Sanaa El Nahhal marched through Republic Street yesterday bearing a graphic poster depicting heart-wrenching photographs of young Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks.
Many turn their eyes away from such distressing images, but Ms El Nahhal was determined that the photographs should be burned into people’s consciences, as she walked through Valletta as part of the Palestine Solidarity Network, calling for Israel to put an end to the Gaza siege.
“Words fail me,” said the 45-year-old, who is Palestinian but has been living in Malta for the past 25 years.
“My family lives in Gaza – my cousin just had her house bombed down. But the most horrible thing is the death of these children, women and old people – vulner-able people.”
Ms El Nahhal added that what she wanted above all was peace on both sides, and for the Palestinians to be offered safety, jobs and a life.
Wednesday’s renewed bombings came a day after Israel initially accepted an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. It was meant to be followed by talks on the terms of a long-term ceasefire.
However, Hamas rejected the plan, saying it had not been involved in talks over the terms of the ceasefire, and launched more rockets at Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Hamas would pay a high price for rejecting the truce offer.
“It would have been preferable to have solved this diplomatically, and this is what we tried to do when we accepted the Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire, but Hamas leaves us no choice but to expand and intensify the campaign against it,” he said.
The Palestine Solidarity Network, formed from a group of organisations against the systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian population, called on the government not to support Israel’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council. If the government did so, they said, it would be committing a “terrible mistake”.
“Israel’s repeated disregard of UN resolutions and its continuous acts of terror towards the Palestinian population make it completely unfit to have such a seat,” it said.
“Moreover, we call on the Malta government to take a clear stand against Israeli aggression and not simply condemn ‘violence in the Middle East’, since this is clearly a case of Israel being the oppressor and the Palestinians being the oppressed.”
The Palestine Solidarity Network has been very vocal recently regarding the spate of violence.
“The violence has now been going on for the past 66 years,” André Callus from Moviment Graffitti explained.
“But now it has intensified. People can’t close their eyes or else Israel will keep doing whatever it wants and it will keep on taking the Palestinians’ land and murdering them.”
During this aggression, he added, 200 people – including children – have already been murdered, hundreds more were injured and Gaza’s infrastructure is being demolished under the Israeli bombardments.
On the other hand, the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel as a reaction to the murder of seven Palestinians living in a Gaza refugee camp have resulted in only one casualty on the Israeli side.
“Thus, contrary to many media portrayals, what is happening in Gaza is not a war but a vicious aggression by the Israeli state.”