Barghouti warns temporary Gaza port ‘could be used to displace Palestinians’

Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, yesterday voiced concerns that a pier which may be built to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip could lead to the displacement of Palestinians from the enclave, Anadolu news agency reported.

“The proposed pier will be under Israeli control and may be used to perpetuate the reoccupation of Gaza,” Barghouti said in a statement.

He called the months-long construction of the pier by the US “an evasion of its legal and moral responsibility for the Gaza blockade.”

“There are real fears that Israel could use it to displace Gaza’s population and carry out ethnic cleansing, which it failed to achieve by force,” he added.

“If the United States wanted, it could force Israel to open all crossings within 24 hours,” he said.

UN: Opening maritime passage to Gaza insufficient to meet Gaza’s aid needs

The US has said it will set up a temporary pier off Gaza to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Palestinians in the besieged territory, with a ship carrying equipment for the construction work on the structure already on its way. Rights groups and the UN have warned that such a project would be insufficient to meet the demands of the Palestinians in Gaza who face famine as a result of Israel’s siege.

It is thought the pier would be able to process 200 trucks of aid a day, while prior to Israel’s brutal bombing campaign an average of 500 trucks of aid were entering the enclave every day by road, even this was insufficient to meet the needs of Gaza’s population.

Barghouti also said the recent airdrops of humanitarian aid “will not eradicate famine in Gaza.”

“The only solution is to break the siege through the Rafah crossing [with Egypt] and force Israel to open all land terminals to deliver aid and medicine to all areas of the Gaza Strip, including the north,” he added.

Last week, five people were killed as a result of the US airdrop of aid over Gaza.