The U.S.-built temporary pier taking humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians will be removed from the coast of Gaza to be repaired after getting damaged in rough seas and weather, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Over the next two days, the pier will be pulled out and sent to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, where U.S. Central Command will repair it, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters. She said the fixes will take “at least over a week” and then the pier will need to be anchored back into the beach in Gaza.
The pier, used to carry in humanitarian aid arriving by sea, is one of the few ways that food, water and other supplies are getting to Palestinians who the U.N. says are on the brink of famine amid the nearly 8-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The setback is the latest for the $320 million pier, which only began operations in the past two weeks and has already had three U.S. service members injured and had four of its vessels beached due to heavy seas. Deliveries also were halted for two days last week after crowds rushed aid trucks coming from the pier and one Palestinian man was shot dead. After that, the U.S. military worked with the U.N. and Israeli officials to select safer alternate routes for trucks, the Pentagon said Friday.
Five minutes of googling says some folks thing stone mason. Some copy and paste response says unskilled tradesman. Other response says translation is just “learned” so maybe they could read.
I’d never heard of this before so seeing that there is disagreement is a fun new thing for me. Especially interesting to see this “learned” response.
I spent a few minutes looking to see if a name I trust said any of this. Ultimately I don’t have the background to evaluate it and lots of folks spend their lives about historical Jesus. I didn’t see anything from anyone I recognized but, like I said, I don’t know much about this area.