The most generous responses to President Biden’s plan to establish a maritime aid corridor to battered Gaza, including building a temporary port and aid deliveries from Cyprus, were marked by skepticism that it would work.
Others saw in the proposal, which Biden announced Thursday in his State of the Union address, more evidence of the administration’s reluctance to confront Israel over its obstruction of relief deliveries or use the United States’ extraordinary leverage as Israel’s main military backer to mitigate the most catastrophic consequences of the war.
Sigrid Kaag, the senior U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, said she welcomed the plan, which came days after the United States joined the handful of countries airdropping aid on the enclave. “At the same time I cannot but repeat, air and sea is not a substitute for land,” she said, where truck deliveries have been sharply limited.
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British Foreign Minister David Cameron, whose government is participating in the U.S. maritime delivery plan, echoed the sentiment. “We continue to urge Israel to allow more trucks into Gaza as the fastest way to get aid to those who need it,” he said in a post Friday on X.
Bader Al-Saif, a professor of history at Kuwait University, said creating a maritime corridor to bypass easier routes for delivering aid is only the latest element of a “baffling” policy response by the Biden administration that’s being noted around the Middle East.
“It sends a very bad signal on U.S. leadership,” he said. “It reinforces what many Arabs think: that Israel is running the show, and the U.S. follows.”
Biden said the plan would allow a “massive” increase in lifesaving aid to besieged Palestinians. Gaza is suffering a spreading hunger crisis that aid officials describe as man-made, caused by limited entry points for supplies, an onerous Israeli inspection process and Israeli attacks on aid convoys and the local police that guard them.
Israel denies limiting aid to Gaza.
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“A temporary pier that could take weeks to construct or airdrops are not a solution,” the International Rescue Committee said in a statement. “The US must use its influence to ensure that Israel lifts its siege of Gaza, reopens its crossings, including the Karni and Erez crossings in the north, and allows the safe and unimpeded movement of humanitarian workers and aid — including fuel, food, and medical supplies.”
Lior Haiat, a spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the country “welcomes the inauguration of the maritime corridor from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip.”
“The Cypriot initiative will allow the increase of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, after security checks are carried out in accordance with Israeli standards,” he wrote Friday on X.
Biden’s speech Thursday included a rare acknowledgment by the president of the scale of Palestinian suffering in Gaza during Israel’s military offensive against Hamas. “This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas,” Biden said. That number comes from the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures he previously derided as suspect.
Wissam Thabet, a 40-year-old Palestinian who fled his home to shelter in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, said a key piece was missing from the address.
Biden “speaks as if what is happening in Gaza is far from American weapons,” he said, when, in fact, the United States is the largest provider of weapons to Israel.
“Our problem is not aid,” Thabet said. “Yes, there is a crisis in Gaza, but the solution to the crisis cannot be achieved through increasing aid. We need a cease-fire. We need to end the suffering completely.”
Al-Saif, the Kuwait University historian, said some of his comments — including on increasing humanitarian aid deliveries — were welcome, but “the tone needs to change.”
“It shouldn’t be an ask” of Israel, he said. “It should be a command.” With its weapons deliveries to Israel, he said, the United States is “financing the war.”
The sympathy Biden did show for Palestinians, he said, appeared to be “tactical,” aimed at placating a domestic constituency he’s losing: Democratic primary voters in battleground states who have been voting “uncommitted” to protest the administration’s support for Israel.
Thabet said a maritime corridor doesn’t address Gaza’s principal need.
“We need to live normally like other people in the whole world,” he said. “Establishing a port in Gaza will not change the reality.”
Al-Saif called the plan “laughable.”
“How long is it going to take to build a port? The aid was needed yesterday.”
correction
A previous version of this article misidentified a resident of Gaza reacting to the State of the Union address. The resident’s name is Wissam Thabet. The article has been corrected.