President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus were seen at the port of Larnaca on Friday. Britain, the European Union, and the United Arab Emirates will join the United States in opening a maritime route for humanitarian relief to Gaza. This Western-backed effort to bring urgently needed aid to the territory by sea appeared to gather momentum. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U. executive body, and David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, announced their participation hours after President Biden outlined a U.S. plan to build a temporary floating pier off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast to support the shipment of food, water, medicine, and other necessities to desperate Palestinian civilians. Ms. von der Leyen said that the first ship carrying aid could depart the E.U. nation of Cyprus for Gaza as soon as Friday, with more to follow on Sunday. Gaza does not have a functioning port, its coastal waters are too shallow for most vessels, and U.S. officials have said it could take 30 to 60 days to set up the floating pier. At a news conference in Cyprus, Ms. von der Leyen offered few details. Israeli officials have said they support the establishment of a maritime corridor as long as the goods can be checked “in accordance with Israeli standards” before leaving Cyprus. Despite the many questions, U.S. and European officials emphasized the urgent need to open new routes for aid into Gaza, where relief agencies say that 2.2 million Palestinians are facing extreme hunger amid Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks against Hamas. For months, the United States and others have warned that Israel was not allowing sufficient aid by land into Gaza. Those concerns have multiplied in recent days, as Palestinian health officials reported that some Gazan children had died of malnutrition and the United Nations warned that more than 570,000 people are facing “catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.” Aid officials say that sea shipments — and a limited number of airdrops conducted by the United States and other nations — cannot make up for the lack of supply routes by land. Only about 100 relief trucks entered Gaza each day in February, on average, through the two open land routes, a fraction of what was going in before the war… Source from www.nytimes.com
