News / Palestine / Editor's Choice

Former top UN official: US pier in Gaza failed to have any meaningful impact

Sunday, 26 May 2024 8:21 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 26 May 2024 8:21 AM ]

A truck carries humanitarian aid across Trident Pier, a temporary US-built pier to deliver aid, off the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, near the Gaza coast, on May 19, 2024.

A former top UN official has dismissed the United States-built pier purportedly installed to transfer aid to Gaza, stating that the structure has failed to have any meaningful impact on the Palestinian population in the war-torn coastal territory.

“The US taxpayer-funded pier in Gaza, designed as a fig leaf to cover US complicity in genocide & in the destruction of UNRWA, has failed to have any meaningful impact & has now been largely washed away by the sea,” Craig Mokhiber, former Director of the New York Office of the UN’s High Commissioner of Human Rights, wrote in a post published on the social media platform X on Saturday.

He noted that the inefficiency of the US pier comes as the Tel Aviv regime is enforcing a tight blockade on all border crossings into Gaza.

The construction of the $320-million floating pier was completed in mid-May to allegedly provide aid to the Gaza Strip. The pier has been criticized as a complicated and costly alternative that tries to deflect attention from demanding a much simpler solution.

Read more:

Hamas rejects US floating pier for Gaza aid as publicity stunt

Part of the US-built Gaza pier collapsed and swept into sea on Saturday as waves carried it toward the shores of the city of Ashdod, situated about 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) south of Tel Aviv, in the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories.

US President Joe Biden asserted in his State of the Union in March that the pier would “receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelter.”

This is while Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson of UN chief Antonio Guterres, said on Friday that the World Food Programme (WFP) has “taken possession of 97 trucks since the floating dock came into operation.”

Israel unleashed the Gaza onslaught on October 7 after Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups carried out Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 35,903 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 80,420 others, according to the Gaza-based health ministry.

The occupying entity has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir