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.

      • Flying Squid
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        106 months ago

        Seriously though, how was this not foreseen?

        • @[email protected]OP
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          226 months ago

          It was a rush job. I’m not surprised things were missed.

          That said it’s an extraordinary amount of money spent when the simpler solution would have been to tie continued Israeli funding with opening the Rafah crossing (and providing protection for the goods).

          • Flying Squid
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            146 months ago

            “Ocean waters can be rough” is a big fucking thing to miss when building a floating pier.

              • Flying Squid
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                06 months ago

                This wasn’t supposed to be that quick though, was it? I thought this was going to be the primary way aid was going to get into Gaza. It could potentially need to last a very long time.

                • @[email protected]
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                  66 months ago

                  Who can say? Could equally have been either a temporary solution, or just a really shoddy “permanent” solution by the lowest bidder.

                  I’m inclined to think temporary just for speed, potentially (ideally) with plans in place for something more long term.

                  An alternative purpose of a temporary structure could be also be to not piss off israel (for some reason, they care about that) by giving Palestinians access to a stable port.

      • @[email protected]
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        66 months ago

        He was in fact not a carpenter, but probably a mason. The whole carpenter thing is a mis translation.

        • @[email protected]
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          46 months ago

          More likely he didn’t exist other than as an itinerant preacher. It would be weird for the son of the creator of the universe to redo party tricks already attributed to previous gods.

          • tate
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            66 months ago

            No, you didn’t. Don’t just take that kind of information from some joker in an internet forum. They provided no evidence or even citations, so now, unless you looked into carefully in the meantime, you don’t know anything that you didn’t know before.

            • @[email protected]
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              56 months ago

              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.

            • @Taniwha420
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              36 months ago

              The word used to describe Jesus’s occupation in Greek is ‘technōn’ (Mark 6:3), which means something like ‘builder’. In terms of etymological root, ‘technician’ might be closer. It commonly referred to carpenters, but also masons. There’s an argument to be made that with Roman involvement in the area there were a lot of Roman summer stone building projects, making it more likely Jesus was a mason than a carpenter.

              Maybe he was a roofer?

    • @Land_Strider
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      56 months ago

      It took about 2 months to become operational (don’t know the exact time, but close to or exactly the planned 6-8 building time), used for 2 weeks, then on maintenance for a week. Spent $320M on this already.

      Jesus Christ, indeed.

  • @Fades
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    6 months ago

    https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3702062/pentagon-press-secretary-air-force-maj-gen-pat-ryder-holds-a-press-briefing/

    In addition to U.S. military humanitarian airdrops and the U.S. government’s efforts to continue sustaining and expanding assistance going in by land, as President Biden announce last evening, the Department of Defense will undertake an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in Gaza, working alongside like-minded countries and partners.

    it was always a temporary, time-oriented thing, as another way to get aid to Gaza while bypassing the israeli zionist fuckfaces that attack and stop aid trucks. Trucks are better per the UN but if they can’t get there they’re useless.

  • @[email protected]
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    6 months ago

    Us: But why did the front fall off?
    Military: Well a wave hit it.
    Us: A wave hit it?
    Military: A wave hit the dock.
    Us: Is that unusual?
    Military: Oh yeah. At sea? Chance in a million!

    • @TechNerdWizard42
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      26 months ago

      And then,

      Military: If you love your country and freedom from Poseidon, we require $10B to study the affects of these “waves” on modern equipment and soldier moral.

      Congress: oh my god! Here’s $20B. We luv you so much, uwu