The U.S. military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a U.S. defense official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 U.S. service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.
Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The cost has not just risen. It has exploded,” Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters, when asked about the costs.
I’ve got a great cost-saving idea!
Withhold all aid from Israel until they start allowing serious amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza!
Boom! 320 million saved, AND a far greater amount of aid reaches Palestinians! Win-win!
Yeah. I wish there was the support available for that.
That pier was built to directly aid Gaza. Are you saying it shouldn’t have been built?
Why in the everloving fuck do alternative methods end-running Israel to get food, water and medicine to civilians in Gaza need to be built? There are airports and docks that can be used right next to the zone, and Israel controls the roads.
If they acted like anything except a tin-pot dictatorship, this would be completely unnecessary. But here we are. The sooner the ICC swears out a warrant for the nazis in charge, the better. Then maybe we can get some human beings in charge that know how to run a functioning democracy.
The pier was built to lessen the political effects of letting Israel bar the literal convoys of aid out of the country they are committing genocide in.
It’s a 320 million USD version of thoughts and prayers.
Republicans are all for sending weapons at any cost, but line itemize humanitarian aid. Fucking monsters. Maybe they should just pay it out of Israel’s $26B aid package.
Why singling out Republicans? Dems voted to fund Israel and Biden signed the bill. Republicans aren’t in charge right now so not sure what you’re on about.
They’re referring to the comments from Senator Roger Wicker in the article.
You know what would have cost $0?
NOT GIVING ANY MONEY TO ISRAEL!
That’s anti-semetic! - Benjamin Netanyahu
Honestly, it doesn’t sound all that expensive. But they need to hurry up, or they won’t be anyone left to feed.
That doesn’t seem to include the cost of mobilizing 10 US Naval Vessels, the cost of the aid distributed itself, or the cost of the servicemen’s salaries.
That said, I don’t really a give a fuck, you know? Like, why would we care? We need to do it, we’re going to do it no matter the cost.
No we don’t. There is 0 reason to build a humanitarian relief pier in Gaza. Most of Gaza’s border is our “close ally” in this conflict. The other border is willing to aid to pass through their territory. Both countries are advanced, and have more than enough logistical infastructure to facilitate all the aid transfers that are nessasary.
The land corridor is more than capable of facilitating aid deliveries. The pier is a PR stunt to make it look like we are working on the problem.
Israel has been making military targets of aid distribution through land routes. If that were an effective method then there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands if not millions of starving Palestinians, and then we wouldn’t need to send the naval vessels.
Your comment reeks of ignorance of the state of the world.
I’m aware of that. What I’m not aware of is how a pier helps. Israel has not conducted strikes in Egypt, or in Israel, so Israeli strikes are not a reason to have aid avoid either of those countries. The Israeli strikes have hit aid groups traveling within Gaza. It doesn’t matter if aid gets to gaza at a land border, or an sea border. It still needs to be transported within Gaza, so it still has all of the same problems.
Israel has not conducted strikes in Egypt, or in Israel, so Israeli strikes are not a reason to have aid avoid either of those countries.
Israel controls the land borders, yes even the one at Egypt, and they’re not allowing sufficient aid trucks through. The sea pier bypasses that chokepoint. Plus after we’ve built it the United Nations and other countries can also use it to deliver aid outside of Israel’s control. It could also be used as a way out that neither Egypt nor Israel can block off.
That pier represents a lot more than just a few trucks of food from the United States.
Israel will also control the pier. The US is operating in close coordination with Israel, and of the 2, Israel is the only one who will have boots on the ground. The IDF already surrounds the pier. All aid flowing through the pier needs to be inspected by Israel before departing from Cyprus, then will need to pass through another set of Israeli checkpoints after being unloaded in Gaza before being distributed.
Hmmm, that’s not ideal. I retract my previous comment.
If Israel makes military targets of the US Navy then that’s going to be real “fuck around and find out” territory. Helping from afar was inadequate, so now we’re going to be helping in person.
The last time Israel attacked a US Navy ship “by mistake”, they paid a few million in reparations in total, facing no retaliation. Let’s see if that changes.
There is a simple method of solving that problem, just have US military vehicles in the convoys with orders to return fire at everything shooting at them.
How is mobilizing US Military land vehicles across the middle east any logistically different than sending 10 naval vessels? If anything that would be more costly. Plus, they’ll just get caught up at the checkpoints set up by Israeli military the same as the other convoys. Because, generally, starting gunfights is frowned upon, so instead they fall back on beaurocracy.
How is mobilizing US Military land vehicles across the middle east any logistically different than sending 10 naval vessels?
Time. The US military prides itself on being able to mobilize worldwide in hours. So instead of taking months to construct a dock, which the starving people of Gaza don’t have, they could take hours to get some people there.
If anything that would be more costly.
Nobody is arguing money here, if anything, less money into the region, specifically Israel, would be nice. Time is the elephant in the room.
Plus, they’ll just get caught up at the checkpoints set up by Israeli military the same as the other convoys.
Not if they have orders not to stop, and US diplomatic channels hammer that home before they get there. If the US used actual pressure, Israel would fold like a house of cards, just as they did last time.
Because, generally, starting gunfights is frowned upon, so instead they fall back on beaurocracy.
Even the bureaucracy would be enough. The US could tell Israel that they won’t get a penny if they continue this course of action any day, and Israel would back down, as they did before. They don’t so they don’t.
The US is doing worse than fuck-all, it’s actively trying to put all its diplomatic power into running cover for Israel’s genocide, and Israel is humiliating the US in turn, while taking their money. Moreover, the whole thing could influence the US elections in a way that would result in a US dictatorship. It’s mind-bogglingly insane.
Lmao, land convoys are NOT faster than the Navy for supplying food and water. I can’t even begin to understand your position if you think something so silly.
Skipping the bureaucracy is better than dealing with the bureaucracy. The fact that your message is inconsistent by saying the naval ships aren’t enough, but instead intentionally getting stalled at the border would be enough, seems ridiculous.
The land aid convoys are already there, Israel is holding them up. The construction of the docks is supposed to take three months. If the US did nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, the aid would already be there, since the last time the US told Israel to back off, they did.
Driving a truck into Gaza is much, much faster than building a dock for ships. You seem to be misunderstanding the situation. The problem with ships is that they can’t dock right now. It’s like saying “trains would be better than trucks”, which is true, except there are no train tracks yet.
The US could put two diplomats on a plane, today, have them land near Gaza, today, have them get in one of the trucks, today, and tell Israel that they will get no more money until Palestine is fed, and also that the diplomats are going to step on the throttle, will not step on the brakes, and if they get shot at, the wing of US fighters circling overhead will shoot back at the IDF, and bomb some Israeli airbases for good measure.
This could all be done today. The dock won’t be ready for months, during which countless people, mostly kids, will starve to death. What the US does instead of this is that they threaten the ICC that if they dare to say that those kids dying is Israel’s fault, they will sanction the judges, while they supply the weapons with which Israel is waging its genocide.
Ah, I was actually wondering if this was because oh we have a naval fleet guarding it, thats millions a day right there.
Well, the use of several of these vessels for supplying aid has been common for decades, so it’s not like it’s a new expense, either.
I love how the US is simultaneously supplying weapons to Israel while dropping food and building piers for the country Israel is bombing. Wait until Israel bombs the pier.
Someone is getting rich AF off this.
Makes sense, military hammers cost half a million each.
I guess if I had to pay taxes to get some sort of aid, any aid inside Gaza or to subsidize an oil leech’s record profits, I’d be fine funding 10 such piers.
Eh, chalk it up as a training exercise. Rapid construction of docks is something that might need to happen in an amphibious assault. We had to do it for D-Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulberry_harbour
In the autumn of 1942, the Chief of Combined Operations Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, outlined the requirement for piers at least one mile (1.6 km) long at which a continuous stream of supplies could be handled, including a pier head capable of handling 2,000-ton ships.
Maybe try to figure out how to do it more-cost-effectively based on this.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if people in the Levant will be using it for a long time to come, so someone will get good out of it.
Haliburton wins again
It’s not for aid, it’s so they can export the newly extracted natural gas from the now razed Gaza
