Humanitarian aid
USA wants to set up a temporary port in the Gaza Strip
Army soldiers load pallets of humanitarian aid into the cargo hold of an airplane in Azraq, Jordan. Food aid has so far been airdropped to Palestinian refugees.
© Sra Lauren Jacoby / US Airforce / Planet Pix via ZUMA Press Wire / Action Press
The population in Gaza urgently needs more aid supplies and thousands are suffering from hunger. Support has so far come either by land or air. Now the sea route should also be used.
The US military, together with international partners, is to set up a temporary port on the coast of the Gaza Strip. The civilian population in need will receive additional help by sea, as a high-ranking US government official announced in Washington on Thursday.
The main part of the port is a temporary pier where large ships can dock to deliver food, water, medicine and emergency shelter. This would offer “the capacity for hundreds of additional truckloads of relief supplies per day,” explained another high-ranking US government official.
Help by sea
Deliveries would initially come via Cyprus, made possible by the US military and a coalition of partners and allies. The implementation of the project will take a few weeks. However, help from US soldiers on site is not necessary.
Government representatives initially did not provide any further details about the plans. However, they stressed that current aid deliveries to the people of Gaza are “far from enough and far from fast enough.”
On Wednesday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel wanted to allow the import of aid supplies into the Gaza Strip by sea for the first time since the war began five months ago. Israel has reached a corresponding agreement with unspecified international institutions, the report said.
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A spokesman for EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels confirmed plans for aid transport by ship on Wednesday. The EU leader wanted to be in Cyprus on Thursday evening and Friday and also visit the port of Larnaca. From there, the relief supplies are to be brought to the Gaza Strip by ship. It is hoped that the humanitarian corridor can be opened very soon, it said.
Thousands of people in the Gaza Strip are starving
The humanitarian situation of the people in Gaza has been deteriorating dramatically for weeks. The bare necessities are missing. Representatives of the United Nations recently warned in the Security Council of the starvation of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing ahead with the ground offensive in Gaza despite ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire and is restricting humanitarian aid.
In view of the humanitarian catastrophe, the USA began supplying the civilian population in the Gaza Strip with aid supplies from the air over the weekend. According to the US government, the framework is now in place for a possible agreement on a temporary ceasefire and the release of further hostages in the conflict. Israel “more or less accepted” the details. Now it is the turn of the Islamist Hamas.
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The Gaza war was triggered by an unprecedented massacre carried out by terrorists from the Islamist Hamas and other extremist groups in southern Israel on October 7th. On the Israeli side, more than 1,200 people were killed. Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. On the Palestinian side, more than 30,000 people have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority.