Tadgh McNally: McEntee 'appalled' that Israel bans medical kit from Gaza

Visiting Egypt's Rafah border crossing, Helen McEntee met families broken by the conflict, and Red Crescent workers who cannot bring much-needed medical aid into Palestine

Ireland's foreign minister Helen McEntee meeting Egyptian Red Crescent workers near the Rafah border. Ms McEntee heard how Israel has banned a long list of items including wheelchairs.  

"A plastic surgeon." That’s what a young Palestinian girl tells Helen McEntee in Arabic what she wants to be when she grows up, on the foreign minister’s second day in Egypt.

Ms McEntee is in Al Arish Hospital, just over an hour’s drive from Egypt’s border with Gaza, where critically ill Palestinians have, on occasion, been able to leave the territory to receive lifesaving treatment.