President Joe Biden pushed for a maritime route to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip over the objections of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) officials, a new government watchdog report concluded.
Among other concerns, the inspector general report concluded that Biden went against the advice of USAID officials when he announced the plan to open a makeshift aid-delivery pier on the Gaza shoreline during his March 7 State of the Union address.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) oversaw the construction and operation of the maritime aid route, known as a joint logistics over-the-shore (JLOTS) mission.
USAID coordinated the aid delivery efforts once those supplies were moved over the makeshift pier and onto the Gaza shoreline.
According to the inspector general’s report, senior USAID officials had discussed a maritime route for aid deliveries to the embattled Gaza Strip before Biden’s March 7 address, but they advocated instead for increasing humanitarian aid deliveries through overland routes.
“Multiple USAID staff expressed concerns that the focus on using JLOTS would detract from the Agency’s advocacy to open land crossings in Israel and Egypt, which were seen as more efficient and proven avenues for delivering aid to Gaza,” the report states.
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) also considered a commercial option for establishing a pier on the Gaza shoreline, according to the report.
After Biden’s March 7 address, WFP officials switched their focus to coordinating with the Defense Department’s JLOTS pier mission.
According to the inspector general’s report, USAID planned for the JLOTS mission to run for about 90 days and deliver humanitarian supplies and food to sustain 500,000 people or more per month.
The JLOTS pier instead operated for 20 days between mid-May and mid-July and delivered enough supplies to support about 450,000 people for one month.
DOD guidance concerning JLOTS missions also states that these makeshift piers cannot operate above Sea State 3, in which waves can reach as high as four feet.
According to the inspector general’s report, members of USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) and the DOD discussed the weather challenges during a JLOTS planning meeting early on and a DOD official noted that the Gaza shoreline was often in Sea State 4 or higher, with high wind and wave conditions.
The U.S. military had to repeatedly pause the JLOTS operation and relocate the pier to avoid weather damage during the mission.
The Epoch Times did not receive a response to a request for comment on the report to the White House by press time.
The USAID inspector general’s office launched its review of the JLOTS pier in June, in coordination with the DOD’s inspector general.
While the JLOTS pier facilitated less humanitarian aid than USAID had hoped for, a U.S. Defense official said the pier mission had still achieved the goal “of providing an additive means of delivering high volumes of humanitarian aid” to the people of the Gaza Strip.
Problems for Aid Pier Mission
As part of its participation in the JLOTS mission, the WFP described multiple prerequisites for its joining the JLOTS mission, including that the makeshift pier be located in northern Gaza, which it assessed has the greatest need for humanitarian aid.
“A northern location would have enabled WFP to avoid the south-to-north land route where it had previously faced delays at [Israel Defense Forces] checkpoints as well as ’self-distribution' or looting of the aid,” the inspector general’s report states.
“However, BHA staff said that DoD decided to locate the pier further to the south after surveying the beach and assessing the security situation in Gaza.”
The WFP also had hoped for a third party U.N. member state to provide the security for the humanitarian operation.
The U.N. food assistance agency said it wanted to avoid working with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) so as to maintain a sense of neutrality in the ongoing Israel–Hamas conflict.
No third party country stepped forward to provide security for the maritime aid corridor, according to the report.
The Israeli military ultimately assumed the task of guarding the aid pier and an adjacent marshaling area on the Gaza shoreline.
IDF activities around the aid pier fueled the perception that the JLOTS mission served an ulterior military purpose.
At the time, Israeli forces conducted an armed raid on Gaza’s Nuseirat neighborhood to recover four hostages who had been taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
Conflicting reports indicate that dozens, if not hundreds, of Gazan civilians were wounded and killed in the Nuseirat hostage rescue operation, though these assessments cannot be independently verified.
U.S. military officials denied that the pier played a role in the hostage rescue mission.
The day after the Nuseirat raid, the WFP paused its participation in the JLOTS pier mission.
Without support from the U.N. agency, “thousands of pallets of aid from the JLOTS operation piled up on the Gaza beach,” the inspector general’s report states.
WFP contractors later retrieved 8,860 aid pallets from the JLOTS operation area for further distribution but did not resume wider participation with the JLOTS mission.
