THE EGYPTIAN ambassador to Ireland, Amr Helmy, has denied that his government is preventing containers carrying Irish humanitarian aid from charities in Galway and Cork from being delivered to Gaza.
The containers of aid sent early this year are still tied up in the Egyptian port of Alexandria, having been returned there from the border.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that the Irish Embassy in Cairo was still making every effort to secure clearance for delivery.
The Galway Palestine Children’s Charity says it is a “devastating development”, and its representative Treasa Ní Cheannabháin travelled to Gaza with her Egyptian husband, Dr Saber El-Safty, over the weekend.
The Arab Medical Syndicate in Alexandria, Egypt, which had been sponsoring the delivery of aid collected in public appeals in Cork and Galway, was informed that only “new goods” could be transported across the border at Rafah into Gaza.
Ambassador Amr Helmy told The Irish Times that containers from Cork had been delivered, and that the Galway containers did not meet “guidelines” which had been issued by the Egyptian authorities and which the Department of Foreign Affairs was aware of.
However, a spokeswoman for the department said yesterday the guidelines were only issued after the containers had been shipped to Egypt. She said that all Irish containers were still in Alexandria.
The ambassador said that some 46 new items of a total of 207 items sent from Galway would meet the guidelines. “We don’t allow used items in, and the Palestinian people don’t need them,” he said. The Egyptian government had permitted “thousands” of containers, ambulances, along with medical staff and representatives of non-governmental organisations into Gaza, he said. He said that more than 600 Palestinians were also being treated in Egyptian hospitals.
However, Israeli handling of the humanitarian assistance was “very slow”, he said. The ambassador said the Egyptians had “nothing against” the Galway charity, but there was a “language of threat” in their statements in relation to the issue, he said.
Ms Ní Cheannabháin said that the Irish containers had been “plagued with problems” since arriving in Alexandria in Egypt in early February, due to bureaucratic delays by the Egyptian authorities. In April, her charity was told that the Israeli authorities wished to inspect every item that was being delivered, and the containers would therefore have to be “devanned”.
“Now we are faced with this newly-invented stipulation that everything must be new,” she said. “People from all over Ireland, from Cork to Belmullet, from Donegal to Dublin have contributed all sorts of wonderful second-hand goods, including medical supplies for the people of Gaza, who have literally nothing.
“One of the containers includes 30 second-hand hospital beds donated by Castlebar hospital,” she said.