The United States is aiming for the pier that would facilitate aid to Gaza to be ready before May 1, a US official said on Thursday, according to Reuters.
US President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address earlier this month, announced plans for a temporary pier on the coast of Gaza that would receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelter and provide aid to the Strip.
Biden later said that Israel will provide security for the port.
"The US military is doing everything they can to accelerate the deployment of this capability, to make it operational prior to the May 1 target date that they've set," Curtis Ried, Chief of Staff of the National Security Council, said on Thursday.
"They are working very hard to advance that and hopefully we can see it operational a bit earlier than that," he told journalists on the sidelines of a conference in Cyprus, according to Reuters.
Asked about how the operation would work within Gaza, Ried said there was no plan for American personnel to go ashore. He echoed Biden’s statement that Israel would play an important role in securing a broad area, and added that the US was talking to "a number of countries" about potentially serving as a security partner within the perimeter compound secured by the Israelis.
From there on, he said, aid would likely be distributed by a UN agency, and that the UN “Palestinian refugee” agency UNRWA would, for the foreseeable future, continue to be used.
The US paused funding to UNRWA in January, after Israel said that 12 of the agency's employees in Gaza took part in Hamas’ October 7 attacks.
Ried said on Thursday that the US had been clear that while it had serious concerns over the allegations Israel raised regarding UNRWA staff, it considered its distribution network essential for aid getting through to Palestinian Arabs.
"We must continue to make use of UNRWA's distribution network in Gaza because there isn’t a way to replace it quickly, it might be replaced over time, but currently it’s the best method that we have to deliver assistance."