A ship containing some 200 metric tons of food is set to arrive in Gaza on Thursday — even though there is no pier in place to receive it and the capacity of international aid agencies for distributing the food to those most in need is questionable, both Israeli and U.N. officials told Jewish Insider.

The ship, which set sail from the Cypriot port of Larnaca early on Tuesday, is part of a World Central Kitchen initiative aimed at providing meals to those trapped in the war-torn Gaza Strip. The operation, which will supplement airdrops of international aid that started earlier this month, has been framed by world leaders, including President Joe Biden, who mentioned the construction of a Gaza pier in his State of the Union address, as a way to circumvent Israeli restrictions on aid going into the Palestinian enclave.

Israel, however, has maintained that there are no restrictions on the amount of aid that can enter Gaza. Instead, they’ve said that the barriers to delivering food and other essential items to more than 2 million civilians are because of limitations with the distribution network facilitated by foreign aid agencies, which are facing serious challenges in reaching those in need.

At the start of this month, Biden announced that the U.S. would join the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and France in air dropping aid into Gaza, and since then the Department of Defense has carried out at least four airborne operations delivering more than 200 bundles containing over 100,000 meals, a White House official told the press in a briefing last week.

“We’re not waiting on the Israelis,” the official said. “This is a moment for American leadership, and we are building a coalition of countries to address this urgent need.”

Biden announced in his State of the Union address that he had directed “the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters…A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”

Contrary to the Biden administration’s portrayal of the initiative as a way to bypass Israel, Jewish Insider heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tout the idea in a press briefing – off the record at the time – on Nov. 5, 2023. Netanyahu said at the time, less than a month into the war, that he had already discussed the idea with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.

Israeli officials told JI this week that it is not only involved in the additional aid efforts but that it welcomes all such initiatives.

“In terms of what is standing in the way of getting more aid to the people of Gaza, it’s an issue of distribution, not inspection,” Shimon Freedman, international media spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli military unit that coordinates between Israel and the Palestinian territories, told JI.

He said that while in the initial stages of the war the amount of aid going into Gaza was slow, “we now have the capacity.”

“We started off with one inspection point at Nitsana, then we added another one in Kerem Shalom. We’ve also taken several steps within both of these checking points to increase our capability of inspection – so increasing the manpower, longer working hours, additional scanning equipment,” Freedman said, adding, “We’ve reached a point today that we can now inspect 44 trucks an hour at those crossings, so the issue is not one of inspection.  

“The biggest problem is distribution,” Freedman continued, describing how there were times over the past few months that some 200 or 300 trucks worth of aid waited at the crossings to be picked up by the international organizations that operate in Gaza.

Freedman said that Israel was hopeful that air and sea initiatives would provide more aid to Gazans, particularly to those in the northern part of the territory where a collapse of civil order has made distribution difficult. Two weeks ago, more than 100 people were killed, including some by Israeli military fire, when an aid convoy heading north was overwhelmed by Gazans looking for food.

On Tuesday, Israel allowed six trucks filled with aid to enter Gaza from a newly opened crossing in the northern part of the Strip as part of a pilot project. A statement by the World Food Program confirmed that enough food for 25,000 people had reached Gaza City for the first time since Feb. 20. 

Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told JI that the looting of aid trucks, especially in the north where supplies of food were scarce, was due to severe food insecurity and desperation.

“Because of the intermittent supply of food going into Gaza, people are very desperate and because they are desperate, when they see trucks going past they try to stop them and take something for themselves and their families,” he said. “Growing needs and an insufficient supply, limited access roads and then insecurity of distribution – all of those things together, make this a challenging environment.”

McGoldrick said that while he welcomed “any food that comes into the north via whatever means,” making it cost effective and efficient was also important. Delivering aid in truckloads is far cheaper than the airdrops, which he said did not always reach those who really needed it.

“On the maritime initiative, I think it’s great that World Central Kitchen is doing this; they do some important work setting up kitchens for people to get meals in different parts of Gaza,” he continued. “My understanding is that this boat coming in will try to resupply the kitchens they have in the north.”

But, McGoldrick noted that there was still an issue of distribution.

“You have to recognize that as soon as you land with the boats – and it will be difficult enough to land without a pier or a harbor – how do you get the aid into the back of a truck?” he said, adding that “you still need roads and those areas are prone to insecurity, looting and ransacking, so what’s to stop that truck from being looted as well?”

World Central Kitchen did not answer a query from JI about how it plans to distribute the aid.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an American political analyst originally from Gaza, emphasized that providing aid in whatever way possible is “immensely critical,” but that they could not be sustained over a long period of time. 

“[The airdrops] are a rapid way to quickly provide food and sustenance needs that are desperately and urgently required, particularly over the isolated north,” he said. “They are not meant to be a permanent or long-term solution as they are expensive and only provide a fraction of the needed aid quantities but in the absence of a cease-fire agreement or a resolution to land-based delivery issues, airdrops remain vital to saving lives and preventing famine-like conditions.” 

Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren also said that the pier project posed a problem and predicted to JI that it was not beyond Hamas to fire rockets at the pier in an attempt to destroy it. 

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, “has an interest in having Palestinians starve,” so that the U.S. pressures Israel to end the war, Oren said.

”Hamas built 450 miles of tunnels,” he continued. “During Israeli airstrikes, the tunnels could have housed the entire population of Gaza and they would have been safe, but no one ever makes that case.”

“It was as if Britain cut off the Underground during the Blitz. Sinwar wants people to die,” Oren said.

As such, Oren said, he disagreed with “people who think [Israel] shouldn’t let aid in, because it’s the only leverage we have over Hamas. Aiding Palestinians actually hurts Hamas.”