Unpredictable weather between Cyprus and Gaza may delay the transportation of humanitarian aid to the strip, White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said on Friday.
He said there are “weather concerns in the eastern Mediterranean, which might affect the date at which you will be able to start receiving humanitarian goods.”
“I understand that the weather right now is as much a factor as just about anything else,” he added.
His statement comes as strong winds hit Cyprus’ coasts and the coming weekend is set to see sporadic storms hit across the island and its vicinity, with temperatures set to drop in the coming days.
In addition, torrential rain hit Nicosia on Wednesday, highlighting the unpredictable nature of the region’s weather in recent days.
Unfavourable weather had delayed previous shipments of humanitarian aid from Cyprus to Gaza in March, with the winds having been too high for the ships to set sail on a number of days.
In addition to his warning about the weather, Kirby echoed the words of Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh from Wednesday, saying the construction of a jetty off the coast of Gaza to facilitate aid is nearly complete.
Singh had said the jetty was “over 50 per cent complete”, and that one of the two parts thereof, the floating pier, has now been “completely constructed and set up”.
She added that construction of the causeway, which will connect the pier to land, is “in progress”.
The latest humanitarian aid shipment from Cyprus to Gaza, aboard the ship the Jennifer, landed at the Israeli port of Ashdod on April 28.
President Nikos Christodoulides had hailed a “mission resumed” in Cyprus’ humanitarian aid corridor to Gaza, known as the Amalthea plan, on April 27, after the ship had set sail.
Then, on Tuesday, he had said the next shipment of humanitarian aid from Cyprus is ready to depart “as soon as the US give us the green light”.
He had at the time said the jetty would be complete by Thursday, but the project has now been hit by delays, notwithstanding American optimism that it is currently nearing completion.
News website Reuters reported on Monday that the jetty had cost a total of $320 million (€298m) to construct, and that around 1,000 US servicepeople had been involved in its construction, most of whom are from the US Army and the US Navy.
That cost is around double that of original estimates, according to US Senator Roger Wicker.
Wicker, a Republican from the state of Mississippi, said “this dangerous effort with marginal benefits will now cost the American taxpayer at least $320m to operate the pier for only 90 days.”
“For every day this mission continues, the price tag goes up and so does the level of risk for the 1,000 deployed troops within range of Hamas’ rockets,” he said.
The jetty’s potential placement has also been a cause for concern among some quarters, with British newspaper The Guardian having reported on Wednesday that the jetty’s placement may be too far south to help alleviate the “very high” risk of famine in the northern part of Gaza.
The north of Gaza, including Gaza City, has been effectively cut off from the rest of the strip by a military road constructed by the Israeli Defence Force which connects Israel with Gaza’s coast, known as the Netzarim corridor.
As such, if the jetty is placed south of the Netzarim corridor, any aid sent towards Gaza City and the rest of the north of the strip will still have to pass through an IDF checkpoint. This would arguably defeat the point of shipping the aid directly to Gaza.
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Mail
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Mail
Source
