DURING his March 7 State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden proudly told listeners that the United States would “establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters.”

The project, said the Pentagon, which plans to deploy 1,000 troops to construct the dock, would take at least two months. It was met with scepticism, viewed as a slow, inadequate and expensive response, far removed from what is really needed — the opening up of routes to aid trucks.

A week later, a ship carrying 200 tons of supplies for starving Palestinians docked on Gaza’s northern shore.