A US Army official said that typically in these operations, a large vessel sits off the shore of the desired location, and a “roll-on-roll-off discharge facility”– a big floating dock– is constructed next to the ship to serve as the holding area. Cargo driven or placed on the dock is loaded onto smaller Navy boats and moved towards a temporary pier or causeway anchored ashore.

The 550-metre two-lane temporary causeway is built by Army engineers, flanked by tugboats and driven, or “stabbed”, into the shore. Cargo aboard the smaller Navy boats can then be driven onto the causeway and onshore.

Ryder insisted the military could build the causeway and stab it into the shore without putting any American boots– or fins – on the ground in Gaza. He said it would take up to 60 days and about 1000 US troops to move the ship into place from the US East Coast and to build the dock and causeway.

After the ship arrives offshore, it would take about 7 to 10 days to assemble the floating dock and the causeway, a Defence Department official said.

“This is part of a full-court press by the United States to not only focus on working on opening up and expanding roads via land, which of course are the optimal way to get aid into Gaza, but also by conducting airdrops,” Ryder said.

The floating pier will allow for the delivery of “upward of 2 million meals a day,” he said. The Gaza Strip has a population of about 2.3 million people.

Ryder acknowledged that neither the airdrops nor the floating pier would be as effective as sending aid by land, which Israel has blocked. “We want to see the amount of aid going via land increase significantly,” Ryder said. “We understand that is the most viable way to get aid in.”

But, he added, “we’re not going to wait around”.

The US will work with regional partners and European allies to build, fund and maintain the corridor, officials said, noting that the idea for the project originated in Cyprus.

On Thursday, Sigrid Kaag, the UN.humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, welcomed the Biden announcement. But, speaking with reporters after briefing the Security Council, she added, “at the same time I cannot but repeat: air and sea is not a substitute for land, and nobody says otherwise”.

The Biden humanitarian efforts in Gaza so far “may make a few people in the United States feel good,” Robert Ford, a former US ambassador to Syria, said in an interview. But, he added, “this is applying a very small Band-Aid to a very big wound.”

The humanitarian aid will probably be gathered in Larnaca, Cyprus, some 210 nautical miles (388 km) from Gaza, officials said. That would allow Israeli officials to screen the shipments first.

While the temporary port will initially be military-run, Washington envisions it eventually being commercially operated, the official said.

Two diplomats briefed on the plans said the port would be erected on Gaza’s shoreline slightly north of the Wadi Gaza crossing, where Israeli forces have erected a major checkpoint.

Meanwhile, the Open Arms, a salvage vessel, plans to tow a barge with 200 tonnes of food, mostly funded by the UAE. The supplies were sourced by charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), which is working with Spanish non-governmental organisation Proactiva Open Arms. WCK said it had another 500 tonnes of supplies in Cyprus, which would be dispatched in future missions, Reuters reported.

The central problems, however, remain unsolved. Aid officials say that delivering supplies by truck is far more efficient and less expensive than bringing them to Gaza by boat. But trucks are still unable to deliver goods amid Israeli shelling and ground fighting, which is fierce in southern Gaza.

And delivering assistance by sea may not prevent the chaos that has accompanied deliveries.

More than 100 people were killed in Gaza last month, health officials there said, when hungry civilians rushed at a convoy of aid trucks, leading to a stampede and prompting Israeli soldiers to fire at the crowd.

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The US military has airdropped aid in the Middle East and South Asia during previous conflicts, even during wars in which the United States was directly involved.

In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered military aircraft to drop food and water to tens of thousands of Yazidis trapped on a barren mountain range in northwestern Iraq. The Yazidis, members of an ethnic and religious minority, were fleeing militants who were threatening genocide.

In 2001, President George W. Bush ordered British and American troops striking the Taliban in Afghanistan to airdrop daily rations to civilians trapped in remote areas of the country.

On Saturday morning, US military cargo planes dropped emergency aid into Gaza for the fifth time in recent days. US Central Command said in a statement that American C-130 aircraft had dropped bundles with parachutes containing 41,400 meals and 23,000 bottles of water.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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