Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) sparred over whether the U.S. forces who will be on the pier off Gaza’s coast for humanitarian aid constitute having “boots on the ground” in the strip.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly said he would not put U.S. forces in Gaza, though during his State of the Union address last month, he announced that he directed U.S. troops to build a temporary pier and causeway in the Mediterranean Sea to increase the amount of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. The roughly 1,000 U.S. forces involved in the mission will not physically be on Gazan soil.
U.S. troops will stay offshore and will sleep on the RFA Cardigan Bay, a British naval ship, at sea, except those coordinating the efforts in Cyprus and Israel, a senior U.S. military official told reporters last week.
Austin said “it’s possible” that U.S. forces on the pier could come under enemy fire from Gaza during his testimony in front of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
“Don’t you think that counts as boots on the ground?” Gaetz asked the secretary. “President Biden told the country we weren’t going to have boots on the ground in Gaza. … You guys seem to be saying boots on a pier connected to the ground connected to service members shooting into Gaza doesn’t count as boots on the ground.”
“It does not,” Austin responded.
The pier and the causeway are expected to be up and running within the next week or so. Defense officials have said it’ll be operational by early May. It is expected to cost roughly $320 million, according to deputy Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
Last week, a “small number of mortars landed in the vicinity of the marshaling yard area” on the coast, according to Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder. Even when the pier is operational, U.S. forces would not have been in the location where the mortars hit.
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Humanitarian aid will get transported to Cyprus, where it will be loaded onto commercial ships and then travel roughly 200 miles from there to the floating pier, known as a Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability. It will then be loaded onto new vessels that will go from the pier to the causeway. Once the aid gets to the causeway, it can be transported to land via truck and get distributed within Gaza.
“Nothing we do is risk-free,” Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week. “I feel strongly that it will be protected,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it won’t potentially have some threat against it, but it’s something we are focused on.”