Ireland

Countries must put pressure on Israel to stop ‘micro-checking’ Gaza aid, Tánaiste says

Every effort being made to move supplies into enclave but Israel delaying distribution of vital food and medicines, says Martin

Tánaiste Micheál Martin: 'The number of trucks getting in is far too low and is actually getting lower.' Photograph: Michelle Tantussi/AFP via Getty

Barry Roche
Sun Mar 10 2024 - 17:16

The international community must put pressure on Israel to “stop micro-checking” every truck bringing aid into Gaza, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said.

Speaking in Cork, Mr Martin said that every effort was being made to get aid into Gaza but Israel’s insistence on checking every truck bringing aid to the enclave was slowing down and delaying the distribution of vital food and medicines.

“The simplest, most effective and most impactful way of getting aid into Gaza is to allow all of the trucks that are on the other side of the border in [to Gaza]. The number of trucks getting in is far too low and is actually getting lower,” he said.

“What the international community needs to do is to put pressure on Israel to stop all this micro-checking on every truck that is going into Gaza through Kerem Shalom and through Rafah. Before this war, 500 trucks a day were going in. Now it is 150 and some days last week it was as low as 59.”

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Mr Martin said that since the International Court of Justice’s preliminary conclusions last month in a case taken by South Africa where it ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent genocidal acts, the volume of aid getting into Gaza had halved.

He said that this was both “shocking and unacceptable” and while Ireland was working with Jordan to assist in air drops and the EU and US were seeking to establish a temporary port in Gaza to allow aid to be shipped from Cyprus, road remained the most effective way of delivering vital supplies.

“None of these efforts can take from the fundamental issue here that the most effective and simplest and impactful way of getting aid into Gaza is through the road crossings and through the borders and getting a sufficiency of trucks in there to make a difference.”

Meanwhile, over 1,000 people attending a rally in Cork for Palestinian heard calls for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Irish Government to cancel their St Patrick’s Day visits to Washington as a mark of protest against the US which provides $3 billion worth of military assistance to Israel each year.

Co-chair of the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign Martin Shiel said that with the World Health Organisation warning that children are now dying in northern Gaza, the US should stop arms shipments to Israel and instead demand that Israel allow aid into the enclave.

“Hunger and severe malnutrition are now widespread in the Gaza Strip, where about 2.2 million Palestinians are facing severe shortages resulting from Israel destroying food supplies and severely restricting the flow of food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies.

“There are aid trucks within miles of where they need to be but Israel won’t let them through. There is an agency, Unrwa, ready and able to organise the distribution of that aid – there is no need for airlifts, temporary ports or shipments from Cyprus.”

Mr Shiel said that Mr Varadkar has an opportunity now to register Irish people’s abhorrence at what is happening in Gaza and America’s complicity in what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people by not going paying the usual St Patrick’s Day visit to the White House.

“We are calling on Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to stand with the Palestinian people and with the millions of Americans demanding their government stops arming the genocide, by doing one simple thing,- refuse to sit down with Joe Biden on St. Patrick’s Day and refuse to hand him a bowl of shamrock.

Barry Roche

Barry Roche

Barry Roche is Southern Correspondent of The Irish Times

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