A day after President Biden announced plans for maritime aid delivery to the Gaza Strip, European leaders said Friday they would deliver aid by ship as early as the weekend. But aid groups and Gaza officials criticized shipments by air or sea as too cumbersome, urging that vastly more food and medicine be supplied by trucks.
The complications of delivering aid to the hungry residents of Gaza were underlined on Friday when the authorities in Gaza said at least five Palestinians were killed and several others were wounded after they were struck by packages of humanitarian aid that were dropped from an aircraft.
The United Nations has warned that five months of war and an Israeli blockade have left hundreds of thousands of Gazans on the brink of starvation, prompting a variety of proposals to speed the delivery of food and other vital needs. Israel insists on inspecting all supplies going into Gaza, and aid trucks have been allowed in through just two border crossings — one from Egypt and one from Israel — in southern Gaza.
President Biden on Thursday night outlined a U.S. military plan to build a floating pier on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to supply food, water, medicine and other necessities to civilians, saying the operation would “enable a massive increase” in the assistance entering the territory.
But U.S. officials said the project would take at least 30 to 60 days to complete, raising questions about how famine in Gaza will be staved off in the critical days ahead.
The aid group Doctors Without Borders said in a statement Friday that the U.S. maritime plans were a “glaring distraction” and that the delivery of aid was not a logistical problem but a “political” one.
“The food, water, and medical supplies so desperately needed by people in Gaza are sitting just across the border,” the group said in a statement. “Israel needs to facilitate rather than block the flow of supplies.”
Britain, the European Union and the United Arab Emirates said Friday they would join the U.S. maritime effort, but added in a joint statement that aid must be delivered “through all possible routes.”
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U. executive body, said that the first ship carrying aid could depart the E.U. nation of Cyprus for Gaza soon, with more to follow on Sunday.
It was not immediately clear where the vessels would unload their cargo or how it would be distributed amid Israeli bombardment and attacks on aid trucks by hungry Palestinians. Gaza does not have a functioning port, and its coastal waters are too shallow for most vessels.
At a news conference in Cyprus, Ms. von der Leyen offered few details. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday that it supported a maritime corridor as long as goods are checked “in accordance with Israeli standards” before leaving Cyprus.
Speaking with reporters on Friday, David Cameron, foreign secretary of Britain, said it was “crucial” that…
2024-03-08 16:00:16
Post from www.nytimes.com
