MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin is to try again to visit Gaza in January.
“Hopefully, we will renew our request to visit Gaza in the new year and I hope we will receive a positive response on this occasion,” he said yesterday.
Earlier this month Mr Martin told the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs that he had been refused permission to make the visit by the Israeli authorities.
He repeated yesterday that he “remains unconvinced about the reasons advanced for the refusal of the visit”.
Others did manage to get there earlier in the year, he said. “I think it sends out a very bad signal,” the Minister added. “It is tantamount to a statement that we do not really want people to see what is going on in Gaza.”
Mr Martin said he would also be raising with his European colleagues the possibility of putting together a deputation of foreign ministers to travel to Gaza.
The Minister was speaking following a meeting in Dublin with John Ging, a former Army officer who is head of the UN relief agency, which is charged with the provision of basic services to more than 4.6 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.
Mr Martin said that earlier this year, there was a genuine sense that space was being created to try to facilitate all-party talks. “Unfortunately, that has stalled, although the work is ongoing,” he added.
“I think that the blockade in Gaza cannot go on indefinitely.”
Mr Ging said Ireland must look, firstly, at what its responsibilities were under international law.
“What are absent . . . are effective and credible mechanisms to uphold international law,” he said. “What that means is that innocent civilians do not have protection.”
