Arab medicine, food supplies rot in Al-Arish

[ 07/02/2009 - 08:13 AM ]

AL-ARISH, (PIC)--

Dr. Bakat Barkani, the chairman of the Algerian doctors syndicate, has plainly accused the Egyptian government of wasting tons of medicine and blood supplies donated by Arab countries to their Palestinian brothers in Gaza Strip.

According to Barkani, tens of Algerian doctors dispatched to Gaza to help their Palestinian counterparts to treat thousands of Palestinians wounded in the cruel Israeli war on Gaza last month were held at Al-Arish and denied entry into the beleaguered Strip.

He explained that the blood donated by the Algerian people to their Palestinian brothers had expired because Egypt neither sent it to Gaza nor kept it in a safe place to avoid the damage.

"Egypt is accused of deliberately damaging tons of medicine, food supplies, and blood", stressed Barkani, adding that the Israeli occupation authority allowed little amount of medicine and food to come into the Strip through crossing points it controls, but Egypt failed to do so.

News correspondents stationed at Al-Arish city quoted Egyptian residents as saying that the government was deliberately seizing and delaying passage of those goods into the Strip although it knows that they might rot because they weren’t kept in a safe place.

Cairo abandoned the Palestinians: Meanwhile, the Arab Bar accused the Egyptian government of abandoning the Palestinian people and leaving them to starve, saying that Egypt wants the Palestinian resistance to accept Israeli dictates.

Abdul Athim Al-Maghrabi, deputy secretary-general of the Bar, explained that the Egyptian decision to close the Rafah crossing point came after Hamas refused the Israeli dictates, and added that the opening of the crossing is linked to Hamas's "acceptance" of those humiliating conditions.

"The Egyptian administration is wrong in taking such a decision, and the justification it tries to convince us with that it is abiding by the 2005 crossings agreement is of no sense, as Egypt wasn’t a signatory to that deal and thus it isn’t bound by any obligation in this regard", Maghrabi added.

He stressed that in addition to the fact that the agreement had expired in 2006, Egypt is duty-bound by the international law to open the crossing point to save the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians who are suffering slow death in the tiny Strip.

However, Maghrabi explained that the Egyptian official stand doesn’t reflect the pulse of the Egyptian street.