U.S. aid deliveries to Gaza by sea suspended after damage to temporary pier

The massive floating dock, known in military parlance as a Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability, was designed to get more aid into Gaza and help fend off famine, which the U.N. says has broken out in the besieged strip's north.
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By Raf Sanchez and Courtney Kube

TEL AVIV — The U.S. military has been forced to suspend aid deliveries into the Gaza Strip by sea after its temporary pier system off Gaza suffered damage in bad weather, the Defense Department confirmed Tuesday.

"Unfortunately, we had a perfect storm of high sea states," deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said at a news conference.

Army engineers are putting the pier back together, and the Defense Department hopes it "will be fully operational in just a little over a week," Singh said.

Singh spoke after NBC News, citing information from a United Nations official, a U.S. official and an Israeli official, reported that a causeway that is attached to the beach in Gaza was damaged.

Aid unloaded on the massive floating dock is shuttled onto the causeway by small boats. The U.N. official said it could take a week to repair.  

The damage is the latest setback to the temporary pier system, which President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union address in March and became operational just two weeks ago.  

Over the weekend, four small U.S. military boats involved in ferrying aid broke from their moorings in bad weather, U.S. Central Command said. Two of them washed up on the coast of southern Israel near the city of Ashdod, while the other two beached in Gaza. 

An American service member also remains in critical condition in an Israeli hospital after having suffered noncombat injuries on the pier last week, a U.S. defense official said. Two other service members sustained minor injuries. 

The temporary pier, known in military parlance as a Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability, was designed to get more aid into Gaza and help fend off famine, which the U.N. says has broken out in the north of the besieged Strip.

Israeli security officials in Cyprus inspect aid ships before they sail for the temporary pier, which sits several miles off Gaza. 

The first sign of problems with the causeway came from a video that emerged on Israeli social media Monday. In the video, a man believed to be an Israeli soldier in Gaza recorded what appeared to be a piece of the causeway floating in the Mediterranean. 

“Look what’s happening to the American barge — it’s simply disconnected and practically swamped,” the man said in Hebrew. “Everything is sinking.”   

At least one truck appeared to be on the detached piece of causeway in the video. 

At full operating capacity, the pier is supposed to be able to deliver up to 150 trucks’ worth of aid every day, the Pentagon says. 

The U.S. military has also dropped aid into Gaza by parachute. But that has been criticized as both expensive and ineffective, especially when it is compared to delivering it through land crossings controlled by Egypt and Israel. 

The new hurdles to helping the beleaguered Palestinians surfaced after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court last week announced he was seeking the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s defense minister. The court also announced it was seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other Hamas leaders.

The ICC alleges that Israeli leaders bear criminal responsibility for a list of “war crimes,” including starving civilians.

Israel has strongly denied the allegations and has pointed to the pier as proof that it is working to deliver food to Gaza by sea, as well as by air and land.

Raf Sanchez

Raf Sanchez is a foreign correspondent for NBC News.

Courtney Kube

Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.