During his State of the Union address Thursday President Joe Biden formally announced that the United States military will build a port on the Mediterranean coast of Gaza to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid via sea routes.
In his address to Congress, Biden declared that he had directed the U.S. military to embark on an urgent operation aimed at setting up a port in Gaza that will involve collaboration with allied nations and humanitarian organizations.
Unnamed officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement, indicated that the operation would not necessitate the presence of American troops on the ground for constructing the pier, which will facilitate the shipment of food, medicine, and other vital items. The officials refrained from giving specifics on the construction of the port. One of the officials pointed out that the U.S. military possesses distinctive abilities and can carry out operations from close to the shore.
During his speech, the President called on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid to enter through Gaza. He reiterated his support for a two-state solution between Israelis and the Palestinians but did not go into specifics.
"Hamas refuses to release more than 130 Israeli hostages or provide information about them and refuses to surrender its positions in tunnels underneath the civilians of Rafah," said Shoshana Bryen, senior director of The Jewish Policy Center and editor of inFOCUS Quarterly. "Providing access to more food simply allows Hamas to continue to hold out, continue to hold the hostages, and try to regroup for more military action. A quicker way to save Gaza civilians would be to pressure Hamas to meet international demands for the hostages and/or to pressure Egypt to allow Palestinian civilians temporary refuge in the Sinai," Bryen told The Foreign Desk.
The same officials note that the temporary port would boost the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the conflict-ridden enclave by "hundreds of extra truckloads" daily. Additionally, they mentioned that security coordination between the U.S. and Israel would be maintained.
In his address, Biden reiterated death toll numbers from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, saying that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began after the Iranian-backed terrorist group massacre of Jews on October 7.
Len Khodorkovsky, a former Trump administration official who served in the U.S. Department of State as a senior advisor for public affairs in the Iran Action Group and deputy assistant secretary for digital strategy in the Bureau of Global Public Affairs, took to X to sound off on the announcement: "By building the Rashida Tlaib Port of Gaza, Biden will only resupply the Hamas terrorists. That aid won't reach civilians or hostages," he said.
"Hard to believe an American President is willing to undermine our ally and endanger our troops just to appease his U.S.- and Jew-hating voters," Khodorkovsky added.
Before his State of the Union speech, a senior administration official told reporters that the new effort would be in collaboration with the United Nations (U.N.) and humanitarian aid organizations that comprehend the distribution of aid within Gaza. They added that the initial supplies would originate from Cyprus.
Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), explained that the President's Gaza port proposal "lacks critical specificity" concerning how aid will get distributed.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio also took to social media to comment on the issue.
"Biden will be endangering America if he uses this temporary port he wants to build in Gaza to bring refugees to the U.S. because there is no way to effectively check the background of anyone they try to bring," Rubio said on X.
Despite efforts by Arab and Western countries to provide more aid to Gaza, the Israeli government has vowed to continue its military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and do whatever is necessary to bring the Iranian-backed terrorist group.
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