<big> SEE UPDATES AT FOOT OF DIARY </big>
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CNN 3 days ago <big><big>World Central Kitchen & Open Arms ship carrying aid to Gaza depart from Cyprus</big></big>
Summarizing this and later articles, a former search&rescue ship with 200 tons of nonperishable food — roughly 130 pallets or at least 500,000 meals including rice, flour, beans, lentils, and canned fish and meats, about the equivalent of 12 trucks-worth compared to the 500 that used to supply Gaza daily — left the Cyprus port city of Larnaca around 3:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday bound for Gaza, the first in the Amalthia Humanitarian Plan, the Cyprus-Gaza maritime aid corridor. The “Open Arms” ship, from the Spanish charity of that name, took about 72 hours to cover the approximate 200 miles to the undisclosed Gaza coastal location of a jetty still under construction by WCK at departure time. The jetty is
...where WCK plans to distribute the cargo [thanks to] thousands of contractors and volunteers [and support of] the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus and Spain.]
Separately, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the agency that runs Israeli operations in the Palestinian territories, told CNN ... that Israel had “participated in the process of inspecting the ship,” without specifying when or where that was done. COGAT inspects aid going into Gaza, and has been accused by aid agencies of denying access for arbitrary reasons, or no reason at all.
The ...European Commission, the United States, the UAE and the United Kingdom [have been working on establishment of this maritime aid corridor first proposed by Cyprus.
... WCK says it has served more than 35 million meals in Gaza since October and is working with almost 400 locally-hired staff ...
Thirteen more paragraphs at the CNN link
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<big>The Hill - March 8 <big>Gaza aid floating port likely to take two months, 1,000 US troops to build: Pentagon</big></big>
TWO DAYS AGO:
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<big><big>WorldCentralKitchen.org</big> DONATION LINK IS THERE.
IMAGE: “Operation Safeena: WCK aid boat offloads in Gaza”</big>
World Central Kitchen’s team in Gaza offloaded almost 200 tons of desperately needed food that arrived on our first maritime aid shipment to the region. Carried on the Open Arms vessel, the cargo is part of Operation Safeena, our effort to bring as much aid as possible to Palestinians by sea. We have provided more than 37 million meals to families in war-torn Gaza by land, sea, and air since first responding to the conflict. The opening of this maritime corridor allows us to provide millions more meals….
More at that website.
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<big>NPR — March 14 <big>An aid ship is en route to Gaza, in a test of a sea corridor for the war-torn enclave</big> 3-MINUTE LISTEN</big> Image caption: Open Arms members carry humanitarian aid for Gaza in a joint mission between NGOs Open Arms and World Central Kitchen at a port of Larnaca, Cyprus, March 9. Santi Palacios/Open Arms-World Central Kitchen/Handout via Reuters
...[once WCK] builds the jetty, [it] will unload the cargo onto smaller boats to take the aid ashore to be distributed to its network of 64 kitchens. [Chef] Andrés says [they weren’t allowed to bring] in machinery, equipment or the concrete blocks requested for the operation but the aid organizations are improvising with what they have. Israel bars a large range of goods to Gaza [that] could be used by Hamas…
"We have crews working 24-7 ... trying to build this 60-meter [yard]-long jetty that will allow us ... if things go well, to start bringing in humanitarian aid in bigger quantities," Andrés says.
Laura Lanuza, communications director for Open Arms, says it has taken three weeks to deal with regulations, restrictions and logistics after the boat arrived in Cyprus…
...each box of food was individually scanned under supervision of Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories at Larnaca port in Cyprus to ensure it did not have contraband before it was loaded onto the barge and then the entire shipment sealed.
"We have to be cautious and we have to follow all the protocols that we have in order to have a good end to this," she says, adding there is food waiting at the port in Cyprus for an immediate second trip if the first goes well…
The barge current cargo is the equivalent of only about 10 trucks of aid. Ahmed Naimat, at Jordan's National Center for Security and Crisis Management, said the main land aid entry through Egypt has 30,000 trucks backed up waiting, some for two months now.
More at the link.
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YESTERDAY
<big>el Pais — March 16 <big>The ‘Open Arms’ arrives in Gaza to carry out the first delivery of humanitarian aid by sea</big>Image caption: The 'Open Arms' ship tows a World Central Kitchen (WCK) barge loaded with food towards Gaza, this Friday.</big>ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES (via REUTERS)</big>
The Safeena mission ,.. arrived on the coast of the Strip this Friday afternoon [to unload] food transported from Cyprus by the ship Open Arms, operated by a Spanish non-profit that normally conducts rescues in the Mediterranean Sea. “Everything is going very well, we are very happy. This was a pilot test and it worked,” said Gerard Canals, operations coordinator.
The mission, promoted jointly by this humanitarian organization and by World Central Kitchen (WCK), a food aid group founded by Spanish-American chef José Andrés, is of tremendous [logistical] “complexity,” ...The difficulty, beyond diplomatic and meteorological obstacles, lies in [delivery], given that Israel does not allow the occupants of the boat to establish contact with the Gaza population.
<big><big>A second ship ... in the port of Larnaca [is being loaded] with 400 more tons of food aid [by] WCK and the governments of Jordan, Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates.</big></big>
The Open Arms arrived south of the capital on Thursday night, 72 hours after departing... Larnaca ... thus reopening an access route that had been closed since 2007...
<big><big>Friday morning the ship anchored approximately a mile from the beaches of Gaza City … [and the laden barge] was towed by two semi-rigid boats from the Open Arms to a jetty built by WCK workers in the Strip. At 3:10 p.m. local time, the barge was moored to the jetty, which was erected in record time with the rubble of the buildings destroyed by the Israeli bombings.</big></big>
The pallets were transferred from the barge to the jetty with a crane truck placed at the edge of the dock. From there, the aid started going into trucks that will distribute it to the 60 kitchens that WCK operates in different parts of Gaza, and to other food distribution points...
The unloading work took place without incident and “quite quickly,” according to the crew members. However, the waves and nightfall slowed operations slightly in the last few hours. At 9.30 pm, a quarter of the merchandise still remained to be unloaded. The Open Arms is scheduled to return to Cyprus afterwards, concluding the pilot test of the operation. “We had a plan of how everything should go; before departing, the authorities had given us detailed instructions about what to do, and everything was carried out almost on time,” Canals described in a telephone conversation….
Three more paragraphs at the link.
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<big><big>The Hill — March 16...‘preparations underway’ to dispatch second ship</big> Image caption: The second vessel, left, with food aid from aid group World Central Kitchen prepares to depart for Gaza, at Larnaca port, Cyprus, Saturday, March 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)</big>
...WCK announced preparations are already underway to dispatch a second boat carrying “hundreds more tons of aid, along with heavy machinery to expedite the offloading process.”
Andrés posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, shared the news of the ship’s arrival.
“We did it! Teams of @WCKitchen and @openarms_fund working hard to offload all 200 tons…12 trucks! This was a test! To learn…we could bring thousands of tons a week…with what we learn we will get better,” he said online.
“I want us to build a highway of constantly flowing aid on the sea as just one more access point into Gaza that is so desperately needed,” WCK CEO Erin Gore, who was recently on the ground in Cyprus, said in a statement….
...The United States and other allies began sending air drops of aid to civilians in Gaza in early March. President Biden announced that the U.S. military would build a temporary port on Gaza’s coast to increase aid deliveries by sea. Still, [that] floating pier is expected to take up to two months to construct….
About 6 more paragraphs at the link.
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<big><big>CBS NEWS March 16 Celebrity chef José Andrés' aid group has sent 200 tons of food to Gaza. Who is he and what is World Central Kitchen?</big></big>
...Andrés, 54, is a Spanish-born chef who moved to the U.S. years ago to work in restaurants in New York City and Washington, D.C. He helped open several restaurants in the nation's capitol and then created his own restaurants around the country, including Nubeluz, in New York City, and Jaleo by José Andrés, with locations in Washington, D.C., Orlando, Las Vegas, Chicago and Dubai.
While working in D.C., Andrés volunteered at DC Central Kitchen, which repurposes food in the city to provide for those in need. This sparked his interest in philanthropy, and he founded World Central Kitchen in 2010. Its first mission was delivering food to Haiti.
What is World Central Kitchen?
World Central Kitchen mobilizes first responders to bring meals to people affected by natural disasters, crises and humanitarian emergencies around the globe
"Deploying our model of quick action, leveraging local resources, and adapting in real time, we know that a nourishing meal in a time of crisis is so much more than a plate of food — it's hope, it's dignity, and it's a sign that someone cares," the organization's website reads.
The nonprofit recently sent food to war-torn Ukraine [where its volunteers chose to go on working even under Russian fire; and] to Texas during the wildfires, and to Japan following earthquakes. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they delivered meals to children learning at home, first responders and seniors who were at risk….
More at the link..
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<big><big>Times of Israel First ship to use sea route arrives in Gaza with 200 tons of humanitarian aid</big> Image caption: World Central Kitchen boat off the coast of Gaza on March 15, 2024. </big>(Israel Defense Forces)
...Floating on a barge attached by rope to a salvage ship, rough seas appeared to slow down the cargo reaching land, footage posted by a WCK official on social media showed.
WCK had constructed a makeshift jetty which allowed the flat-bottomed barge to approach Gaza’s shallow waters for lack of proper port infrastructure….
...Israel has been under increasing pressure to allow more aid into Gaza. The United States has joined other countries in airdropping supplies to the isolated region of northern Gaza and has announced separate plans to construct a pier to get aid in….
...Humanitarian groups say airdrops, ships are less efficient ways of carrying aid, call on Israel to guarantee safe land corridors for trucks...
...World Central Kitchen operates 65 kitchens across Gaza and has served 32 million meals from them since the war started, the group said….
...The organization plans to distribute the food in the Strip’s north, the largely devastated target of Israel’s initial offensive in Gaza, which has been mostly cut off by Israeli forces since October. Up to 300,000 Palestinians are believed to have remained there despite Israeli evacuation orders, with many reduced to eating animal feed in recent weeks…
A dozen or so more mostly short paragraphs at the link.
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See also (paywalls):
- The Washington Post — March 15 — A barge of food reaches Gaza, testing new {sic} aid corridor as famine looms. A ship organized by a celebrity chef’s nonprofit delivered food and water to the Gaza Strip on Friday…
- New York Times March 15/16 — First ship carrying aid arrives in Gaza carrying some 200 metric tons of food from Cyprus. It is seen as a pilot effort for a new…
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BACKSTORY
- DK Dec 27, 2023 The allies landed 160,000 troops on Normandy. Plan could land aid from Cyprus across coast of Gaza
- DK Dec 31, 2023 Israel preliminary OK to Cyprus for major aid to Gaza by sea. Challenges remain.
- DK March 7, 2024 World Central Kitchen, UAE to team up for sea-lane+hovercraft aid to Gaza. Updated.
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From Haaretz email on Saturday:
- According to The Guardian, World Central Kitchen plans for a second shipment of 240 tonnes of food to set sail for the Gaza Strip from Cyprus soon.
- According to a UNICEF report published on Friday, about one in every three children under the age of two in northern Gaza suffer from acute malnutrition, and at least 23 children there have "reportedly died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks."
- Germany's air force – in coordination with France and Jordan – carried out its first humanitarian aid airdrops over northern Gaza on Saturday. CENTCOM [United States Central Command] conducted another aid airdrop into northern Gaza in cooperation with Jordan's air force.
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These include information on the US JLOTS Pier
UPDATE Monday, March 18
TheNationalNews
Cyprus will host a meeting on Thursday to increase the operational capacity of a new maritime corridor to send aid to Gaza, Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said. The news comes as a second ship, operated by the US charity World Central Kitchen and funded by the UAE, prepares to leave Cyprus with 240 tonnes of aid.
More than 40 countries are expected to attend the meeting, which will include discussions on long-term funding of the corridor, Mr Kombos told reporters on Monday as he arrived at a meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels….
World Central Kitchen ... operates a number of food kitchens throughout Gaza via a local network and [has already] contributed significantly to aid delivered by land and air, in addition to the maritime route…
The arrival of the first ship signalled the first time Israel has been willing to lift its maritime siege on the enclave since Hamas came to power in 2007, according to Mr Kombos [, doing so] exclusively for the Amalthea plan," he said. "Cyprus has been working on this for a long time and the support from the US and the UAE has been instrumental for the materialisation of this project,"…
...The US has said that a mini-port that its army is building in Gaza [note: not “in” Gaza, an off-shore jetty] to receive aid will be operational in early May, but Mr Kombos said it may happen sooner than anticipated….
That article also reports that the off-shore mini-port being built by the US army, for aid to enter Gaza by sea, may be operational sooner than the anticipated early May date, The May 13 linked article includes a 43 second video of brief explanation by Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder for the Pentagon, showing images and data. The article reports that
...it will take more than 1,000 US troops to build the ... “temporary offshore maritime pier”…
...Despite it being a sea operation, the effort is being led by the US Army, with the Navy acting in a supporting role. The [announcemtn was reported here May 9]….
The 550-metre pier forms part of the Joint Logistics Over the Shore, or Jlots, and falls under the command of the 7th Transport Brigade. The dock will operate around the clock and will be able to unload up to 2 million meals a day, as well as medicine, water and other critical non-profit supplies….
[This design] has not been used in a disaster situation since the 2010 Haiti earthquake relief effort, and not used in wartime since 2003...
A US private advisory company called Fogbow will play a key role in the overall plan, a source said.
“Our organisation essentially stood up to do this. The whole team were hired as advisers for the project,” a source working on the mission, known as Blue Beach, told The National. “We are a small group of former military, USAid, CIA, UN. We don’t do security. We combine the skills of those groups together as advisers...
More at the article links.
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UPDATE Monday, March 29
TheConversation <big>A new US-run pier off Gaza could help deliver 2 million meals a day – but it comes with security risks</big>
The U.S. has dispatched eight Army and Navy vessels from Virginia to build a temporary pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip. The aim of this work: to supply food and other necessary items for Palestinians as the war between Israel and Hamas continues and the resulting humanitarian crisis worsens.
Even before Oct. 7, 2023, and the massacre by Hamas of Israeli citizens that sparked the war, about 80% of Palestinians in Gaza relied on foreign humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs, including food. Now, the United Nations is warning that half of Palestinians in Gaza face famine within the next few months.
The new pier, which is expected to be operational sometime in May 2024, could help deliver 2 million meals a day to Gaza’s estimated 2.2 million residents….
The US has decades of experience combining army and navy resources to construct temporary piers like this in other conflicts and humanitarian disaster conditions, starting with World War II, when the United States’ Allied forces landed on Normandy aided by the construction of a floating dry dock pier. More recently, in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the U.S. built a temporary floating pier for military purposes to circumvent the Iraqis having mined Kuwait’s port. In the 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster, the U.S. built a floating pier in the Port-au-Prince Bay to help humanitarian agencies with food and medicine for the population under conditions of damaged port facilities and ruined roadways. In between and since, actual and training missions have kept up U.S. military capability of this kind, e.g., temporarily constructed off South Korea in 2015 to test cargo deliveries in the event of a crisis, and last summer in Australia in a training exercise.
See the US Defense Department Marc 20 publication on the current 30-year program integrating the Navy and the Army. which details this project, “Deploying Key [U.S. Military] Capabilities to Support Humanitarian Aid to Gaza.” It’s VERY interesting, describing the features of the “Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore” floating pier, how it facilities reception of aid brought by ships too large to get any closer to land there, the the method of transfer by smaller watercraft and causeway to shore, and so on.
Although construction and operation are routine as a result of experience, the security issues remain: “the pier could become a target for Hamas or other Iranian-backed proxy groups in Gaza or elsewhere that still have mortar, rockets, drones and other ways to harass or attack the ship” and there is concern about danger to civilians if they stampede for the aid.
Also more at TheConversation link, above.
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Update Friday, April 26
ABC NEWS A US-led effort to bring aid to Gaza by sea is moving forward. But big concerns remain
JERUSALEM -- The construction of a new port in Gaza and an accompanying U.S. military-built pier offshore are underway, but the complex plan to bring more desperately needed food to Palestinian civilians is still mired in fears over security and how the humanitarian aid will be delivered.
The Israeli-developed port, for example, has already been attacked by mortar fire, sending high-ranking U.N. officials scrambling for shelter this week, and there is still no solid decision on when the aid deliveries will actually begin.
While satellite photos show major port construction along the shore near Gaza City, aid groups are making it clear that they have broad concerns about their safety and reservations about how Israeli forces will handle security.
Sonali Korde, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development, said key agreements for security and handling the aid deliveries are still being negotiated. Those include how Israeli forces will operate in Gaza to ensure that aid workers are not harmed.
“We need to see steps implemented. And the humanitarian community and IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) continue to talk and engage and iterate and improve the system so that everyone feels safe and secure in this very difficult operating environment,” Korde said.
A senior U.S. military official said Thursday the U.S. is on track to begin delivering aid using the new port and pier by early May. The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public, said deliveries through the sea route initially will total about 90 trucks a day and could quickly increase to about 150 trucks daily.
The senior official acknowledged, however, that the final installation of the U.S.-built causeway onto the beach at the port will be governed by the security situation, which is assessed daily. The Israeli Defense Force has a brigade — thousands of soldiers — as well as ships and aircraft dedicated to protecting the deliveries, the official said.
Asked about the recent mortar attack, the miliary official said the U.S. assesses that it had nothing to do with the humanitarian mission, adding that security around the port will be “far more robust” when the deliveries start.
In addition, the U.S. has rehearsed offensive and defensive measures to ensure U.S. troops working at the pier and those on the floating platform several miles off shore are all protected.
Aid groups have been shaken by the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in an Israeli airstrike on April 1 as they traveled in clearly marked vehicles on a delivery mission authorized by Israel. The killings have hardened sentiment among some aid groups that the international community should focus instead on pushing Israel to ease obstacles to the delivery of aid on land routes by truck.
The World Central Kitchen staff, who were honored at a memorial service Thursday in Washington, are among more than 200 humanitarian workers killed in Gaza, a toll the U.N. says is three times higher than any previous number for aid workers in a single year of any war.
Development of the port and pier comes as Israel faces widespread international criticism over the slow trickle of aid into the Palestinian territory, where the United Nations says at least a quarter of the population sits on the brink of starvation.
This is how the sea route will work:
— Pallets of aid will be inspected and loaded onto mainly commercial ships in Cyprus, which then will sail about 200 miles to the large floating platform being built by the U.S. military.
— The pallets will be transferred onto trucks, driven onto smaller Army vessels and then taken several miles to the causeway, which will be roughly 1,800 feet, or 550 meters, long and anchored to the shoreline by the Israeli military.
— The trucks will then go down the causeway to a secure drop-off area, where pallets will be distributed to aid agencies. That mission could last several months, the U.S. military official said.
A U.N. official said the port will likely have three zones — one controlled by the Israelis where aid from the pier is dropped off, another where the aid will be transferred, and a third where Palestinian drivers contracted by the U.N. will wait to pick up the aid before bringing it to distribution points.
The construction of the new port in the Gaza Strip appears to have been moving quickly over the last two weeks, according to satellite images analyzed Thursday by The Associated Press. Offshore, U.S. Navy and Army vessels have started the construction of the large pier, or floating platform.
The port sits just southwest of Gaza City, a bit north of a road bisecting Gaza that the Israeli military built during the fighting. The area once was the territory’s most-populous region, before the Israeli ground offensive rolled through, pushing over 1 million people south toward the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border.
No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday's mortar attack at the port site, and no one was hurt of killed. But it reflected ongoing threats from Hamas, which has said it would reject the presence of any non-Palestinians in Gaza.
High-ranking Hamas political official Khalil al-Hayya told the AP that the group would consider Israeli forces — or forces from any other country — stationed by the pier to guard it as “an occupying force and aggression,” and that they would resist it.
The U.N.'s World Food Program has agreed to lead the aid delivery effort. Carl Skau, WFP's deputy executive director, speaking Thursday at the U.N., said it’s “necessary for us to be able to operate, reach communities, have access to needs, and to do so in a safe and secure way.” He also said the port mission must be just one part of a broader Israeli effort to improve sustainable, land-based deliveries of aid to avert a famine.
The U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes deliberations, said several sticking points remain around how the Israelis would handle the port’s security. The military is reportedly seeking to install remote-controlled gun positions, which the U.N. opposes, said the official, although it was not clear what weapons were being described.
In a statement Thursday, the IDF said it “will act to provide security and logistical support for the initiative,” including the construction of the dock and the transfer of aid from the sea to the Gaza Strip.
The port will provide critical extra aid as getting more supplies into Gaza through land crossings has proven challenging, with long backups of trucks awaiting Israeli inspections. Past efforts to get land in by sea faltered after the World Central Kitchen attack.
Countries have even tried airdropping aid from the sky — a tactic that aid groups say is a last-ditch resort because it can’t deliver aid in large quantities and also has led to deaths.
“The more time we spend talking about JLOTS," said Bob Kitchen, vice president for emergencies with the International Rescue Committee, using the U.S. military acronym for the U.S.-built pier, "the more we talk about air drops — all of this is massively expensive, comparatively low-scale and is a side-show. It’s a distraction."
United Nations UN coordinator in Gaza announces new plan to deliver lifesaving aid