Brussels – The European Union will use the temporary pier built in record time by the U.S. military off the coast of Gaza for the first time today (May 17). A shipment with more than 88 thousand trays of food for the Palestinian population is already on its way from Cyprus. “It will arrive in the late afternoon,” a spokesman for the European Commission said in the morning.
Romania made the shipment available through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, while the European Commission will cover its transportation costs. The pier in the northern part of the Strip opened at around 9 a.m. (local time).The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) disclosed in a statement that hundreds of tents have been delivered through the temporary facility for the people evacuated from Rafah (according to Unrwa, already more than 600,000) in the Al-Mawasi area, which Israel has recognized as a humanitarian zone. The U.S. military added that no U.S. soldiers went ashore.
With the implementation of the maritime corridor, announced on March 8 by the European Commission, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the Republic of Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the EU has set up a logistics center in Cyprus to help manage the further flow of aid to Gaza. “The EU will continue to do its utmost to alleviate the suffering of civilians in Gaza. However, it is evident that there is no meaningful substitute to land routes via Egypt and Jordan and entry points from Israel into Gaza for aid delivery at scale,” commented EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič.
With the Erez crossings and the port of Ashdod closed by Israeli authorities and new obstacles to convoy entry at Kerem Shalom and Rafah due to Tel Aviv’s military operation, the amount of aid that can enter Gaza from the roughly 500-meter-long U.S. pier is as essential as it is insufficient. “In line with its obligations under International Humanitarian Law, I call on Israel to expand deliveries by land and to immediately open additional crossings to get more aid into and throughout Gaza unimpededly,” Lenarčič added.
