The U.S. military’s cost estimate to build a pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid has risen to $320 million, a U.S. defense official and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The figure, which has not been previously reported, illustrates the massive scale of a construction effort that the Pentagon has said involves about 1,000 U.S. service members, mostly from the Army and Navy.

Still, the cost has roughly doubled from initial estimates earlier this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“The cost has not just risen. It has exploded,” Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters, when asked about the costs.

  • maynarkh@feddit.nl
    21·
    6 months ago

    The land aid convoys are already there, Israel is holding them up. The construction of the docks is supposed to take three months. If the US did nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, the aid would already be there, since the last time the US told Israel to back off, they did.

    Driving a truck into Gaza is much, much faster than building a dock for ships. You seem to be misunderstanding the situation. The problem with ships is that they can’t dock right now. It’s like saying “trains would be better than trucks”, which is true, except there are no train tracks yet.

    The US could put two diplomats on a plane, today, have them land near Gaza, today, have them get in one of the trucks, today, and tell Israel that they will get no more money until Palestine is fed, and also that the diplomats are going to step on the throttle, will not step on the brakes, and if they get shot at, the wing of US fighters circling overhead will shoot back at the IDF, and bomb some Israeli airbases for good measure.

    This could all be done today. The dock won’t be ready for months, during which countless people, mostly kids, will starve to death. What the US does instead of this is that they threaten the ICC that if they dare to say that those kids dying is Israel’s fault, they will sanction the judges, while they supply the weapons with which Israel is waging its genocide.