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.

Palestinians were being “choked” by the Israeli blockade, he said, and the resulting black market was only benefiting the rule of Hamas, the fundamental militant rulers abhorred by the Israelis.

Mr Martin’s trip is the first by an EU minister to Gaza in a year. During his brief few hours on the ground, he visited schools, frustrated business representatives and met officials with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the chief aid group keeping Gazans alive.

Only minutes after crossing over the border, the minister witnessed first-hand the desperate struggle for food as veiled mothers and needy fathers pushed through queues for hand-outs of bags of rice at a UN food distribution centre. Around 80% of Gaza’s people are dependent on aid.

Parents of school pupils told him how human rights classes for their children were opening the minds of youngsters trapped in the Palestinian territory.

“In a former life, I was a schoolteacher,” he told parents in one school, stressing that education was the key to opportunities.

But business leaders said books and education were not enough to ease the torment from the blockade.

Support for Hamas was growing, he was told. The tunnels – which he managed briefly to view firsthand – between Egypt and Gaza have been fuelling a massive black market.

It’s not just weapons that are smuggled in but food, fuel, clothes, building materials such as cement and even nappies.

But the Islamic militants are in control of much of the economy, giving more moderate groups little access to funds.

The consequences are that while EU member states, such as Ireland, continue to refuse to talk with Gaza’s rulers – as Hamas are listed as a terrorist group by the EU – its power continues to grow, much to the annoyance of the Israelis.

The minister’s message was simple. Ireland cared, deeply, and would do what it could at an EU level to push Gaza’s case. But ultimately, he argued, Israel needs to ease the blockade unless it wanted its sworn enemy to grow in power.