Pier for Gaza aid to cost US $320 million
pentagon — The Pentagon says a floating pier that will be used for bringing more aid into Gaza will cost about $320 million.
Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday the cost includes the transportation and construction of the equipment and pier sections from the United States to the coast of Gaza. It also includes the cost of aid delivery operations.
Crews from the USNS Roy P. Benavidez and several Army vessels started building the floating platform for the operation last week, according to a senior military official. Next will come construction of the causeway, which will be anchored to the shore by Israel Defense Forces.
The entire system is called Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS.
U.S. and Israeli officials have said they hope to complete construction and begin operations by early May.
U.S. military officials say aid will be loaded onto commercial ships docked in Cyprus, which will transfer the aid to the floating platform now under construction. At the platform, aid will be transferred to trucks loaded onto smaller ships and transported to the floating, two-lane causeway anchored to the beach.
The new port sits just southwest of Gaza City. A mortar attack targeted the port site on Wednesday, but officials said no one was hurt.
A senior military official told reporters the Pentagon expects deliveries to “begin at about 90 trucks a day … and then quickly scale up to 150 trucks a day.”
Aid has been slow getting into Gaza due to long backups of vehicles at Israeli inspection points. The U.S. and other nations have been airdropping food into Gaza, but each airdrop via military place only accounts for about one to three truckloads of food, a U.S. official told VOA.
Aid organizations have said several hundred truckloads of food are needed in Gaza each day.
Israel attacked Hamas in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 terror attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken hostage.
In the nearly seven months since the attack, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive against the militant group, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza.