E. Rowell: The motive of the Obama-Biden Administration to foil Israel’s ability to win the war against Hamas is clear. The sum of all their efforts on a regular basis goes to preventing Israel from completing the mission in Gaza while protecting Iran and her proxies. They want to prevent a triumphant Israel at all costs. This is unacceptable to the majority of Americans who support Israel. In addition, the efforts which they created and now support, to cultivate anti-Zionism and Jew hatred on college campuses, has led directly to the genocidal groups on campuses, threatening Jews and Israelis. This is psychological warfare against Jewish people everywhere. Now even democrat voters are disgusted with both the Pro-Palestinian rioters and this administration’s craven Jew hatred.
Mishaps and mortars and cargo and kitchens.
By J. E. Dyer, THE OPTIMISTIC CONSERVATIVE 26 April 2024
It’s tempting to place a major focus on the mishaps now besetting the U.S. temporary pier project off Gaza. But we’re going to get past that lightly, for a brief, even more important discussion of a couple of unbudging realities in the overall situation.
One is that the Biden administration continues to try to thwart Israel’s strategy for Gaza, which is to eliminate Hamas as a factor there and reset post-Hamas conditions for long-term arrangements as advantageously as possible for stability and Israeli security.
The other is that the condition of Gaza has already been altered to the extent that it cannot go back to the status quo ante (i.e., before 7 October 2023). The status quo ante is a dead letter. What Biden is trying to thwart is Israel’s strategy for shaping the new status quo. That’s what all the jockeying about Rafah, the hostages, cease fires, and what Israel is doing about Iran is about.
The temporary pier project has been kind of sad so far. As the plot develops, we learn that the plan is to install the Army pier directly adjacent to the Gaza coast. A similar Navy pier will sit further off the coast (three miles), and will become a hub for transferring cargo from cargo ships to Army support vessels (see below), which will then approach the Army pier and offload the cargo in batches to a waiting processing terminal ashore.
It wasn’t clear at the outset that both the Navy and Army apparatuses would be used (I wrote about both of them here). The apparent need to employ both of them adds a layer of complexity that would be unnecessary if the U.S.-delivered aid were simply offloaded from the cargo ships at an Israeli port and moved into Gaza over land.
The Biden priority is thus clearly to establish an offloading point in Gaza, whatever it takes. That clarifies the character of the project: it’s meant for the primary purpose of delivering aid directly by sea to Gaza, a measure that breaks the basis on which Israel’s security blockade of Gaza has been maintained since early 2009. The security blockade was compromised a few weeks ago when the World Central Kitchen (WCK) deliveries began, to a separate, hastily-constructed jetty off Gaza. Pursuing the U.S. pier and yet another stream of deliveries by sea into Gaza will compromise it further.
It apparently will take some unexpected time, however, to get the whole multi-pier contraption set up. Two Military Sealift Command (MSC) ships, USNS 1st Lt. Baldomero Lopez (T-AK-3010) and USNS 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo (TAK-3008), were carrying parts for the Navy pier from the East Coast. But Bobo suffered a fire in the engineering spaces during its transit, and had to turn around on 11 April, arriving back in Jacksonville, Florida last week.
That leaves Lopez in the Mediterranean with a collection of the Navy pier parts, and the problem of how to move Bobo’s load to marry up with it. Lopez is underway east of Crete on 26 April, on a heading toward Gaza. Without the parts John P. Bobo was carrying, the Navy pier can’t be assembled yet.
M/V Roy P Benavidez, now a ready reserve transport ship for MARAD, in MSC livery ca. 2010. Benavidez is moving parts for the U.S. Army Trident temporary pier to be operated off Gaza. Wikipedia, USN photo.
Meanwhile, M/V Roy P. Benavidez, a former MSC ship now working ready reserve transport for the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD), is toting Army parts and has shown up off Gaza, where work on the Army pier has begun. Unfortunately, the Army pier site took mortar fire from Hamas on Wednesday 24 April.
Notification that Israel & CENTCOM have concluded the Joint Logistics agreement for IDF security to the temporary pier project off Gaza. See translation below.
Note that this announcement comes shortly after a report that the pier received mortar fire, apparently off Gaza…
1/x https://t.co/OtihzYo9lz— J.E. Dyer ?? (@OptimisticCon) April 25, 2024
Since U.S. personnel, most of them Army soldiers, are working on the pier set-up offshore, this does put them in direct peril from the threat of Hamas ashore. Note that the range of mortar fire is limited, and if the pier was hit (not entirely clear that the pier itself was hit at sea; it may have been equipment on the beach), that presumably means its position in the water is close to shore at this point.
he MARAD transport ship Benavidez took a position at a prudent distance offshore on 24 April, appearing to be outside mortar range of the Gaza coast. The ship has not reported a position since late on 24 April, probably due to the mortar fire.
Benavidez is about 7NM (8 statute miles) off Gaza at this position reported on 24 April 2024. The ships has not reported a position via AIS since reported mortar fire from Hamas on 24 April. Map: Marine Traffic; author annotation
A few hours after the report of mortar fire, which resulted in some “light” damage to the pier equipment, and minor injuries to one person (not reported to be an American soldier), the IDF on 25 April announced an agreement with CENTCOM by which the IDF will provide shore-side security for the pier project.
This would be required for the pier construction to continue, since the Army pier must of necessity be close to the coast. The construction workers can’t be left vulnerable to mortar (or rocket) fire offshore. The artillery threat has to be neutralized ashore. An Israeli media outlet, Kann News, reports via Twitter/X that the IDF will provide “a brigade [presumably infantry], a navy ship and an aircraft to protect the US forces working to build the pier in Gaza.”
(The navy ship and the aircraft would fill patrol stations, deploying in rotation.) More on this below.
Four of the Army landing craft vessels that will support the pier’s operations – out of a total of five dispatched for the project – are in the Eastern Mediterranean. One, USAV SP4 James A. Loux (LSV-6), is in Souda Bay, Crete. One, USAV General Frank S. Besson (LSV-1), is nearing Gaza on a lone transit. Two, USAV Monterrey (LCU-2030) and USAV Matamoros (LCU-2026), are just behind Besson as of 26 April, in company with each other and on course for the Gaza coast.
We may deduce that the USAVs are approaching the pier site now because they have deliveries to make to it, though it wouldn’t be consignments of humanitarian aid at this point. The USAVs might, at this point, be delivering things to Benavidez, which is afforded with multiple deck cranes and in calm seas can retrieve cargo from vessels moored alongside. (If enough of the Trident pier is in place, the USAVs could deliver cargo directly to it. Some guarantee of safety from shore-based attacks should be in place for moving to that stage, however.)
The fifth Army vessel, USAV Wilson Wharf (LCU-2011), is apparently in port in the Canary Islands off North Africa as of 26 April 2024. Wilson Wharf last reported her position on arrival at Santa Cruz de Tenerife on 5 April 2024, and observers assume she has suffered a casualty of some kind because she hasn’t moved since.
If Benavidez’s location is a guide, it appears the Army’s temporary pier – the element directly on the Gaza coast – will be relatively far north off Gaza. That said, we shouldn’t necessarily assume Benavidez is situated close to where the pier work is being done. Safety for the ship, which has no defenses against standoff rocket or mortar threats, would be paramount. A satellite image of the pier under construction will probably emerge in the next few days.
Also worth noting is Hezbollah’s ability to launch rocket or cruise missile fire from off the Lebanese coast. Antiship cruise missiles, in particular, would have the range to reach the temporary pier site in northern Gaza if fired from Lebanese waters (or the Lebanese coast).
Parking in the middle of Israel’s war
The Biden administration’s anxiety to set up the pier, considered alongside its animosity toward an IDF campaign against Hamas in Rafah, its determined insistence on a ceasefire, its reiteration of the “two-state solution” refrain, and its proposal of a multinational peacekeeping force for Gaza, speaks loudly to the administration’s intent to push its policies over Israel’s for the post-war strategy.
This is actually more important than the replenishment of standard munitions Congress just voted for Israel, and Biden’s agreement to sign it. Israel can certainly use the ammo and parts, but providing them doesn’t mean Biden actually supports Israel’s plan for ridding Gaza of Hamas and implementing post-combat security and a transition phase there. In the latter regard, the Biden posture doesn’t look like support of Israel at all.
It looks instead like the U.S. administration seeking to interpolate itself in the situation and shape it to U.S. will, as expressed by Biden and his agencies, rather than supporting Israel’s policy.
The method of gaining leverage in Gaza, per se, is envisioned in part through the temporary pier (a theme I discussed in earlier articles). Bringing in the pier – which in fact represents the second new access point for outside, third-party actors to Gaza from the sea (the WCK delivery point was the first) – will expand the metastasizing problem for Israel of losing control of what’s entering Gaza and who purports to have a stake in it.
This is why Israel is prepared to provide comprehensive security for the pier assembly and operation. Israel doesn’t want U.S. boots on the ground in Gaza, and – in light of Biden’s vow that no U.S. boots will stray there – Israel also doesn’t want other nations’ boots on that ground. Israel doesn’t want outside private security contractors there, armed and ready to shoot at Hamas. Israel can’t afford to allow an uncontrollable situation of that kind to develop.
That’s partly because it could blow up at any time. But it’s also because getting personnel in Gaza whose security is at risk begins to give outside parties a stake in Israel’s arrangements and operations there, and that’s a foot in the door for political vetoes over, precisely, Israel’s arrangements and operations.
NO ONE WITH AN INTEREST IN KNOWING WHAT’S HAPPENING IN GAZA WOULD CONSTRAIN HIMSELF TO AVOID RECEIVING INTELLIGENCE FROM EXPERIENCED INTELLIGENCE COLLECTORS CONTRACTED TO OPERATE THERE.
Pushing for a ceasefire and emphasizing the hostages – although the importance of some to the U.S. as Americans is seldom mentioned – is a schedule of measures to delay Israel’s Rafah finale: the complete removal of Hamas from Gaza.
Continued emphasis of the alleged impending “famine” in Gaza is a way of keeping the pretext for outside intervention and third-party presence in Gaza alive.
Many people who recognize that the famine allegation is invalid, and who perceive the temporary pier as overkill, nevertheless resist recognizing the persistent thrust of Biden’s policies as a campaign to thwart Israel and leverage control of post-war Gaza out from under the planners in Jerusalem. Those people tend to be Democrats who support Israel and mistake the provision of military aid – however foot-dragging and politicized it may be – for back-up to Israel’s policy plans. That’s not what it is; day after day that point is confirmed by the Biden administration’s proclamations against Israeli policy.
That said, Israel is getting a lot done under the veil of distraction created by the Western media’s evanescing obsessions. The sheer media cacophony of the campus protests in the U.S., along with the focus on Iran’s missile and drone attack and such war-narrative elements as the alleged “mass grave” found in Gaza, have obscured significant accomplishments by the IDF on recent days. As much as Team Biden, and the EU and UN, warn against an IDF operation to clear Hamas out of Rafah, Israel has laid the groundwork for that operation and is preparing to execute it soon. That reality is overshadowed by the American uproar over the protests, and has not received the prominent coverage it might otherwise have.
The IDF has also brought off a series of attacks on Iranian (and Hezbollah) infrastructure in Syria and Lebanon – accomplishments that may be viewed, if one prefers, as a continuation of a longstanding preventative strike profile by Israel, but in the current context are more likely preparation for a significant operation to paralyze and degrade Hezbollah. In the wake of the attacks, Iran has actually moved forces out of southern Syria.
That matters, because the further those forces are from Israel, the more reaction time the IDF will have to them. Iranian cadre (both the Qods Force and the Iran-backed militias), an intermittent source of attacks on Israel, has been forced out of position for surprise from its locations in Syria.
Just to make things briefly interesting, USS Dwight D Eisenhower (CVN-69) moved on 26 April from the Red Sea into the Eastern Med, for an undisclosed reason.
But Israel is still steadily getting its desired job done. There will be more pressure to withstand from the Biden administration in the coming days, but Israel must withstand it and carry through on ridding Gaza of Hamas, degrading Hezbollah, and keeping the real prospect of preemption ever before the eyes of the radical regime in Iran.
Feature image: A Trident Pier supports Combined Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore (CJLOTS) 2015, July 3, Anmyeon Beach, Republic of Korea. U.S. Army photo by Maricris C. McLane.
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