President Joe Biden‘s administration has played a supporting role in the nearly 6-month-old Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, providing military support for the Jewish state while also talking up the need to safeguard Palestinian civilians. As CIA Director William Burns has tried to negotiate the release of Israeli hostages, some with dual U.S. citizenship, the Biden White House is taking a more active role in the conflict.
The president announced in his March 7 State of the Union address that he directed the U.S. military to build a port off Gaza’s coast along the Mediterranean Sea to provide a fresh way to get aid to the 25-mile strip, from which Hamas launched the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel, claiming about 1,200 lives and taking hundreds hostage. The goal of the planned Gaza port, for which U.S. military planners have secured backing from allied countries, is to speed up food, medical, and other aid to Gaza residents. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes. Israel contends a sizable minority of those who died were Hamas terrorists.
Defense officials have said the planned Gaza port will likely take about 60 days and more than 1,000 service members to build. The port should enable the distribution of up to 2 million meals daily, and the transports ashore could be operational 24 hours a day.
“To the leadership of Israel, I say this: Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden said. “Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.”
Once that is constructed, large vessels carrying aid will approach a floating pier offshore. The aid will then be offloaded and put on Navy support vessels, known as logistics support vessels, to go the rest of the way to a causeway, where it will be brought ashore.
The move brings the United States closer to active participation in the Israel-Hamas war, though American officials insist that is not the case.
Biden and defense officials maintain that U.S. forces will not be “on the ground” in Gaza, though U.S. troops will be involved in the port operations at sea.
Biden said the Israelis would provide security for the port.
Questions remain on whether Hamas fighters will try to block the port’s construction or take even more direct military actions against U.S. and allied troops.
It’s a question of “if Hamas truly does care about the Palestinian people,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said recently. “One would hope that this international mission to deliver aid to people who need it would be able to happen unhindered.”
Mounting US-Israel tension
The Gaza port plan comes amid increasingly public disagreements between the Biden administration and Israel over a looming invasion into and around the southern Gaza city of Rafah. More than a million Palestinians live in the area or have fled there from fighting in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli military move into Rafah would be a red line for the U.S., Biden said in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart. Though Biden also said he wouldn’t abandon the U.S.’s closest Middle Eastern ally.
“It is a red line, but I am never going to leave Israel,” Biden said in the interview. “The defense of Israel is still critical, so there’s no red line I’m going to cut off all weapons.”
The comment encapsulates the stance he has taken through much of the war between Israel and Hamas. In one breath, he attempts to influence Israel’s war tactics, and he often does so in relation to concerns about civilian casualties, but he also refuses to use the leverage he has to force Israel’s hand.
“We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave [Gaza],” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in response to Biden’s remarks in an interview with German outlet Axel Springer. “You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That Oct. 7 doesn’t happen again.”
Israeli officials have not shown the U.S. a humanitarian or military plan for Rafah, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on March 11.
The administration has urged the Israelis to do more to prevent civilian casualties, though whether that has had an impact remains unclear. During his State of the Union speech, Biden cited the Palestinian death toll figure of 30,000 without any caveats about how many were Hamas terrorists.
“I think the criticism has largely been around how they dealt with non-Hamas Palestinians that are absorbing all the friction associated with this conflict. I definitely think there is some dissonance with this, and I think it’s very obvious that the president, and the administration, has taken a lot of pressure here politically in our own country,” former U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Joseph Votel told the Washington Examiner. “He has made the decision to use capabilities that are at his disposal to begin to address, even as insufficient or as minimal as that might be at this particular point to the overall need, that he actually is doing the things that he can do.”
Biden and his administration have also called on Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, given the dire humanitarian crisis. Israel thoroughly searches any aid truck that goes from Israel or Egypt into Gaza to ensure no weapons are going in. However, the amount of aid getting into Gaza is not enough to meet the overwhelming demand.
“We’re not waiting on the Israelis,” a senior administration official said. “This is a moment for American leadership. And we are building a coalition of countries to address this urgent need.”
Open questions on next US steps
The U.S. military has carried out multiple airdrops of aid, dropping more than 200,000 meals into Gaza. Other countries have conducted similar missions. A handful of people were killed by the airdropped goods this month, though U.S. military officials said they were not responsible for that specific airdrop.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is opting to build the temporary port instead of pressing Israel to open the port in Ashdod, which is less than 25 miles from Gaza. The administration has also refused to condition military aid for Israel on it doing more to prevent civilian casualties.
There are continued unknowns regarding whom the U.S. will hand the aid to for distribution throughout the strip.
“We’re continuing to plan and coordinate with partners in the region,” Ryder said. “As for aid distribution, we’ll have more details in the future, but we are coordinating with ally and partner nations, the U.N., and humanitarian NGOs on the way ahead for distribution of assistance into Gaza.”
There have been reports of aid convoys being converged upon resulting in the theft of the aid.
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“With the departure of police escorts, it has been virtually impossible for the U.N. or anyone else … to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs,” said U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield, appointed by Biden to coordinate humanitarian aid to Gaza, last month. “Because of [Israel’s] attacks on the U.N. convoys and others, the value of things has risen, which only feeds a vicious cycle to empower more criminal activities.”
The administration has also worked alongside the Qatari and Egyptian governments to act as mediators for a possible ceasefire deal, though there has been no breakthrough since the weeklong cessation of fighting in late November. The deal the U.S. supports would stop war efforts for six weeks and allow for a surge of humanitarian aid into the strip and for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages.
