Curious children looked on as they tried to make out the convoy of big black cars.
They ran to the main gate of their school where the vehicles stopped and the Maltese delegation came out to shake hands with the administrators.
The Prime Minister’s wife, Michelle Muscat, was with the delegation having been invited by the Palestinian authority to visit the UN-run school inside the Aida refugee camp.
Huddled below the oppressive concrete wall built 10 years earlier by the Israelis, the school caters for a student population of 400. It is a small building with classroom sizes ranging from 40 to 45 students.
As Ms Muscat sat around the meeting table with her husband, her eyes caught a glimpse of a wall chart with pictures of what children did in their holidays.
“It was the only inspiring thing in the classroom along with the stickers on the window panes with messages about Christmas,” she told journalists later.
She admitted never expecting the concrete dividing wall to be as imposing. The visit to the refugee camp brought out the stark reality Palestinians endure on a daily basis as a result of Israeli occupation.
But she defended the decision to remove the scarf symbolic of Palestinian resistance that was given as a gift by community leaders at the school.
The Prime Minister and Ms Muscat carefully removed the scarf, folded it and put it in front of them before Dr Muscat spoke.
“We accepted the gift willingly and although Malta supports the Palestinian cause we could not be part of their fight,” she said, justifying the action.
Although Malta supports the Palestinian cause we could not be part of their fight
In Foreign Minister George Vella’s words, Malta wanted to be an honest broker trusted by both sides.
“The Israelis are an altruistic people but it creates a dilemma when you experience the Palestinian side and how they live,” Ms Muscat said.
Having visited a number of Israeli charities in the previous two days, Ms Muscat was impressed by the Israelis’ altruism.
She noted how Israelis who live abroad donate a lot of money to help build up the country’s infrastructure. The Hadassah Medical Centre, an 800-bed public hospital with various speciality areas in Jerusalem, was built entirely out of donations by mostly American Israelis, whose names appear on every wall of the main lobby.
“They feel it is payback time to make up for their ancestors’ suffering,” Ms Muscat said, adding that the visit to the Holocaust memorial was enough to help her understand what fuelled this sense of belonging to the state.
The reality is that two peoples are still trying to live side by side in a land both claim to be theirs. Peace remains allusive for the moment.
But Ms Muscat believes there is hope, at least in the hearts and minds of ordinary people.
She visited a hospital in Israel where a team of paediatric surgeons run the Save a Child’s Heart programme. The surgeons offer free heart surgeries to children from poor African countries and Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
“There are no divisions at this level and people want to help each other,” she said, even if they do it quietly.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com