WASHINGTON: U.S. President Joe Biden's plan to build a floating U.S. military port to speed up aid to Gaza could take up to 60 days to become a reality and involve more than 1,000 American troops, the Pentagon said.
The Pentagon offered the timeline a day after Biden announced the initiative in his State of the Union speech.
The United Nations has warned that widespread famine in the Gaza Strip is "almost inevitable" without urgent action. A formal conclusion that famine has arrived in the coastal enclave of 2.3 million people could come next week. The U.N. has said that once famine is declared, it is too late to help many people.
"Children in Gaza cannot wait to eat. They are already dying from malnutrition and saving their lives is a matter of hours or days - not weeks," said Jason Lee at Save the Children.
Some U.S. lawmakers and aid organizations said the floating pier system masked the bigger issue: the failure to get Israel's government to allow more aid to enter Gaza by land, which is the fastest, most efficient option.
"This is not a logistics problem; it is a political problem," said Avril Benoît, executive director for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in the United States.
"Rather than look to the US military to build a work-around, the US should insist on immediate humanitarian access using the roads and entry points that already exist."
Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, described the planning for the port system as still in its early stages, with deployment orders just starting to go out to those troops who will head to the Middle East.
The Pentagon said it had also not yet determined exactly how the landing site for the floating port system would be secured against any threats and said it was in discussions with partners including Israel. — Reuters
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