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I was just taught.
To get money.
And ride on my enemies.’
Rotterdam orders.
Ships in the Mediterranean Sea were on standby while waiting to unload an initial tranche of 500 tons of aid, with thousands more tons in the pipeline, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom’s deputy commander, said Thursday. About 90 trucks per day are expected to come over the pier via an attached floating causeway before ramping up to 150 trucks daily, officials have said.
Yet even as the U.S. military has said delays in getting the deliveries underway were largely due to poor weather and sea swells, the United Nations prevaricated Thursday on whether it has fully agreed to deliver the aid brought from the pier.
The World Food Program, the primary U.N. agency involved, has sought logistics guarantees that delivery routes will be cleared of holdups and bottlenecks caused by Israeli military checkpoints and road denials, amid the killing this week of a U.N. international worker whose vehicle the agency said came under Israeli tank fire despite travel approval.
Since Oct. 7, 191 U.N. workers have been killed in Gaza, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Almost all were Palestinians.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that challenges remain to effectively increase the amount of aid entering Gaza via the pier, including the need to ensure workers’ safety.
The project, announced by Biden in March, has drawn criticism from lawmakers and others, who contend his administration should instead do more to pressure Israel to boost the amount of aid that is allowed into Gaza through border crossings. Some critics also have raised concerns that the pier could be vulnerable to attack by militants.
