Exclusive: UN says US Gaza pier plan compromises its neutrality

The United States’ plan to deliver aid to Gaza via a maritime corridor hit a major hurdle this week, as United Nations agencies resisted pressure from Washington to distribute the life-saving goods, citing concerns they could be seen to be collaborating with the Israeli Defense Forces. The Biden administration has been pressing U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and the heads of U.N. agencies, including the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization, to participate in a U.S.- and Israeli-led plan to ratchet up humanitarian assistance in Gaza. By the end of the month, the U.S. Navy plans to erect a sea bridge, or jetty, in southern Gaza to speed up the delivery of assistance in Gaza, facing famine after six months of intense Israeli restrictions on assistance. The Israel Defense Forces plan to provide a security perimeter around the drop-off point, offload the goods, and hand them off to workers contracted by the U.N. agencies. On Wednesday, the U.N. undersecretary-general in the U.N. Department for Safety and Security, Gilles Michaud, phoned the State Department to raise concerns about the security of U.N. personnel throughout Gaza if the Israeli army were to play a central role in managing the aid operation. He also noted that the heads of U.N. agencies felt the U.S. was pressuring them to work directly with the Israeli army. The debate is playing out as the U.S. and Israel are facing increasing pressure to ensure the protection of civilians, particularly in the days following the deadly Israeli strike against World Central Kitchen, which left seven aid workers dead, bringing the grand total of aid workers who have been killed to over 200. David Satterfield, the U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, said the relief effort is critical to Israel’s broader strategic war aims, which the U.S. supports. “The humanitarian element of this campaign is absolutely essential. The humanitarian element has lagged,” he said in an April 10 interview with the American Jewish Committee. “There is an imminent risk of starvation for the majority, if not all the 2.2 million population of Gaza. This is not a point in debate. It is an established fact, which the United States, its experts, the international community, believe is real.” Martin Griffiths, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, convened a Zoom meeting with the heads of U.N. relief agencies, including WFP’s Executive Director Cindy McCain, UNICEF chief Catherine Russell, WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, to discuss the aid situation. He raised concern about the impact of the U.S. and Israel’s plans on the perception of U.N. neutrality. “The UN welcomes all efforts to increase the amount and type of aid delivered for the people of Gaza, whether by air, sea or, most importantly, land,” he said in a statement issued after the Wednesday meeting. “We trust that no effort will be spared to ensure that aid reaches those who need it across the Gaza Strip, including in the north, that the safety of our aid workers and of civilians remains paramount, and that the independence of our operations is maintained.” “We will continue to work with all those committed to alleviating the humanitarian suffering in Gaza and to advocate for principled and safe aid delivery.” Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Gaza, met on Wednesday with representatives of Israel’s military and humanitarian agencies and presented them with a list of “what is needed for the U.N. and our humanitarian partners to be able to deliver assistance safely, to deliver it effectively and at the necessary scale throughout Gaza,” the U.N.’s chief spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, told reporters at his daily press conference on Thursday. “For any humanitarian operations that would involve the United Nations, the safety of our colleagues and those civilians we are desperately trying to reach remains of the utmost importance,” Dujarric told Devex. “The independence of our humanitarian operations, based on principled and safe delivery of aid, must be maintained.” In a press conference on Friday, McGoldrick outlined a series of concerns about the plan for a maritime corridor, noting that it would be erected far from the area of greatest need in northern Gaza. “We’d hoped that the pier would be in the north of Gaza to address the imminent famine challenges in the north,” he said. He noted that the U.S. and Israel have decided to set up the pier in the south, where the IDF has a military base and a military road to move goods into Gaza. “We still have some concerns over the perception and neutrality of the project, because in many ways the plan, or the operation … embeds us in an IDF-surrounded perimeter,” he said. “And I think that’s difficult for us.” McGoldrick added that the U.N. has been in talks with Israel and U.S. officials, including military officers from the U.S. Central Command, “to try to come up with a solution and we’re trying to develop a paper which will try to give us operational clarity on how we need to work.” One U.N. official told Devex that agencies "do not want the IDF to provide security but rather a security contractor from a member state, rather than a private contractor." The agencies, the official added, want “to ensure that security arrangements would not comprise the U.N. neutrality.” In an effort to underscore the risks of delivering assistance in a war zone, Dujarric noted that one of UNICEF’s vehicles “was hit by live ammunition on Tuesday, while it was waiting to enter northern Gaza. The agency said the incident has been raised with the relevant Israeli authorities.” Some senior U.N. aid officials have been skeptical of the need for a maritime corridor, noting that the humanitarian crisis can be best addressed by accelerating the delivery of food, medicines, fuel, and other goods through truck routes from Israel and Egypt. “But apparently there is definitely a lot of pressure underway with the Americans hitting us up at the highest level to get us to play ball,” one official said. “We think this is a distraction,” the official added, noting that is preventing the U.S. from applying the necessary pressure on Israel to open more border crossings and lessen the bureaucratic red tape that has impeded the swift delivery of assistance. But Satterfield said the maritime channel, when fully operational, would deliver 100 truckloads of assistance, per day. “This is a massive quantity of aid,” he said.