Charlot Zahra
While the Palestinians in Gaza were facing the onslaught of the Israeli army for the fourth day consecutively, their brothers in Malta were protesting in solidarity with them during a march organised by seven organisations in Valletta yesterday evening.
Despite the searing cold that had descended on the capital by the time the protest march started at 5:30 pm in Freedom Square, more than 200 people took part in the protest march at the Israeli aggression.
The demonstrators, including several Palestinians living in Malta wearing the characteristic keffiyeh, marched behind a banner entitled “Palestine: A Land Denied”.
As they marched down Republic Street, they chanted slogans such as “Stop the war, stop the massacre”, “Israel Stop the Gaza massacre”, “Long live Palestine”, “Save the children of Gaza”, “Allah Hu Akbar” and “Down Down USA”.
Among the people that took place in the demonstration were Alternattiva Demokratika (AD) chairperson Arnold Cassola, Peace Lab founder Fr Dionysius Mintoff, Labour MP Evarist Bartolo and Labour international secretary Alex Sciberras-Trigona.
There were no Nationalist politicians or party officials present for the manifestation in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The sizeable crowd included a number of Palestinian children who marched in front carrying candles and posters reading “Stop killing the children of Gaza” and “Stop killing us”.
The demonstration then proceeded till Republic Square in Valletta, where a joint message by the seven organisations expressed “their full condemnation of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, which have resulted in a massacre of Palestinian people.”
“We are also calling on the Maltese Government for our country, as a country which has historically recognised the rights of the Palestinians, to take a clear stand which condemns the Israeli aggression,” the seven organisations insisted.
While they condemned any acts of violence perpetrated by both sides, they added that it was “neither just nor helpful for the objective of peace to put the actions done by Hamas and the bombardments by the Israeli state on the same level, as it was the Israeli aggression which killed hundreds of persons in a few days”.
During the past 60 years, from the day the state of Israel was created, “Palestinians have been living as prisoners in their own land and enduring a systematic policy of terror from Israel,” they explained.
“Regardless of whether one agrees with Hamas’s control of Gaza, what the Israeli government has been doing for the past years is nothing but a ‘collective punishment’ which is causing suffering and death among innocent people,” the seven organisations insisted.
They added that these actions would “only serve to enhance the despair and legitimate anger of the Palestinians as well as provide fertile ground for more desperate, albeit unjustified, attacks.
“Above all we are convinced that peace in the region will only be possible when Palestinians have their own state enabling them to live freely and not under the control of the Israeli government,” the joint statement concluded.
The seven organisations that took part in the solidarity demonstration were Moviment Graffiti, the Peace Lab, Zminijietna, the General Workers’ Union (GWU), the Third World Group, Kopin and Kooperattiva Kummerc Gust.
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