Three times more food aid reached Gazans before the US military pier opened

Polygraph | Newsletter n°253 | 12 June 2024

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The pier is a PR stunt

The US military pier in Gaza isn’t working, at least not for Palestinians. Despite what the White House says, it is not delivering aid anywhere close to the levels needed. In fact, it’s hardly produced any aid at all. Its practical failures as a mechanism to deliver humanitarian assistance reveals the pier’s true purpose, which is to serve the political interests of Joe Biden and his administration. As I argue in my latest article in Responsible Statecraft, the pier “provides humanitarian cover for an inhume policy.”

What follows is a quick rundown of my two main points, but the full article is better. If you already knew the pier was a PR stunt, you’ll have more evidence at your disposal to beat back misinformation from political leaders and others. If you think the pier is brilliant, please let me talk you out of it. Read the piece here.

1. The pier is a distraction

A new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program found that 1.1 million Palestinians could face starvation by mid-July. Here’s an excerpt: “In the absence of a cessation of hostilities and increased access, the impact on mortality and the lives of the Palestinians now, and in future generations, will increase markedly with every day, even if famine is avoided in the near term.” (Bold text = my emphasis)

Preventing famine requires a ceasefire and reopened border crossings, and for that, a pier is about as useful as a trebuchet. The only thing the US military pier is good for is distracting people from Biden’s real policy, which enables Israel to prolong and intensify its assault on Gaza, and permits Israel to starve Palestinians by blocking food aid.¹ The pier is there to make the Biden administration look like it’s “doing something” for Palestinian civilians while it implements a policy that starves and kills them.

2. The ‘humanitarian’ pier provides almost no humanitarian aid 

I looked at UN data that tracks imports into Gaza through land crossings, filtered the enormous spreadsheet for all the food imports, counted the number of pallets each food import contained, then put the data in chronological order. Here’s what I found.

Israel’s closure of the Rafah crossing — Gaza's only lifeline — on May 7 resulted in 66,181 fewer pallets of food aid reaching starving Palestinians last month compared to April.² Against this 66,181 pallet shortfall, the $320 million pier provided just 1,806 pallets of food to humanitarian agencies in Gaza in May.³ As I noted in a recent newsletter, Israel wasn’t letting enough food into Gaza before it closed the Rafah crossing, either.

After the US assisted Israel’s massacre in Nuseirat, the UN World Food Program suspended deliveries from the US military pier into Gaza. Aid from the pier is now piling up on the beach.

^Alt text for screen readers: Three times more food aid reached Gazans before the US military pier opened. This chart compares pallets of food delivered to Gazans in April and May 2024. The April column shows 93,442; the May column shows 29,067. The overwhelming majority of the pallets were delivered by land (expressed in gray). The $320 million pier delivered just 1,806 pallets of food aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza in May (expressed as a blue sliver on top of the May column). Data: UNRWA, IDF.

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1. And destroy Gaza’s domestic food production system.

2. (Ken Klippenstein observed on May 29 that more aid (food and non-food items) had gotten into Gaza before the pier was built, based on his analysis of government officials’ discourse. My research further confirms his assessment.)

3. The 1,806 pallet figure comes from the IDF, but it seems about right (if not a bit high) based on related reporting and statements from UN and US officials.