AMMAN: A 210-truck convoy carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip was still stranded at Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba on Saturday, awaiting an Egyptian permission to sail to the besieged Palestinian territory, activists said.
The convoy, known as Viva Palestina, is led by British lawmaker George Galloway and manned by more than 450 activists from 17 countries, including the United States, Turkey and European states.
The convoy, which arrived at Aqaba from Amman on Thursday night, was scheduled to reach the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the Israeli offensive on the Palestinian territory that killed at least 1,300 people and wounded more than 5,000 others.
Egypt has stipulated that the convoy should get into the Gaza Strip through Al-Arish port, a condition Galloway and other activists refused because it involved “technical and logistic hurdles,” according to sources from the Muslim Brotherhood, a key backer of the expedition.
The Egyptians also put two other conditions for allowing the convoy to pass — coordination with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the possibility of coordination with the Israeli side, activists said.
They said Turkey was mediating a solution with the Egyptian authorities to facilitate the convoy’s entry to the Gaza Strip.
“The Aqaba people are extending all help to the convoy pending a breakthrough,” an activist said.
“People here have opened their homes to the participants, donated their cars for their movement and women were cooking food for them,” he added.
