Yves here. Many commentators, including readers here, have ridiculed the floating pier for Gaza humanitarian relief scheme on the assumption it wil not or only barely work. Given that Israel would like that outcome, it’s reasonable to assume Israel will influence the process to assure subpar results. In fact, given how Israel is becoming more and more openly intransigent (see for instance a recent, stunningly offensive letter from the Israeli ambassador to insufficiently Israel-subservient Congresscritters), the government might welcome humiliating the US by turning the pier into a fiasco, provided Israel could have plausible deniability about messing things up.
As this detailed post on exactly what this “pier” amounts to (it turns out there are two!), Israel has many points of potential interference, beyond the well-known one of insisting on inspecting supplies (not that that is unreasonable per se but it’s been clear that Israel has used excessive stringency as an excuse for choking inflows). For instance, Israel is not allowing the US to enter Gaza (!!!). So Israel will control not just cargo inspections but also the anchoring of an 1,800 meter causeway (which attaches to the second pier) to Gaza proper.
And look at how many transfers have to happen to get food and supplies to land. The “Rube Goldberg” characterization is charitable, since Rube Goldberg machines actually do work.
The only good news is that this scheme is so wildly impractical that it can’t serve as a means for herding more than miniscule numbers of Palestinians out of Gaza.
By Ann Wright, a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” Originally published at Common Dreams
Instead of U.S. President Joe Biden marking a red line in the sand demanding that Israel allow aid into Gaza via ground transportation, his inept diplomatic team sent out a plea for help to the U.S. military.
While in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves for 29 years, I thought I had seen some pretty stupid things the military was told by politicians to do. It always begins with politicians deciding the easiest, most sensible solution to a problem would have too much political baggage and cost them votes in the next election. So, they look for a politically expedient solution, one that is invariably very expensive and convoluted.
Attempting a Military Solution for a Political or Diplomat Problem—AGAIN!!!
In this vein, all too often, politicians turn to the U.S. military for a solution to a non-military problem. Then some A-type personality in the military presents a hair-brained idea to the politicians, probably never thinking that the idea would be accepted. Then it is accepted to get the politicians out of a jam, and the next thing you know is that the Rube Goldberg, crazy idea is being funded.
This unbelievable scenario is what has happened with getting humanitarian aid into Gaza for the starving survivors of the Israeli genocide of Gaza. Instead of U.S. President Joe Biden marking a red line in the Israel/Gaza/Egypt sand demanding that Israel allow into Gaza the miles of tractor-trailer loads of food and medicine that have been stalled for months at the Rafah border crossing, Biden’s inept diplomatic team sent out a plea for help to the U.S. military.
And the U.S. military, always looking for validation of its immense “capabilities,” seized the opportunity to use one of its little-known assets—the Army’s Joint Logistics Over the Shore, or JLOTS, system that provides bridging and water access capabilities—to help out the failed U.S. diplomatic efforts to get the U.S.’s “strongest ally in the Middle East” to end the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by letting the massive truck convoys filled with food and medicines into Gaza.
Normally used to move military equipment across rivers where bridges have been blown up—many times by the U.S. military itself—and sometimes to transfer military equipment from a ship onto shore, the U.S. Army’s small navy swung into action and began sailing to the Mediterranean in U.S. Army ships filled with barges that can be locked together to form landing docks and causeways.
Rube Goldberg Complex of Construction and Transportation Ideas
In a Rube Goldberg complex of construction and transportation ideas, the U.S. military anchored to the sea floor three miles off the northern coast of Gaza a floating dock system onto which large cargo ships can dock.
Cargo ships will off-load pallets and possibly container loads of humanitarian assistance—long-life packaged food and medical supplies—on the three-mile off-shore dock. This cargo will have undergone inspection by Israeli authorities in the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, 200 miles from Gaza.
The inspection process involves Cypriot customs, Israeli teams, the U.S., and the United Nations Office for Project Services. The U.S. Agency for International Development has set up a coordination cell in Cyprus.
From the cargo ships, food and medical supplies will be transferred into the backs of U.S. Army trucks (probably 2.5-ton trucks) that have arrived on the floating pier brought there by two types of smaller Army boats—Logistic Support Vessels, or LSVs, and Landing Craft Utility boats (LCUs). LSVs can hold 15 trucks each and the LCUs about five.
The loaded 2.5-ton trucks will be driven back onto the LSVs and motored three miles to the second floating pier system constructed by the U.S. military.
The trucks will then be driven off the LSVs onto the second pier and down a two-lane, 1,800-foot (six U.S. football fields long) causeway anchored onto Gaza land by the Israeli military. The causeway will be anchored onto Gaza shores by the Israeli military because the U.S. military is forbidden to have “boots on the ground” in Gaza.
The truckloads of food and medical supplies will then be driven somewhere… and supplies distributed by some organization… yet to be determined according to the latest news reports.
The empty trucks will then be driven back along the two-lane, 1,800-foot causeway to the floating pier where they will be driven into the small LSVs, and the LSVs then sailed back three miles to the larger off-shore pier and the process begun again. The long causeway should be a cause of alarm for drivers, as the winds and waves so dramatically affected the construction of the causeway that most of the causeway was put together in the calm waters of Ashdod, an Israeli harbor, after winds and waves made construction of the causeway in place off Gaza impossible. Parts of the causeway are now being towed 20 miles from Ashdod harbor to northern Gaza to be linked into place.
While Thousands of Truck Loads of Cargo Wait at the Rafah Border Crossing, It Will Take 2,000 Truck Loads to Empty Each 5,000 Ton Cargo Ship
If a large cargo ship has 5,000 tons of food and medical supplies to be off-loaded, and if each truck can hold 2.5 tons of cargo, it will take 2,000 trucks to take the cargo from one ship. If there are 15 trucks on each LSV, then the LSVs will have to make 133 trips to get the trucks to the 1,800 foot causeway.
If the LCUs that hold only five trucks are mostly used, then it would take 400 trips to get the cargo to shore.
Two-thousand trucks to offload ONE ship driving 1,800 feet on a causeway that will be dangerously affected by tides, winds, and waves is a recipe for disaster.
A graphic, not to scale, showing how the aid delivery system will work. (Photo: Department of Defense)
Will Israel Bomb the Docks, Piers, and Causeway? Remember the USS Liberty!
The possibility of probability is high that Israeli military jets, drones, and artillery may “mistakenly” target the pier complex… or Hamas or other militant groups may decide that the U.S. complicity in the genocide of over 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza outweighs the meager food and medical supplies the U.S. is bringing into Gaza, which presents another aspect of the recipe for disaster for the U.S. Rube Goldberg pier.
U.S. military personnel should remember the Israeli attack on a U.S. military ship, the USS Liberty. In 1967, the Israeli military bombed and torpedoed a U.S. ship off Gaza, killing 34 and wounding 171, and almost sunk the ship. The U.S. cover-up for its ally Israel’s brutal, lethal attack on a U.S. military ship continues to this day, as does the U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
The World Will Not Forget
Palestinians in Gaza and citizens around the world will not forget that miles of supplies are just feet away from Gaza at the Rafah crossing and the U.S. will not use its pressure on Israel to open the gates at Rafah, instead offering an expensive, idiotic solution to an easily solvable problem.
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Maybe US contractors in charge of building the pier to supply Gaza with food should go for a “two-fer” and kill 2 birds with one stone: outsource the contracting to Ukraine which could then hire the same folks responsible for building those missing bunker fortifications on Ukraine’s border with Russia’s Belgorad Oblast. This time, I’m sure the clerk who accidentally pressed the SAP purchase order button that read “Purchase mansion on Italy’s Mediterranean Sea Coast” because it was right next to the selection “Fortified Dragon’s Teeth Bunker” won’t make the same mistake twice.
They have found some of the missing Ukrainian dragon teeth. They were just dumped on a pile. Subcontractor couldn’t be bothered with laying them down properly. They also got nicknamed milk teeth, because they are smaller than Russian adult-sized ones.
I could not have thought up a less efficient method of unloading a cargo ship if I had tried.
By not allowing non-Israeli troops on the shore of the Gaza, the Israeli authorities have guaranteed that maximum dysfunction will occur.
This has turned out to be a sequel to Joseph Conrad’s book: “The Heart of Darkness 2: The Shore of Darkness.”
West Bank has long been treated similarly. Perhaps fewer deaths , but never-ending destruction, humiliation, lack of any human rights to any Palestinian residents (in their “own homes”). Armed murderous “settlers” have full power. See new DDN news by Peter Oborne. Getting rid of ALL Palestinians is the aim.
Maybe the pier/floating dock is not really too unload food but to load up people forced to depart?
No, as I said at the top (our Policies require you to read the post in full before commenting!), it’s too inefficient to move much of anything. You’d only be able to expel tiny numbers of Palestinians, even before getting to issue of cargo ships not being designed for bulk transport of humans.
Cattle cars weren’t designed for the bulk transport of humans either, but when you’ve got a genocide to run you make do with what you have…
It’s all part of a Theater of the Absurd in which human lives are shattered for the pleasure of sadists in blue business suits.
I am not so certain. While I don’t know a lot about shipping and piers, I observe 2 things.
1) The pier is clearly excessively long. Moreover the sections are modular. Would it not be possible to modify the configuration to allow it to act as a larger “loading bay” for “passenger” ferries (probably modified livestock) ships? I have seen flatbed transports used to transport cattle over short stretches of water. The Sinai is only a few kilometers away.
2) Going further with this, the piers themselves float. In fact a huge section is “floating” offshore, and can I assume be moved. Isn’t it possible that Palestinians could be loaded onto the piers and again floated down to the Sinai and the piers returned? Who made / is making the concrete piers?
Johnathan Pollard’s recent Youtube interviews make it clear that the hardline in Israel is still pushing for ethnic cleansing out to the Sinai, including getting the US congress to place more pressure on Egypt.
I have gone on a lot of cruises (not my preference, it was how my aged mother wanted to travel). I don’t see your comments as realistic regarding how ships are boarded. Precarious boarding situations use small tenders (30-40 passengers) and the usually require two crew members on either side of the small gangway to get them on board.
The Israelis have not herded ANY Palestinians. They have urged them to leave certain locations by leveling them and depicting other areas in Gaza as safer but have not once physically pushed a group to go a particularly place.
And the causeway is 1800 meters to get to a presumably adequate depth. How will they force people to walk to the entrance and then that distance?
In addition, you are referring to non-military equipment. No private provider would allow their assets to go into a war zone, with the odds good that Hamas would try to blow up any such ship. The vessels would be uninsurable.
> 1800 meters
For the metrically challenged (like me), that’s more than a mile. That’s a long pier
…one of these piers connects a poor and impoverished population to an expanse of sea that few ships would care to visit. The other is in Gaza.
They know its stupid. They know we know it’s stupid. They are taunting on our face with open corruption. There is no such thing called third world corruption anymore. It’s globalized corruption.
Head hurts just trying to figure out why this is a more acceptable idea than letting in all the already loaded trucks that have been sitting on the Egyptian side of the border.
Learn something new every day. :-)
> … the U.S. Army’s small navy swung into action ..
> … U.S. Army ships filled with barges …
When I first saw this, I thought U.S. Army ships?!? But then I thought, well, why not? They’ve got everything else. Next question was: who operates these ships, armymen or civilian contractors? A little googling yielded a result; it turns out that there is actually a job category in the US army called ‘watercraft operator’! Who could imagine?
‘What did you do in the army, daddy?’
‘I was a
sailorwatercraft operator.’heh heh
‘What did you do in the CIA, daddy?’
‘I was a waterboard operator.’
With this idea, the US has really put themselves in the barrel here. All the Israelis have to do is slow walk inspections and hold up actual deliveries until the whole thing becomes a fiasco. At that point, the Israelis will blame the US on the world stage for letting those Palestinians starve and not them for stopping trucks go through the regular crossings. And the US will not point this out as Congress will not let them as it would embarrass the Israelis if they did.
you mean, the US taking a fall for Israel?
These D-Day reenactment events are getting more and more realistic.
I hope not. The Allies built an artificial port after D-Day called a Mulberrie. But then-
‘Mulberry A became operational on June 16. Unfortunately, a strong storm approached on 18-19 June, which began to break-up and destroy the mulberry due to harsh winds and waves. In the following days, damage to the artificial harbor became so severe that it was deemed to be unrepairable.’
https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-europe/operation-overlord/mulberries.html
What are the winter conditions off Gaza like in the coming winter months?
You can still see the pieces of it in Arromanches Harbor. It’s quite impressive as you drive in from the coastal road. It’s also a nice stop for lunch.
My pet theory is that this pier is just a useful real time exercise for a marine military landing and supply tool that they might find useful elsewhere. Like the South China Sea.
Well, then it was a clear failure. This was a political stunt to invoke half remembered historical events such as the Berlin airlift among an older cohort without doing anything.
Round n round the Mulberrie bush.
Why spend the money? Why not? If the USA government is interested in R2P it would have simply told Israel to allow supplies in -or else. As a USA citizen whose senator is Fetterman I’ve heard him and other congress “representatives” say the most blood curdling and vile things about this “war” in Gaza. To me it makes perfect (cynical) sense to waste time and money building this pier. How many Palestinians have died while it’s being build? How many will die because of all the objections Israel will install to prevent aid getting in? Remember the goal: Palestinians expelled from Gaza; and the pier is to some unknown extent a PR history for Biden, as in, “He’s doing the best he can… At least he’s doing something.”
It’s just another too little to late to expensive to slow to stupid from Biden.
I sure didn’t know about the 2nd pier. How did all the news media keep that under wraps?
Like so many other things he’s “done”
Take the new solar tariffs
Here is a good view of it. It seems to correlate with what I read here
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xyftfzyAUw8
Now that we’re getting some numbers to work with in terms of tonnage of humanitarian aid to be delivered via the pier, it’s becoming clear that they’ll be lucky if they can deliver even half of the much ballyhooed “2,000,000 meals per day” target.
Let’s assume that each meal consists of 10 ounces of food, using the U.S. Humanitarian Daily Ration (HDR) packet as a starting point (one 30-ounce HDR contains 3 meals for one person). I have no idea how the actual food is packaged or who provides it for the Gaza relief effort, but let’s assume 10 ounces per meal for now.
2,000,000 meals equals 20,000,000 ounces, which works out to be 625 tons. If the causeway trucks can carry 2.5 tons each, that means 250 trips up and down the causeway.
To deliver all that in one day would mean a truck gets unloaded at the beach every 5-6 minutes for 24 hours straight – no interruptions, no delays loading or unloading, no shortage of fuel, no flat tires, no mechanical problems, no tired drivers, no bad weather, no rocket attacks. I’m no logistics expert, but that seems like a tall order.
But even hitting the 150 trucks per day maximum target provided by the JLOTs folks would require all of the various crews — on the cargo ship, the LSVs and LCUs, the causeway, the staging area — to still work at a feverish pace to unload a truck at the beach every 9-10 minutes for 24 hours straight.
Even that amount of effort would amount to about 1.2 million meals – far short of the 2 million meals needed for everyone in Gaza to get one meal per day.
And that’s if the trucks carry nothing but food and no other essentials such as water, mattresses, blankets, tarps, cooking fuel, hygiene products, medical basics and so on.
It’s better than nothing, but when you’ve got the capacity to get hundreds of trucks a day through the land crossings – trucks that can carry 20-30 tons each, by the way — it defies logic to view the temporary pier as an effective solution.
There’s also the factor of load management, because not every ton of cargo is equally useful. Imagine unloading 5000 tons of dried foodstuffs to a place where there is limited potable water and cooking fuel.
Military over the shore logistics usually uses tank landing ships and Landing Craft Air Cushions. each capable of delivering around 50 to 200 tons on beaches without any piers or other facilities. US Navy amphibious assault ships deploy 2 or 3 LCACs (Landing Craft Air Cushion), each able to deliver 60 to 70 tons onto a beach. A pier does not need to be built to use this capability,
The U.S. Navy is not the only navy that has amphibious capabilities. NATO members France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Turkiye, and United Kingdom have amphibious assault ships deploying various types of landing craft. These are not World War 2 hand-me-downs; most of the ships listed were built in the 1990s and 2000s. The most recent is the Netherlands’ HNLMS Karel Doorman (A833), commissioned in April 2015. However, Karel Doorman carries only two LCVPs (landing craft vehicle personnel), each able to move only 3 to 4 tons to shore.
An interesting oddity is that NATO member Greece has 4 Soviet-designed Zubr-class hovercraft (world’s largest hovercraft), able to carry up to 150 tons. They reportedly were built in Ukraine, not Russia, though Russia has built some for China and other countries, as well as the Russian navy.
Turkiye has an especially large number of amphibious ships though many of its smaller vessels are from World War 2 and probably no longer in service. Still, Turkiye evidently has a considerable capacity to bring aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. Why has this Turkish capacity not been put to use yet? No doubt, the Israelis are extremely sensitive about this capability by a Muslim country in close proximity to Gaza and Israel.
A few other Muslim countries in the Middle East and northern Africa also have amphibious combat ships. Egypt acquired the two Mistral class amphibious assault ships France had built for Russia in the early 2000s, then refused to deliver. The navy of Iran has around ten amphibious assault ships, the five smallest of which were designed and built by Iran. Iran has also been able to maintain in service 14 hovercraft acquired from the UK in the 1970s. These reportedly have a payload capacity of about 15 tons.
You seem to forget that a design spec was no American set foot in Gaza. Those landing craft would have required that.
It is obvious that the entire purpose of this pier system is to enable the democratic party to say that Biden demanded that the Israelis allow the pier to be built because he is a humanitarian. This idea must have been created by the same team that came up with the idea that Biden pretend to withhold ammunition from the Israelis. The democratic political professional seem to believe that whatever they say will be believed, and then the public will recognize that Biden is a humanitarian.
That sounds very plausible. Another “election” year stunt to give the D party faithful an excuse that Genocide Joe is the lesser mass murderer and abuser of power. We have such a wide spectrum of meaningful choice in our beloved “democratic, free and fair elections”. The purported cessation of arms shipments was a disgusting and cynical ploy. The loyal opposition put up a phony show of protest, insisting that more arms be shipped.
No wonder they are politicians, they are terrible actors
They might be able to fool Americans, but it doesn’t fool anyone else.
Which says what about Americans?
This Rube Goldberg scheme is direct proof that the Dems main constituency, the PMC are getting mad at the situation and that is worrying the Dem election managers. The kids being brutalized on campus must obviously be having an impact on their parents who are in turn applying pressure behind the scenes on the Dem apparatchiks. This again could be why the Israel Lobby is going all out to squelch the protests. The corporate Dems are squealing and whimpering and that should make us happy.
Don’t be surprised if Biden wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
Well, people around the world are seeing Biden butchering and eating plenty of people, especially “subhumans,” so there’s that.
~Attempting a Military Solution for a Political or Diplomat Problem—AGAIN!!!
When all you have is a hammer…
As part of this conversation, it seems timely to note that I have not seen any discussion of the quantity, quality, and intensity of the secret and damning information the Israelis must have about past actions of US congressmen, political parties, government officials, etc., and the US military, state department, and corporations. According to aritcles I have read, this would include information stretching from the Nordstream pipeline, thru the Iraq War, to the JFK assassination. It appears arguable that the US is the submissive partner in this relationship.
Submissive? Not really. For example, If we follow the money: Just look at how many trillions of dollars have been transferred to the MICIMATT in just recent years. Israel is just a small piece of that pie. Israel and the Lobby are the biggest examples of the wider context of institutional corruption. Israel is not the only one who benefits from US foreign policy
Where’s the fuel and oil for the trucks coming from? Where is the maintenance shop for the trucks? Where are the mechanics and off duty drivers going to stay? One stalled truck or tired driver colliding with something or pitching halfway off the structure and the whole scheme stops.
Good points!
Wondering if the 1800 ft pier could be easily turned into a marina to hold all the yachts and sailboats of the well-to-to once Jarod’s seaside real estate plans are complete…
A cynical take that I read is that the pier may/will be used to facilitate the emigration (explusion, cleansing) of Gazans to the West. (or at least a trial balloon of the idea)
(I’m just the messenger)
Well gosh. The US military is just so Benny Hill they are almost funny. Those stupid Americans – they are spending so much money they might as well be building a logistics support harbor facility where they can all wear captains hats and walk around in fast motion all day long. What could be more important than pure nonsense? Maybe establishing themselves formally as the “harbor master” of this new facility. I’d guess that provides some sovereign control of said new harbor just three miles off the shores of northern Gaza. Conveniently as well, that is where Israel and Lebanon are both claiming a vast natural gas field. And, oh dear, if Lebanon and Iran get pissed and blow this logistics harbor out of the water that will justify those stupid Americans if they defend themselves. And that is how we will enter the war. So it makes perfectly good sense, even though it looks silly and incompetent, that we let Israel prevent any aid from entering Rafah. What could possibly be more serious? I betcha Blinkie himself conjured this up.
Blinkie for sure. No one does outrage like him. Consider the choice of his song to sing in Ukraine. It was genius. A finger in the eye of every Leftie who ever listened to Neil Young including Neil himself. It’s like the mustache man quoting the Torah at length.
Based on information from an article in todays NYT, initially, 90 trucks/day will be able to move food into Gaza. The above article tells us that one shipload will require 2000 trucks to move the food aid into Gaza. With 90 trucks /day ( later perhaps 150 trucks /day) it will take 29 days to move the aid carried by one shipload into Gaza! And even more days depending on the weather. Meanwhile thousands of truckloads are still unable to enter Gaza from the southern border. On top of that, settlers, encouraged by the Israeli government are are blocking the trucks from entering, putting rocks on the road to block to make their use impossible, throwing the packages of aid off the trucks and destroying the food, slashing the tires of the trucks, and have even incinerated a number of trucks which are first in line to enter. All this while Israeli solders just watch and congratulate the settlers. Democracy Now has covered this and I encourage readers to link to this coverage. The NYT has not revolting incident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaJa3dUfpYY
I would like to take the liberty of drawing attention to the outrageous statements made by Lindsay Graham made on Sunday News. He wants to allow Israel to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza as we did on Japan which he characterizes as a humanitarian act to end the war and save lives!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course there was no push back by the moderator!!!!! Contrast this with the treatment and characterization of the students demonstrating against the inhumanity of the tactics of the US and Israel employed in Gaza.
These details suggest that the purpose of the pier is not to deliver anything. So I think the purpose of the pier is to tighten Israeli control. They can now block Rafah indefinitely and perhaps even block their own crossings and build a Beautiful Wall TM. Everything will enter or leave via Cyprus and the pier.
There may be some logistical issues with supporting the current Gazan population size but for the Israel that is a self-limiting problem….
The idea is transparently an evil ploy to require serious comment. The people falling for this con (a) don’t care about what the US and Israel are doing in Gaza or (b) are as dumb as Genocide Joe.
Not too sure about the part about 2.5 ton trucks.
The pictures attached to this story show larger trucks carrying aid down the pier, supposedly.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trucks-carrying-300-pallets-of-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza-roll-across-new-us-pier/
Not that this will work well in any case.
Thank you for the link.
Ann Wright wrote 2.5 tons of cargo per truck.
Interesting photos.
For one, the pier width appears to be one lane. That’s a shocker. That means one-way traffic.
Two, the overhead shot of the Trident pier reveals that it is far short of 1800 meters long. Based on the size of the trucks you can see, it is no more than a few hundred yards long.
Third, the staging area on the beach at the end of the pier looks oddly constricted. It appears that there is barely maneuvering room for one truck to turn around. Perhaps the trucks never leave the end of the pier and forklifts unload it from either side and trundle up the beach to the larger staging area by the road.
I wondered about the source of that graphic; here it is: Associated Press, May 17:
Not a bug. A feature. Here’s an aerial shot also from AP (Central Command):
Seems tenuous.
If the US had any real interest in aid getting delivered to Palestinians, they would just have marines escort the backlog of trucks at the Rafah crossing and clear out the settlers etc. along the way. Obviously they don’t have any interest in this.