The U.S. military finished installing a floating pier for the Gaza Strip on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war.
The final, overnight construction sets up a complicated delivery process more than two months after U.S. President Joe Biden ordered it to help Palestinians facing starvation as food and other supplies fail to make it in as Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push on that southern city on the Egyptian border.
Fraught with logistical, weather and security challenges, the maritime route is designed to bolster the amount of aid getting into the Gaza Strip, but it is not considered a substitute for far cheaper land-based deliveries that aid agencies say are much more sustainable. The boatloads of aid will be deposited at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City and then distributed by aid groups.
According to a 2019 UN report, there are over 3 billion barrels of oil estimated to be located beneath the occupied lands of Palestine, including off the coast. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has identified potential and existing oil and natural gas reserves in the West Bank and Gaza, including 1,525 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in the occupied Palestinian territories. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that the Palestinian territories do not produce oil.