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According to AFP on the 17th, a senior US official announced that the US military's mission to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip through a temporary dock has ended. The report said that US President Biden had expressed disappointment with the performance of the dock, and since its construction, the dock has drifted away from the coast many times, resulting in extremely limited actual operating time.

The temporary dock built by the United States in the Gaza Strip. Source: Visual China

On July 17 local time, Brad Cooper, deputy commander of the US Central Command, told reporters that "the maritime reinforcement mission involving the dock has been completed, so the dock is no longer needed. It is now being transferred to... a port in Ashdod, Israel" in order to "provide a more sustainable route."

According to Cooper, the new route is for supplies to depart from Cyprus to Ashdod and then be transported overland to the northern Gaza Strip. Transport work on this route has already begun, with more than 1 million pounds of aid shipped in recent weeks. Cooper also said that the total cost of the temporary dock project is lower than the previously estimated $320 million, but the U.S. military has not yet announced the final amount.

The report mentioned that since it was completed and put into use in mid-May, the temporary dock built by the US military in Gaza has repeatedly encountered accidents, including being damaged by bad weather and had to be temporarily dismantled for repairs. On June 7, the dock was rebuilt, but on June 14 it was moved again to Ashdod, Israel to protect it from the waves, which happened again later that month.

There have also been problems with the distribution of aid after it arrives, with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) suspending the distribution of aid shipped through the terminal last month to assess the security situation as Israel launched a military operation nearby.

Agence France-Presse pointed out that Biden announced in his State of the Union address in March that the US military would build a temporary dock for humanitarian aid in the Mediterranean waters near the Gaza Strip. At that time, Israel blocked the delivery of aid supplies by land. The Pentagon said at the time that the project would help push the Israeli government to open more routes for the transportation of aid supplies.

"The deployment of this terminal ... helps secure Israel's commitment to open more crossings into northern Gaza," Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singer recently told reporters. But Biden said at a news conference last week that the terminal has not been as effective as he had hoped. "I'm disappointed that some of the initiatives that I've proposed have also not been successful, such as the terminal that we had coming in from Cyprus (to Gaza) - I had hoped that would be more successful," he said of the project.