Martin: Israel needs to ease Gaza blockade

IT was kept secret for weeks, but NGOs knew, journalists knew and the Palestinians did too. Finally, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin arrived in Gaza yesterday morning after a brief 20-minute security check on the Egyptian border.

The media scrum that followed his five-car convoy around the enclosed enclave was akin to a country leader’s arrival. But the news that met him, unsurprisingly, was not good.

Having been denied access to the Gaza Strip by the Israelis in December last year, Mr Martin finally got to see with his own eyes the deplorable conditions in which its 1.5 million people are surviving.