US aid ship departs Cyprus for Gaza

The latest aid ship to depart Cyprus for Gaza left the Larnaca port on Thursday morning.

The ship, a United States container vessel called the Sagamore, is currently travelling southwards towards Gaza.

While the Cyprus Mail was initially able to reach the foreign ministry for confirmation, the ship’s departure suggests that the temporary jetty being constructed by US forces off the coast of Gaza has now been completed.

Sections of the jetty were still positioned at Israel’s Ashdod port as recently as Wednesday, with the US waiting for weather conditions to allow for the jetty’s construction to be completed.

Once the ship arrives at the jetty, aid will be loaded onto support vessels, which will transport the aid to a causeway, from whence lorries will take the aid for onward delivery and distribution in Gaza.

The jetty’s capacity will begin at 90 lorryloads per day, rising to 150 per day once the operation is in full swing.

Questions were raised regarding the capacity, which some perceived as low. In response, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh on Wednesday highlighted that the jetty is a “temporary” solution, and that “the best way” to transfer humanitarian aid into Gaza was through land routes.

In addition, questions had been raised over the cost of the jetty’s construction, with news website Reuters having reported that the jetty had cost a total of $320 million (€298m) to build.

They had added that around 1,000 US servicepeople had been involved in its construction, most of whom are from the US Army and the US Navy.

That cost is around double that of original estimates, according to US Senator Roger Wicker.

Wicker, a Republican from the state of Mississippi, said “this dangerous effort with marginal benefits will now cost the American taxpayer at least $320m to operate the pier for only 90 days.”

“For every day this mission continues, the price tag goes up and so does the level of risk for the 1,000 deployed troops within range of Hamas’ rockets,” he said.

The jetty’s potential placement has also been a cause for concern among some quarters, with British newspaper The Guardian having reported last week that the jetty’s placement may be too far south to help alleviate the “very high” risk of famine in the northern part of Gaza.

The north of Gaza, including Gaza City, has been effectively cut off from the rest of the strip by a military road constructed by the Israeli Defence Force which connects Israel with Gaza’s coast, known as the Netzarim corridor.

As such, if the jetty is placed south of the Netzarim corridor, any aid sent towards Gaza City and the rest of the north of the strip will still have to pass through an IDF checkpoint. This would arguably defeat the point of shipping the aid directly to Gaza.

The jetty’s final placement is not yet publicly known, though will likely become clearer once the Sagamore arrives in Gaza.

The most recent humanitarian aid shipment from Cyprus to Gaza, aboard the ship the Jennifer, had docked at the Israeli port of Ashdod on April 28.