President Joe Biden will order the U.S. military to establish a temporary port in Gaza to increase the flow of humanitarian aid, senior administration officials said Thursday.
Biden will formally make the announcement at the State of the Union address Thursday night.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the announcement, did not elaborate on how the port will be built but said that the military had “unique capabilities” to undertake the “emergency mission.”
The operation will not need American troops to be on the ground.
“The truth is we know that the aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough and nowhere fast enough,” said one official. “The president will make clear again this evening that we all need to do more and that the United States is doing more and we are seeking to use every channel possible to get additional assistance into Gaza.”
Large shipments of more food, water, and medicine will initially be received from Cyprus and will take several weeks to execute.
Earlier this week on Tuesday, the U.S. airdropped additional aid into Gaza in coordination with the Royal Jordanian Air Force. The first U.S. aid drop supplied Gazans with more than 38,000 meals.
A catastrophic humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in Gaza, with cases of newborns and children starving to death. International aid organizations have criticized Israeli forces for impeding and blocking aid operations within Gaza. Earlier this week, Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting for aid in northern Gaza.
“Hunger has reached catastrophic levels,” Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N.’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told journalists at U.N. Headquarters on Wednesday after a visit in Gaza.
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