https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/gaza-pier-used-for-aid-delivery-has-been-reconnected-u-s-officials-say
The section that connects to the beach in Gaza was rebuilt nearly two weeks after heavy storms damaged it and abruptly halted what had already been a troubled delivery route.
This is, remember, the pier that they claimed they didn't make contingency plans for any heavy storms. In the Mediterranean.
I don't know enough about the Mediterranean climate to know if this was a bad idea, but it sounds like they didn't either
Let me put it this way- large chunks of The Odyssey are Odysseus being caught in a big storm at sea. So you would think the U.S. military would have heard about something that's been known since the bronze age.
It's almost like they had to make compromises because their options were limited by materials, time, and access to the site.
It's almost like Biden should have forced israel to let in aid through the land crossing like the ICJ ruling required israel to do.
Exactly, it was (very relatively) cheap and quick. And they figured when, not if, it breaks, it will be again quick to repair. And it is interesting tech that could be useful down the line that they may figure is worth the cost in training alone.
Modular military engineering materials are both obscenely expensive, and temporary. They are meant as a bandaid to quickly solve transportation problems to enable logistics.
Also, being modular, they can be replaced easily and quickly.
If you want a hardy lifetime dock, you're going to need months to years under ideal circumstances. And then Isreal could "accidentally" blow it up with a "rogue" strike, and there would be no option but to scrap the whole thing. Because most permanent docks aren't meant to handle military strikes.
But yeah, let's just ignore that the building constraints around this are just about the worst case imaginable. Let's just keep whining about how a solution isn't perfect and therefore worthless like all the other Leftist comments on Lemmy
They barely delivered any aid. This was a boondoggle.
It's amazing the military ineptness people excuse.
And then Isreal could "accidentally" blow it up with a "rogue" strike
Yeah maybe they should stop giving rockets to the rogue state that keeps blowing up their shit.
Let's just keep whining about how a solution isn't perfect
The only thing this is a solution for is to the problem of "what's a good way to pretend we're humanitarians while genociding the people we're pretending we care about", so yeah, it's worthless if you don't want that to happen.
We don't want a hardy lifetime dock. We want Israel to stop committing genocide and to allow aid by land and air routes.
What is the population of Gaza? Maybe 2.1 million in the Gaza strip? Various search engines give results between 1/2 million and 5 million, a rather wide variance. This article says the U.S. hopes to deliver 1 million pounds of food every 2 days. The average person eats between 3 and 5 pounds of food per day. It's not enough food even for the lowest population estimate. OTOH, every bit of additional food helps and is good news.
If im not mistaken, when the pontón was originally planned, israel wasnt suppose to enter Rafah... maybe thats the origin of the problem?
Oh, I hadn't realized it was already being used. A million pounds every two days is a lot, so I'm surprised I hadn't heard until now.
It is because it broke down after the first delivery and the first delivery got blocked by the IDF and wasnt distributed. So the Pier didnt really deliver anything yet.
It is also still far too little and the US could force Israel to open all borders to let in as much aid as is actually needed by stopping to send them weapons and provide diplomatic cover. Plus if the US would apply sanctions, Israel could be forced to retreat from Gaza and finally start upholding international law within a few days.