Palestina 19

Aid Rots Outside Gaza 

By Erin Cunningham

Inter Press Service

April 15, 2009

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of aid intended for the Gaza Strip is

piling up in cities across Egypt's North Sinai region, despite recent calls

from the United Nations to ease aid flow restrictions to the embattled

territory in the wake of Operation Cast Lead.

Food, medicine, blankets, infant food and other supplies for Gaza's 1.5

million people, coming from governments and non-governmental agencies

around the world, are being stored in warehouses, parking lots, stadiums

and on airport runways across Egypt's North Sinai governorate. 

Egypt shares a 14-kilometre border with Gaza that has been closed more or

less permanently since the Islamist movement Hamas took control of the

territory in June 2007. 

Flour, pasta, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tomato sauce, lentils, date bars,

juice, chickpeas, blankets, hospital beds, catheter tubes and other

humanitarian- based items are all sitting in at least eight storage points

in and around Al- Arish, a city in North Sinai approximately 50 kilometres

from Gaza's border. 

Three months after the end of the war, much of the aid has either rotted or

been irreparably damaged as a result of both rain and sunshine, and Egypt's

refusal to open the Rafah crossing. 

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