Gaza pier used for aid delivery has been reconnected, U.S. officials say

Wilshire@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 95 points –
US pier in Gaza to reopen for humanitarian aid after sea damage
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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.

It's not ineptitude. Their hands are tied by the government from providing aid in any effective way.

Are you seriously saying that the U.S. has no leverage over the Israeli government?

I never said anything like that.

You said their hands are tied. That means they don't have leverage they could use.

"They" is pretty clearly referring to the military, as that's what we were discussing.

What's your solution, then? Overnight peace in the middle east?

I'd say the U.S. not offering Israel any more support until they open the borders to aid would go a long way to solving things.

But apparently that's going way beyond the pale.

And how exactly will that put food in the hands of the starving Palestinians?

Again with the "if it's not perfect, it's not worth doing" bullshit I'm so tired of hearing about this conflict.

Sorry... how will letting aid trucks into Gaza put food in the hands of starving Palestinians?

You know what aid trucks are, right?

Look we either spend a billion a year rebuilding this thing or we start looking for actual solutions to the problems we've caused. Do you want that? I thought so.

You can't be dense enough to believe that if the US stops sending Isreal aid, that suddenly Isreal will suddenly magically be completely disarmed, and aid trucks will suddenly be able to move freely. Aid trucks aren't even on the table.

Since that's not even close to what I said, no, that's not what I believe.

And what other conclusion is there to your answers?

Me: How would YOU put food into Palestinian hands?

You: Stop sending aid to Isreal.

Me: How does that put food in Palestinian hands?

You: Aid trucks

If that was what I said, you would be right. However, this is what I said:

I’d say the U.S. not offering Israel any more support until they open the borders to aid would go a long way to solving things.

I'm not sure why you think that sort of thing doesn't motivate a country we're giving billions of dollars in aid to, but it does.

However, this is what you said in response:

You can’t be dense enough to believe that if the US stops sending Isreal aid, that suddenly Isreal will suddenly magically be completely disarmed, and aid trucks will suddenly be able to move freely. Aid trucks aren’t even on the table.

I said nothing about disarming Israel. And I know aid trucks are not on the table, because no one is motivating Israel to put them on the table. Again, withholding the billions of dollars in money and weapons we're sending to Israel would go a long way to getting them to let aid trucks in to feed people. You seem to be suggesting that not sending them more weapons than they already have is disarming them. Which it is not.

Or are you saying Israel doesn't need American money and weapons anyway? Then maybe America should just stop giving them money and weapons regardless.

My point is that stopping aid to Isreal won't put food in Palestinian bellies any time soon. And when they're starving right now, it's a useless gesture.

Actually doing what CAN be done right now, which is bypassing land chokepoints by building a non-perfect dock to offload millions of lbs of food, is the best solution I've heard of thus far, to actually stave off the immediate problem of starvation.

I'm not saying I approve of continuing to send military aid to Isreal. We can attack this from multiple fronts, but getting food and medical aid into Gaza is the most urgent need. And I don't find your efforts to undermine the most effective, if flawed, means of getting those supplies into Gaza to be helping the Palestinian's plight in the slightest.

You are either completely unknowledgable about the situation there or arguing in bad faith. But giving you the benefit of the doubt. There is more than enough aid waiting since months just outside the borders. Israel took over the Rafah crossing to Egypt, murdering two Egyptian soldiers in the process. There also enough aid is waiting.

By stopping to arm Israel the US might not provide food literally tomorrow, but within short time. That pier took over two months to build. More than enough time for the US to pressure Israel into behaving.

Again Israel could let in aid today if they wanted to. They could stop bombing hospitals, ambulances, aid workers, refugee shelters right now if they wanted to. The US could make them want that. And if simply cutting weapons wouldnt be enough the US could declare a no fly zone and break Israels chokeholds on the border crossings by force if necessary. The US could threaten and employ a sanctions regime that would threaten to vaporize the Israeli economy, making any government resign within days.

But the US doesnt do that. The US doesnt want that. The US wants to cover for this genocide and just pretend doing something about it, which is why they build an expensive pier for months that doesnt deliver aid and then breaks apart, while watching the single attempted aid delivery to be denied by the Israeli genocidal forces.

You claim I'm arguing in bad faith, but all your points make insanely huge assumptions on what the US is plausibly capable of forcing, and in an insanely short timespan. Particularly taking into account how little Isreal has been willing to negotiate in good faith currently and in past.

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So you're saying the U.S. has zero leverage on Israel?

No. I'm saying that relying on that leverage completely, and expecting a fast and complete solution, and allowing the Gazians to starve to death if that hailmerry doesn't work, is completely asinine.

And that's not even taking into account what the absolute 180 on foreign policy WRT Isreal will cost us in the short and long term. It could very possibly give the entire election over to the Republicans. Which would obviously be even worse for Gaza.

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The fuck does someone's political alignment have to do with this shit?

The tendency to make Perfect the enemy of Good.

It's a tired theme here on Lemmy, particularly WRT Gaza, and particularly in criticism of Biden's policy towards Isreal.

We don't want a hardy lifetime dock. We want Israel to stop committing genocide and to allow aid by land and air routes.

Ok. And how has that negotiation been going?

I prefer to actually do what can be done in the short term, while we continue to work on long term solutions in tandem. Not just put all your eggs in the long term basket, and let the Palestinians starve if it takes too long, or doesn't happen at all.

Aid by land and air can be done in the short term, a lot faster then building a dock and shipping by sea. The only thing stopping that is a pure policy decision by Israel.

Personally, I think the US should continue with aid airdrops. Hell, I think they should load up trucks and roll through Rafah or any available crossing in Gaza.

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.

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