The US-built Gaza aid pier broke apart. Here’s what we know • FRANCE 24 English

The US-built Gaza aid pier broke apart. Here’s what we know • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] time now for our daily factchecking segment I’m joined by via bahel VIA welcome to the program today you’ve been looking at some false claims that surround that humanitarian Aid Pier that the United States constructed in Gaza just tell us what this is all about yes Tom well first let’s start with a little recap of the port itself back in March President Joe Biden announced that the US would be building a temporary floating port or floating Pier attached to Gaza Shoreline in to ramp up uh humanitarian Aid to The Enclave where millions are facing famine now this was estimated this project to cost $320 million involve uh a thousand US troops roughly in its construction and the deliveries would play take place uh alongside Israeli control now how does that Port work well the port Works in fact if we take a look at this diagram it takes uh it works by having this this is what’s called a floating Causeway as we can see there this narrow structure in the middle and this is what is attached to the Gaza Strip there is a larger uh platform at the end there but there’s also a floating Pier so that’s this structure there and this structure uh if we imagine that floating Pier just a little bit ahead uh straight ahead of our of our Causeway this pier this floating Pier is where the aid deliveries would be dropped off before they would then be transported via these support vessels to the causeway uh and into the Gaza Strip now this project was declared operational by the US in mid-may this is a photo released by us Central Command showing uh the finished product and they said that 1,000 metric tons of Aid was delivered via this pier until until just over a week later uh poor weather and storms uh struck the coast uh of Gaza and damaged uh that structure that that project there and this led to viral claims online that the ports had entirely washed away just over a week after its construction if we take a look at the video attached to this tweet we do see uh a structure there in the sea as well and many internet users claims that this was uh part of Biden’s uh floating Pier now as well as being washed away there was also claims that it had entirely submerged or sunk so let’s take a look at that video as well where we can see something indeed floating in the water there off the shoreline but those are the claims that we’re looking at today Tom okay so I I’m just wondering what really happened then to that Pier with all these different versions of events well the US Central Command gave a statement saying that four vessels uh that were supporting the Fe the the peer were affected by the Seas and these in fact broke off uh and beached on the coast the Israeli coast of ashalon now in terms of what is a vessel uh this would be a vessel from our research it would be this structure here this is a supporting pillar if you will a support structure next to our Causeway um and with the storm that’s what detached from its Moorings and that’s what we can see here in our viral claim we can see those same black gratings uh on the side there so this is the vessel that in fact attached in terms of the other video that we saw there of that part of the pier that was sinking this was in fact the end of our platform the end of that Causeway where it uh expanded into a much larger structure we can see uh that if we look at uh satellite imagery of before and after the storm so this is before uh we can see the entirety of our Causeway attached this is the larger platform towards the end and if we look after the the storm took place there is just this smaller structure here attached to the Gaza uh Shoreline so this what we see floating there at the back that is indeed our larger structure there now according to the Pentagon press secretary that would be Sabrina Singh who gave a press conference on this matter she said that these parts of the pier were damaged they weren’t they have not submerged or sunk in the sea or anything like that they have been damaged and they’ve been taken to ashdod in Israel by the US Central Command for uh repairs before they plan to be returned to uh their rightful place and a video of those parts of the of the pier docked uh in ashdod have also been spotted online let’s take a look but there we have it uh parts of those Pier uh parts of that Pier docked in ashod okay and of course this project has faced quite a lot of quite a lot of criticism and challenges uh just tell us a bit more about what sorts of things people are saying well yes this project has been blasted for its Hefty price tag uh $320 million us some say uh well it’s critics say that it is a complicated and very expensive workaround that deflects from a problem with with a much simpler faster solution and that would be Road uh deliveries into Gaza and that if Israel was to open these land Crossings into Gaza it would be a lot simpler than this uh than constructing this structure this is a quote by Juliet Tuma at anra who says uh to alera that any effort to bring in more humanitarian Aid into Gaza is absolutely welcome however there is a more efficient cheaper quicker way to get that Aid into the enclave and that is by Road Tom okay well thank you very much indeed for that but goodby Hill with today’s edition of Truth or fake thank you

Just over a week after its completion, a slew of poor weather off Gaza’s coast battered the US-built humanitarian aid port off the enclave, which President Joe Biden had said would ramp up deliveries to those in need. Some social media users claim the pier drifted away or sunk entirely, but this is not entirely true. Vedika Bahl explains in this edition of Truth or Fake. 
#Gaza #Israel #JoeBiden

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