Eve is here. Many commentators, including readers here, have derided the Gaza Humanitarian Relief Plan’s floating pier on the premise that it doesn’t work, or barely works. Given that Israel wants that outcome, it is reasonable to think that Israel would influence the process to ensure a substandard outcome. Indeed, given that Israel has become increasingly openly intransigent (e.g. A recent shockingly offensive letter from an Israeli ambassador to a member of Congress who is not sufficiently obedient to Israel.), the government might be happy to humiliate the US by making the pier a fiasco if Israel can come up with a plausible deniability about messing things up.
Like this detailed post about what exactly this “pier” amounts to (it turns out there are actually two!), Israel has a well-known policy of requiring inspection of supplies. There are many other points of potential interference (not that they are unreasonable per se), but it is clear that Israel is using excessive stringency as a pretext to block the influx. ). For example, Israel does not allow the US to enter Gaza (!!!). Israel will therefore not only control cargo inspection, but also the securing of the 1,800-meter causeway (connected to the second pier) to the Gaza mainland.
And look how many transfers it would take to get food and supplies to shore. The “Rube Goldberg” characterization is charitable, because the Rube Goldberg machine actually works.
The only good news is that this plan is highly unrealistic and will not work as a means to expel the tiny number of Palestinians from Gaza.
Author Ann Wright is a 29-year veteran of the U.S. Army/Army Reserve, retiring as a colonel, and a former U.S. diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, and Mongolia. In December 2001, she was part of a small team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is co-author of the book Dissent: Voices of Conscience. It was first published in common dreams
Instead of drawing a red line in the sand demanding that US President Joe Biden allow Israel to provide aid to Gaza via ground transport, his incompetent diplomatic team sent a petition to the US military asking for assistance. .
During my 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve, I thought I had seen some pretty stupid things the military was ordered to do by politicians. It always begins with politicians deciding that the simplest and most sensible solution to a problem is too politically costly and will cost them votes in the next election. Therefore, they seek politically expedient solutions, which are always very expensive and complex.
Attempting a military solution to a political or diplomatic problem – again!!!
In this vein, politicians too often look to the U.S. military for solutions to non-military problems. Then his A-type guy in the military proposes a dumb idea to a politician who probably never thought the idea would be accepted. Then you’re allowed to get politicians out of trouble, and the next thing you know, Rube Goldberg’s crazy ideas are being funded.
This incredible scenario is what happened with the introduction of humanitarian aid Gaza For the starving survivors of Israel’s massacre in Gaza. Instead of drawing a red line in the sands of Israel/Gaza/Egypt, US President Joe Biden has demanded: Israel Biden’s incompetent diplomatic team has asked the U.S. military for help to allow miles of tractor-trailer loads of food and medicine into the Gaza Strip that have been stuck at the Rafah border crossing for months. requested.
And the US military, always seeking validation of its vast “capabilities,” seized the opportunity to exploit one of its lesser-known assets. Army Land Joint Logistics (JLOTS), a system that provides bridging and water access capabilities — a system that provides America’s “strongest ally in the Middle East” with failed U.S. diplomatic efforts to end starvation for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. To help, a huge convoy of trucks was loaded with cargo. Food and medicine to Gaza.
Usually used to move military equipment across rivers where the bridge had been blown up many times by the US Army itself, and sometimes used to transfer military equipment from ships to shore.The US Army’s small navy. immediately sprung into action and set out on a voyage to the Mediterranean. A U.S. military vessel full of barges that can lock together to form landing docks and causeways.
Rube Goldberg Complex combines ideas of construction and transportation
In a Rube Goldberg complex that combines construction and transportation ideas, the U.S. military has anchored a system of floating docks on the ocean floor about three miles off Gaza’s north coast that can accommodate large cargo ships.
Cargo ships load and unload humanitarian supplies (long-life packaged food and medical supplies) on pallets and, in some cases, containers, at a three-mile offshore pier. The cargo will be inspected by Israeli authorities at the Cyprus port of Larnaca, 320 miles from Gaza.
The inspection process includes: Cyprus customs, Israeli team, USA, and the United Nations Office of Project Services. The United States Agency for International Development has established a coordination office in Cyprus.
From the cargo ship, food and medical supplies are transferred by two types of small Army boats, Logistics Support Vessels (LSVs), to the beds of U.S. military trucks (possibly 2.5 ton trucks) that arrive at the floating pier. Landing Craft Utility Boat (LCU). Each LSV can accommodate 15 trucks and the LCU can accommodate approximately 5 trucks.
The loaded 2.5-ton truck returns to the LSV and drives three miles to a second floating pier system built by the U.S. military.
The trucks then move from the LSV to Pier 2, down a two-lane, 1,800-foot (the length of six American football fields) causeway where Israeli forces are anchored on Gaza land. The causeway will be anchored to the Gaza coast by Israeli forces, as US troops are prohibited from “putting their boots on the ground” in Gaza.
The truckloads of food and medical supplies will then be taken somewhere, and the supplies will be distributed by some organization…which, according to the latest reports, has yet to be determined.
The empty truck then returns along a two-lane, 1,800-foot causeway to a floating pier where it boards a smaller LSV, which then returns to a larger pier three miles offshore for the process. It started again. The long causeway should be a cause for alarm for motorists, as the wind and waves had a dramatic effect on the construction of the embankment, and after the construction of the wind and waves, most of the causeway was built on the calm side of the Israeli port of Ashdod. grouped into bodies of water. It is impossible to build on the banks of the coast of Gaza. Parts of the embankment are currently being towed 32 miles from the port of Ashdod to northern Gaza and connected in place.
Thousands of truckloads of cargo are waiting at the Rafah border crossing, but 2,000 trucks will be needed to empty the 5,000-ton cargo ship.
If 5,000 tons of food and medicine are to be unloaded onto a large cargo ship, and each truck can carry 2.5 tons of cargo, 2,000 trucks will be needed to transport the cargo from one ship. If each LSV has 15 trucks, the LSV would need to move the truck 133 times to move it up the 1,800-foot causeway.
If the LCU, which can accommodate only five trucks, is primarily used, it will take 400 trips to get the cargo to land.
Having 2,000 trucks unloading a single ship traveling 1,800 feet on a causeway exposed to dangerous tides, wind, and waves is a recipe for disaster.
Diagram (not to scale) showing how the aid delivery system works. (Photo: Department of Defense)
Will Israel bomb piers, piers and causeways? Remember the USS Liberty!
Israeli jets, drones and artillery are likely to “accidentally” target the wharf complex. Or Hamas and other extremist groups may decide that US complicity in the massacre of more than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza outweighs scarce food and supplies. The medical supplies the US is bringing into Gaza represent another aspect of the recipe for disaster for the US Rube Goldberg Pier.
U.S. military personnel must not forget about Israel’s attacks on U.S. warships. USS Liberty. In 1967, Israeli forces bombed and torpedoed a U.S. military ship off the coast of Gaza, killing 34 people, wounding 171, and nearly sinking the ship. The U.S. cover-up of the brutal and deadly attack on U.S. warships by its Israeli ally continues to this day, as does U.S. complicity in Israel’s massacre in Gaza.
the world won’t forget
Palestinians in Gaza and their citizens around the world will never forget that miles of supplies are located at the Rafah crossing, feet from Gaza, and the United States will not pressure Israel to open the Rafah gates, instead would present an expensive and stupid solution. An easy problem to solve.
