The Age & Sydney Morning Herald / New York Times / Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt | 12 March 2024
How do the USA politicians square this conundrum – providing aid to the victims of the genocide that they are leading by supplying the arms – Mark
WASHINGTON: The United States has a history of using its military to get food, water and other humanitarian relief to civilians during wars or natural disasters. The walls of the Pentagon are decorated with photographs of such operations in Haiti, Liberia, Indonesia and countless other countries.
But it is rare for the US to try to provide such services for people who are being bombed with tacit US support.
President Joe Biden’s decision to order the US military to build a floating pier off the Gaza Strip that would allow aid to be delivered by sea puts American service members in a new phase of their humanitarian aid history. The same military that is sending the weapons and bombs that Israel is using in Gaza is now also sending food and water into the besieged territory.
The floating pier idea came a week after Biden authorised humanitarian airdrops for Gaza, which relief experts criticised as inadequate. Even the floating pier, aid experts say, will not do enough to alleviate the suffering in the territory, where residents are on the brink of starvation.
Nonetheless, senior Biden officials said, the US would continue to provide Israel with the munitions it is using in Gaza, while trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians under bombardment.
So the Pentagon is doing both.
For decades, the Army Corps of Engineers, using combat engineers, has built floating docks for troops to cross rivers, unload supplies and conduct other military operations. Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick S. Ryder said the army’s 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, near Norfolk, Virginia, would be one of the main military units involved in the construction of the floating pier for Gaza.
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