Malta doubles UNRWA aid for Palestinians in Gaza facing humanitarian crisis

Malta’s foreign ministry is assisting the collection of donations for Gaza, which will go to several humanitarian organisations in the Middle East, and doubled its annual contribution to the UN Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which works to assist vulnerable Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere.

 In a statement, the foreign ministry said it has been following with extreme concern the daily humanitarian developments emanating from Gaza, which it said heading into a humanitarian catastrophe.

“The Ministry immediately condemned the act of terrorism perpetuated against Israel by Hamas but reiterated the importance of always distinguishing between Hamas and Palestinian civilians,” foreign minister Ian Borg said.

The ministry will now assist members of the public who wish to donate funds for Gaza, by facilitating a collection of funds that would be divided equally between UNRWA, as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is also working to address the urgent humanitarian situation in Gaza. 

Members of the public who wish to donate funds which will then be collected and donated to the organisations can donate funds through Central Bank of Malta account ‘Humanitarian Fund’, account number MT63MALT011000041005EURCMG50000, with address at 331, Allied House, DCS – 3rd Floor S, VLT1060, Valletta.

“The Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs and Trade commits to ensure that funds donated to this account will only be used to assist vulnerable people in Gaza. The decision to collect funds rather than items has been made following the recent difficulties for the humanitarian aid to pass though the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.”

Israeli mass displacement plan

Israel acknowledged on Monday that one of its ministries had drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.”

But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

“We are against transfer to any place, in any form, and we consider it a red line that we will not allow to be crossed,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said of the report. “What happened in 1948 will not be allowed to happen again.”

A mass displacement, Rudeineh said, would be “tantamount to declaring a new war.”

In its report, the Intelligence Ministry — a junior ministry that conducts research but does not set policy — offered three alternatives “to effect a significant change in the civilian reality in the Gaza Strip in light of the Hamas crimes that led to the Sword of Iron war”, using the IDF label given to the war.

The document proposes moving Gaza’s civilian population to tent cities in northern Sinai, then building permanent cities and an undefined humanitarian corridor. A security zone would be established inside Israel to block the displaced Palestinians from entering. The report did not say what would become of Gaza once its population is cleared out but its authors deem this alternative to be the most desirable for Israel’s security.