Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Defence, Helen McEntee, toured the Rafah crossing on Tuesday with Egyptian officials, including North Sinai Governor Khaled Megawer, as Dublin announced a fresh $49 million humanitarian allocation for Palestinians in Gaza amid worsening winter conditions and continuing displacement.
McEntee was briefed at Rafah — a key gateway for aid convoys and medical evacuations — and later visited Egyptian Red Crescent warehouses in el-Arish, where relief supplies are being staged for onward delivery. Her trip highlighted both the bottlenecks and the centrality of the Egypt–Gaza corridor for sustaining humanitarian operations while fighting and restrictions continue to shape access.
Irish officials said the funding will support urgent relief and basic services for Palestinians. The Irish Times reported that Ireland’s 2026 package totals €42 million, including €20 million in core funding to support the work of UNRWA across Gaza, the West Bank and the wider region.
The announcement comes as aid groups warn that shelter materials remain insufficient for the vast population displaced by the war. More than two million people are sheltering in tents or makeshift structures, many of them damaged or poorly insulated, leaving families exposed to flooding and cold snaps.
On Tuesday, a powerful rainstorm battered Gaza, flooding hundreds of tents and collapsing weakened structures, killing at least six people, including a child who died from cold exposure, Reuters reported. The Hamas-run media office cited by Reuters said dozens have died this winter from cold exposure and building collapses, while a U.N. assessment flagged large-scale flooding risk across displacement sites and the need for hundreds of thousands of tents.
Separate reporting underscores the risks to children. UNICEF said six Palestinian children have died from hypothermia in Gaza this winter, warning that basic living conditions remain “suffocating” amid ongoing shortages of shelter, fuel and medical capacity. An Associated Press report also described widespread tent damage from severe winds and continued hardship during Gaza’s third winter of the conflict, even as a ceasefire has reduced—but not eliminated—violence.
For Egypt, Rafah and el-Arish remain critical to logistics and triage; for Ireland, the visit signals an effort to reinforce donor pressure for sustained humanitarian flows and predictable medical evacuations at a moment when weather-driven emergencies are compounding a prolonged displacement crisis
