![](https://www.richardcyoung.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Floating-Pier.jpg)
U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) and Sailors attached to the MV Roy P. Benavidez assemble the Roll-On, Roll-Off Distribution Facility (RRDF), or floating pier, off the shore of Gaza in support of Operation Neptune Solace, April 26, 2024. Courtesy photo – US Army Central 04 26 2024
President Joe Biden’s Policy Making/incompetence – An Apt Parable
During his State of the Union (2024) address, President Joe Biden introduced the idea of a pier in Gaza as a means of distributing financial aid. Meant as an applause line, it quickly became a logistical nightmare. Costly, as well, with a $230 million price tag for its construction, reports Noah Rothman in NRO:
A Pier Built on Hubris
By the time it was completed, aid was already flowing into Gaza via Israel and Egypt, so what was the sense to that? duplicative headache (again, aid was already flowing into Gaza via Israel and Egypt when it was completed) didn’t become fully operational until mid May, at which point it promptly came under fire from Palestinian militant groups.
It functioned for all of four weeks before the high winds, tides, and swells of three feet or more that were known to be this prefabricated dock’s kryptonite — weather patterns that tend to typify conditions in the ocean — scuttled the pier…
$230 Million Wasted
According to Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh, the temporary dock, “Biden’s brainchild,” extending from the Gaza coast into the Mediterranean, from which humanitarian assistance could be dispersed to local Palestinians — was defunct.
“As we always said with the pier, it is meant to be temporary,” said, Ms. Singh.. “When the commander decides that it’s the right time to re-install that pier, we’ll keep you updated on that.”
The Point of the Pier
It was designed to embarrass the Israelis for failing to distribute humanitarian aid (716,000 tons and counting) to the Strip to the administration’s satisfaction. The Israelis did not publicly object to the slight, in part because it would further imperil Jerusalem’s relationship with the Biden White House and because it would make little sense to object to the administration’s offer to relieve the humanitarian burdens on the IDF. But the lack of a defined and achievable mission ensured that the pier would have to remain in operation indefinitely — at least, until the close of combat operations in the Strip.
The idea for the pier emerged as a State of the Union applause line, but it was all downhill from there, explains Mr. Rothman:
A Logistical Nightmare
This duplicative headache (again, aid was already flowing into Gaza via Israel and Egypt when it was completed) didn’t become fully operational until mid May, at which point it promptly came under fire from Palestinian militant groups.
It functioned for all of four weeks before the high winds, tides, and swells of three feet or more that were known to be this prefabricated dock’s kryptonite — weather patterns that tend to typify conditions in the ocean — scuttled the pier.
By June, the thing had to be dismantled and tugged off to the Israeli port of Ashdod for repairs. The pier reentered service only two weeks ago, but it is offline again, and it may never return to operation. The good news is that much of the aid delivered via the pier remains undispersed in a lot that Singh told reporters was “pretty close to full,” which at least indicates that the humanitarian situation on the ground in Gaza is not as dire as anti-Israel activists and their allies in media let on.
The pier, intended to resolve Biden’s domestic political conundrum, failed to satisfy the restive anti-Israel Left.
(Biden) needed it to demonstrate America’s capacity to project not just power but altruism, but it only exposed the limits of U.S. engineering. In the end, the pier’s fatal infirmities compelled its caretakers to shuttle it off the public stage despite the embarrassment to all involved.
Truth, Stranger than Fiction
President Joe Biden’s pier, completed in May, was open for less than one week before a storm rendered it inoperable. “The Biden White House surely didn’t intend for the pier to remain in service forever, but nor could they have possibly set out to engineer an embarrassment for themselves,” continues Mr. Rothman. “… sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.”
Aid is now sitting in a storage yard adjacent to the pier, reports NRO. Ms. Singh said that the area was “pretty close to full” and told the Associated Press that she didn’t know when the pier would be reinstalled.