On March 7, 2024, President Joe Biden directed the U.S. military to establish a floating pier off Gaza’s coast to facilitate delivery of humanitarian aid. Whether delivered by truck or dropped by aircraft, Hamas hijacks most of the aid. The infusion of food and Hamas’s ability to horde and distribute it as patronage, meanwhile, strengthens Hamas.
There is precedent for such action in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch, and in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Never, however, has the United States used the capability for sustained operations on a large scale during war.
While Biden’s State of the Union announcement of the temporary pier was short on detail, U.S. and regional officials have since fleshed out the details. The floating seaport will be one side of a sea bridge that will shuttle goods from a base in Larnaca, Cyprus, in which donors can store equipment, medicine, and food intended for transfer to Gaza. Following inspection by Israeli officials, cargo ships will transport it to a floating port, likely within Israel’s territorial waters.
The floating port will be outside Gaza for several reasons. First, the Gaza port is not deep enough to allow large ships to enter and dock. Second, the supply chain will enable Israel to control and prevent weapons and ammunition smuggling. Finally, the goal is to transfer the aid to the northern region of Gaza, where Hamas control is weaker, to reach residents without allowing Hamas to siphon off the assistance.
The Israeli Navy will secure the floating port, from which goods will be transferred to smaller boats that will transport them to the Gaza pier. U.S. officials increasingly see the idea of a floating pier to be a longer-term solution that will help Gaza’s reconstruction, even though the process does not allow large volumes of aid. Israel will cooperate with the scheme because it wants to signal that its war is against Hamas and not otherwise against the population of Gaza.
On March 19, the Biden administration acknowledged that Qatar would also participate in the project. Israel opposes Qatar’s involvement in building or operating the port, as this would throw a lifeline to Hamas, a long-term Qatari client.
Much remains uncertain. The ground situation will affect pier building, and U.S. elections might distract White House attention. As an anchor for the project and European Union member, Cyprus will input across the entire process. Securing the sea corridor is also essential to prevent smuggling into Larnaca and to protect shipping and the pier itself. This will require a greater sustained Israeli naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean.
While Biden’s team continues to embrace the idea of the floating pier, the likelihood that the initiative will become operational is declining. The entire operation remains extremely complex. Meanwhile, with truck traffic into the Gaza Strip increasing to over 500 trucks per day, the need for the pier declines.
If, however, the initiative comes to fruition, it will strengthen Hamas. First, it will give the terrorist group a propaganda boost by allowing it to claim it broke the Israeli “siege” of Gaza. Second, Hamas could hijack much of the assistance shipped through the pier as soon as it touched land. Biden might have proposed the pier to appease certain American constituencies who embraced the false rhetoric of Palestinian genocide, but rather than bring peace to the region, Hamas partisans and their financiers in Qatar see an opportunity to hijack a humanitarian drive to further their war against Israel.
