Posted on 06/27/2024 12:23:57 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For six kilometres the road is a dusty moonscape without a hint of civilian life. The Netzarim corridor, as Israel calls it, slices across Gaza’s narrow waist, from its border with Israel to its Mediterranean coast. The buildings on both sides have been pancaked into piles of rubble. As a convoy bounces along the rutted track, there are no Palestinians in sight, only Israeli soldiers and army vehicles and a constant swirl of grit. And then there is a dazzle of blue: the corridor ends at the sea, and the hulking steel pier that America spent $230m to install on Gaza’s shore.
In March, when Joe Biden announced the pier, he made it sound straightforward. Gaza had a problem with hunger. America had a whizzy solution; a modular floating causeway that its army would haul halfway around the world and assemble in the Mediterranean. It would, the president said, provide a “massive increase” in aid.
The reality was more complicated. The pier was finished on May 16th but was soon damaged by rough seas. It was operational for just two of its first six weeks.
When The Economist visited the pier on June 25th, the first journalists to see it from inside Gaza, it was working again: two landing craft unloaded their cargo in just over an hour. Lorries drove off the vessels and down a causeway made of interlocking steel segments. They delivered pallets to a staging area, an expanse of beach flattened by the Israeli army and surrounded by berms and concrete barriers.
The Pentagon says the pier has delivered over 6,200 tonnes of aid this way since it was first installed, equal to 25 to 30 lorries a day—not trivial, but far short of the 150 a day that America promised.
Still, the pier is just one piece of a larger aid operation. Supplies are also entering through Kerem Shalom, the main commercial crossing in the south, and via three land crossings in the north. “We’re trying to create different places of entry in order to have less friction,” says Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli army spokesman.
This spring, briefly, aid workers said things were improving. In March the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (ipc), a un-backed initiative that measures hunger, said that hundreds of thousands of people in northern Gaza would face famine within two months. But its latest study, published on June 25th, found that famine had been avoided, albeit temporarily, by a big increase in aid deliveries since March.
The good news ends there. The ipc said that 495,000 Gazans (almost 25% of the population) still face “catastrophic” levels of hunger. More than half of Gazans have sold their clothes to buy food; one in five goes entire days and nights without eating.
The staging areas next to the American-built pier have two sets of gates. Lorries coming from the pier use those on the west side, next to the sea, to deposit their cargo. The eastern gates are for Palestinian drivers arriving to pick up aid. But the Israeli army says no one has come through those ones for two weeks, and that 7,000 pallets of aid (mostly food) have piled up in the staging areas. Your correspondents saw long rows of them, most bearing the logo of the World Food Programme (wfp). Aid is getting into Gaza—but no one is distributing it.
Israel blames Hamas for the delays. The group has repeatedly attacked the pier and Kerem Shalom, periodically halting aid deliveries from there. “The distribution problem is something hard to manage,” says Mr Hagari. “The international community has to make more of an effort.” Aid workers say much the same about Israel. On June 25th the un warned that it would suspend its operations in Gaza unless the Israeli army co-ordinates more with them.
Sending a convoy to pick up supplies involves many delays, often in areas with spotty communication and nearby fighting. “We’re going to ask for the green light to move that empty truck to a waypoint, and then wait for the green light to move to another waypoint,” says Matthew Hollingworth of the wfp. “Your 12-hour days have one hour of action.”
Many Palestinians are sceptical of the pier. On June 8th Israeli troops freed four hostages being held by Hamas a few kilometres away. A video filmed by an Israeli soldier showed them being brought to a helicopter near the pier and then evacuated from Gaza. It has fuelled conspiracy theories that America built the pier for military purposes rather than to deliver aid.
At Kerem Shalom, where aid has been piling up for weeks, Mr Hollingworth likens the stretch of the main road leading away from the crossing to something out of a Mad Max film: “Any truck that goes is going to lose its wing mirrors, people will try to smash the windscreen, people will try to get in.” Much of the violence is the work of criminal gangs using aid lorries to smuggle cigarettes (now costing up to $25 each) into the enclave. Neither the Israeli army nor Hamas make the road safe. The un insists that only a lasting truce will solve the humanitarian crisis. That does not look imminent.
On June 23rd Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said he was willing to make a “partial deal” to release some of the hostages in Gaza. “But we are obligated to continue the war after a pause,” he added in an interview with a right-wing Israeli network.
His comments sparked anger in Israel, because he seemed to be abandoning many of the hostages. They also upset officials in Washington because in May Mr Biden endorsed a proposal that could end the war for good. A day later Mr Netanyahu seemed to backtrack, saying he was still “committed” to Mr Biden’s suggested deal.
The back-and-forth was typical of a prime minister who has long wavered on whether to make a hostage deal, as most Israelis want, or continue the war, as his right-wing supporters demand. Hamas, for its part, wants firmer guarantees that the deal will end the war permanently. Like his plan for the pier, Mr Biden’s efforts at diplomacy are crashing into a hard reality. ■
Translated: Self-fulfilling prophecy.
The failed pier and effort to resupply Palestinian terrorist HAMAS is representative of the Biden administration. Just the latest in a string of failures and actions to undermine the US. Never once did Biden condition aid from the pier dependent upon release of American hostages as even a minor step.
It could not be easier for Hamas to end the war permanently. Unconditionally surrender, turn in your leaders, release the hostages, renounce any and all future terrorism and violence against Jews and Israel, disband Hamas as an organization, and hold free elections.
You cannot negotiate with muslms. They are all liars.
Yeah we can trust the rat propagandists at The Economist to get to the truth.
The USA has no borders to the conflict, even through proxies. This drives the DC neocons and State Dept, with their operating ideology of “full-spectrum dominance” absolutely crazy.
So what to do? Build a pier to give them a direct border to the conflict.
People think Israel manipulates US politics, but I have no doubt the US manipulates Israeli politics far more.
Should the food get through, Hamas won’t have emaciated kids to parade for the cameras.
“It could not be easier for Hamas to end the war permanently. Unconditionally surrender, turn in your leaders, release the hostages, renounce any and all future terrorism and violence against Jews and Israel, disband Hamas as an organization, and hold free elections.”
This solution requires that Hamas be like any other government. It isn’t. The Palestinians are probably composed of 30% part-and-full-time terrorists. They are collectively called Hamas by the West. The people who purport to control Hamas have no more control than one homeowner’s association might have over another one. The West supports Hamas’ purported leadership in the hope they can have someone to deal with. That leadership only has influence because it has the foreign aid to hand out. It’s like thinking you have influence over the homeless because you give them stuff. More likely they’ll just take the stuff and spit on you. Same with the terrorists. You can’t make a deal with Hamas because there is no Hamas. It’s an illusion.
If you gotta ask.........👎
If the Palestinians still back Hamas I can’t think of one reason to feed them. War has consequences - or should.
Anyhow we didn’t feed the Japanese ‘civilians’ or the German ‘civilians and their kids’ during World War II because we weren’t virtue singling idiots.
Maybe Hamas doesn’t give a damn if their people starve to death or not... maybe it’s time to find out. I’m guessing they do care but would rather have the world feed them - with Hamas taking the largest share for themselves.
We would have lost World War II if we had decided to feed and assist the people who started that war.
Strategic Importance:
The port is strategically significant for several reasons:
It's envisioned as a gateway from South America to Asia, potentially transforming trade routes.
It could reduce travel times for vessels moving between South America and China.
The port may serve not only Peru but also become a primary connecting point for goods from Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil bound for China.
Economic Impact:
The project is expected to bring substantial economic benefits to Peru:
It could attract mining investments worth $15 billion in southern Peru.
The port is projected to improve logistics for several Peruvian regions.
It may boost Peru's ambitions to become a "trade superpower".
U.S. Concerns:
The project has raised concerns in the United States:
There are concerns about the port's potential for military use,
Regional Impact:
The Port of Chancay is expected to significantly impact regional trade dynamics:
It may redefine shipping patterns along the west coast of South America.
The port could become a major hub for exporting critical commodities like lithium, soybeans, and iron to Asia.
The good news ends there. The ipc said that 495,000 Gazans (almost 25% of the population) still face “catastrophic” levels of hunger. More than half of Gazans have sold their clothes to buy food; one in five goes entire days and nights without eating.” IF IT IS AID SO GRACIOUSLY PROVIDED BY THE US AND UN, THEN WHY DO THE GAZANS HAVE TO ‘BUY’ FOOD? AND FROM WHOM? HAMAS STEALS IT AND SELLS IT FOR 10 TIMES THE PRICE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IF FOR SALE OUTSIDE OF GAZA.
Everything is a ploy with Democrats.
A flat beach? Those Israelis are amazing. Has anyone ever heard of a flat beach anywhere else?
More than half of Gazans have sold their clothes to buy food; one in five goes entire days and nights without eating.
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But, we’re told that 70% of these dirt poor people, when given a choice, voted for their fellow Gazan’s to go ahead and kill 1,200 Jews, decapitate babies, burn babies alive in ovens, rape women, girls and babies, hold hostages for months on end and machine gun any jew in sight.
Then, our dumbass democrats reward these SAME pond scums with millions in aid knowing full well that most of it would be stolen.
Gaza should be on a total siege. Giving aid and comfort to an enemy in a time of war only prolongs the conflict. It should end with either all of Gaza dead or with a complete unconditional surrender.
Since I was a kid I’ve liked the expression: “Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?”
My point EXACTLY.
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