … to ensure the safety of our staff and our partners."
"The maritime storage mission involving the pier is complete, so there's no more need to use the pier, particularly because, we're able to implement a more sustaining pathway, to Ashdod," Deputy Commander of U.S. Central Command Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters in an off-camera/on-record briefing Wednesday.
Sonali Korde, Assistant to the Administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, added, "The key challenge we have right now in Gaza is around the insecurity and lawlessness that is hampering the distribution once aid gets into Gaza, into the crossing points."
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Now, the pier project appears to have run its course, and humanitarian aid will be delivered through a maritime corridor in Cyprus to Ashdod before going into Gaza – a fully civilian-run operation.
Cooper explained, "In the past few weeks, we've begun utilizing this new hybrid pathway from the sea and land to deliver aid from Cyprus to the port of Israel, then into north Gaza via the U.N. and WFP. And it's been successful."
"Israel has been fully supportive of this effort, and in the last several weeks, we've successfully delivered more than 1 million pounds of aid into Gaza via this route," Cooper added.
The White House referred all questions to press gaggles and conferences happening today, during which Deputy State Spox Vedant Patel defended the decision to pursue the pier project and claimed that the operation ultimately proved successful.
"We believe that this effort was successful, and, specifically, because the peer and its existence and the work that happened through it impacted aid delivery to northern Gaza," Patel said. "It successfully delivered millions of pounds of aid to the people who need it. Nearly 19 million, as I mentioned, and its use helped, overall, the increased flow of aid and alleviate conditions in northern Gaza."
"Not at all to say that the situation is resolved or conclusive or anything like that, but overall, it was an effort that we believe was successful," he added.