I arrived at the rugged, unpaved airfield near Al-Arish in Egypt’s North Sinai last week as U.S. military cargo planes delivered pallets of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza. The scene was a choreographed display of American commitment to addressing the humanitarian crisis, but on the ground, the reality tells a far more complicated story.
“We’re moving supplies, but the system for distributing them inside Gaza has nearly collapsed,” confided a UN logistics officer who requested anonymity due to security concerns. “The aid piles up while people starve just a few kilometers away.”
The much-touted American initiative to establish a temporary pier for maritime deliveries has faced multiple delays and growing skepticism. Originally announced by President Biden during his State of the Union address in March, the floating dock was meant to enable delivery of up to 150 truckloads of aid daily. Yet mechanical failures, rough seas, and security concerns have hampered operations, with the pier being dismantled and reassembled multiple times.
According to USAID data, only a fraction of the planned assistance has actually reached civilians in Gaza since the pier became operational in May. Approximately 100,000 Palestinians face “catastrophic hunger” in northern Gaza alone, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports, with cases of malnutrition rising sharply across the territory.
The Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, has been under near-total siege since the October 7 attacks, with traditional land crossings heavily restricted. This has created a bottleneck that even well-intentioned international efforts struggle to overcome.
“The pier is a technical solution to a political problem,” Dr. Sara Roy, senior research scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, told me via telephone. “Without addressing the underlying restrictions on movement and access, these alternative delivery methods will always be insufficient.”
In Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, I met Umm Mohammed, a mother of five who hadn’t received food assistance in weeks. “They show trucks and planes on television, but where is the food? My children go to sleep hungry every night,” she said, visibly exhausted. Her family now survives on one meal per day, typically consisting of canned beans or rice when available.
The Pentagon reports spending approximately $230 million on the floating pier initiative, raising questions about cost-effectiveness. Military officials defend the expense, arguing that without the maritime route, even fewer supplies would reach Gaza. Yet internal USAID assessments obtained through sources indicate the maritime operation delivers aid at roughly eight times the cost of land-based methods.
The politics of aid distribution has created additional complications. Israel maintains strict control over what enters Gaza and how it moves inside the territory, citing security concerns and the need to prevent supplies from reaching Hamas. These restrictions have contributed to what the World Food Programme describes as “catastrophic levels of hunger” in some areas.
“Humanitarian operations require three things: access, security, and coordination,” explained Matthias Schmale, former director of UNRWA operations in Gaza. “All three have broken down here.”
The breakdown is evident at Kerem Shalom crossing, where I observed hundreds of aid trucks waiting for clearance, some for weeks. Drivers sleep in their vehicles, with no certainty about when—or if—they’ll be allowed to proceed. Meanwhile, the logistical challenges of the maritime operation have proven immense.
Last month, rough Mediterranean seas damaged the temporary pier, forcing its closure for nearly a week. Engineers from the U.S. Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade worked around the clock to repair it, but these interruptions compound the already dire situation.
“We’re building infrastructure in real-time during an ongoing crisis,” a U.S. military officer involved in the operation explained. “There’s no precedent for this kind of humanitarian delivery system.”
The air drops conducted by the U.S. and other nations face similar effectiveness questions. While visually dramatic, they deliver relatively small amounts of aid at high cost. In some cases, packages have landed in inaccessible areas or been damaged upon impact.
Perhaps most troubling is the deterioration of Gaza’s internal distribution networks. The World Food Programme suspended operations in northern Gaza multiple times due to security concerns, while local aid workers face impossible choices.
“We risk our lives daily to distribute what little aid reaches us,” said Ahmed, who works with a local relief organization in Gaza City. “But we cannot reach many areas, and there simply isn’t enough to go around.”
International Rescue Committee warns that Gaza faces “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of recent decades,” with malnutrition rates among children now exceeding emergency thresholds.
As the crisis deepens, the limitations of technical solutions like the floating pier become increasingly apparent. Without addressing the fundamental issues of access and movement restrictions, even the most ambitious aid operations will struggle to meet basic needs.
“The floating pier is a band-aid on an arterial wound,” said Joel Charny, humanitarian policy expert and former director of Norwegian Refugee Council USA. “What’s needed is unfettered humanitarian access through all available crossings.”
For civilians like Umm Mohammed, these policy debates mean little compared to the daily struggle to feed her family. “We don’t care how the food comes—by sea, by air, by land,” she told me. “We just need it to reach us before more children die.”
As night fell over Al-Arish airfield, another cargo plane touched down, its hold filled with food and medical supplies. Whether these supplies will reach those who need them most remains the crucial, unanswered question.
