Israel builds up forces ahead of Gaza City offensive

Valletta quietens at dusk, the honey-coloured bastions glowing above Grand Harbour while pushchairs and prayer-beads swing side-by-side on the Barakka lift. Yet even here, 1,800 kilometres from Gaza City, Israel’s military build-up feels close enough to touch. Over the past week, the Maltese have followed each new brigade, each tank column, with a particular intimacy born of geography, history and the tight weave of family ties that link the archipelago to the Levant.

Malta’s position in the middle of the Med has always made it a listening post. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, islanders huddled round Rediffusion sets for BBC crackle; in 1967 they watched flickering black-and-white footage in the now-shuttered Rialto cinema. Today the updates arrive faster—WhatsApp groups ping with Al Jazeera clips while elderly men in Marsaxlokk still tune to Radju Malta’s noon bulletin. The result is a nation that debates Middle-East policy over ftira and dips bread into oil as though it were the same conversation their grandparents had under British rule.

Local impact is already visible. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has issued a Level-3 travel advisory for Israel and the Palestinian Territories, forcing at least two Maltese pilgrimage groups to cancel Easter trips to the Holy Land. St Paul’s Shipwreck Church in Valletta, usually packed with Maltese scouts fundraising for Bethlehem, has seen donations diverted instead to the Emigrants’ Commission’s Gaza relief fund. “Every euro we send buys a surgical kit,” says Fr Jimmy Bonnici, himself a veteran of 1980s volunteer work in Beirut. “Our parishioners understand siege; they inherited the memory of 1940-42.”

The cultural reflex is tangible. Last Friday, University students chalked silhouettes of children on the Triton Fountain paving stones—an echo of earlier protests during the 2014 Gaza conflict. On Saturday, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra dedicated the adagio from Mahler’s 10th Symphony to “all civilians under fire.” Even the traditional Maltese festa is affected: organisers of the upcoming St Peter’s feast in Mdina have scaled back petard imports, citing “global supply-chain disruptions” triggered by Red Sea shipping reroutes.

Businesses feel the tremor too. Enemed, the national fuel distributor, has hedged jet-fuel prices after the Suez risk premium jumped 8 %. Island importers of Israeli citrus—mostly Jaffa oranges sold in Valletta’s Is-Suq tal-Belt—report cancelled orders as consumers boycott. Conversely, sales of Palestinian olive oil in organic shops from Sliema to Gozo have surged 25 %, with labels explaining the groves now lie inside an active war zone.

On a human level, Malta’s Palestinian and Israeli communities—each numbering a few hundred—are rattled. At the Melita Football Club bar in St Julian’s, a Tel-Aviv-born software engineer and a Gaza-born medical researcher share a Cisk in awkward silence, both glued to opposite ends of Twitter. The Maltese bartender, Joseph, says the pub has introduced a “no-politics” table rule after a near-scuffle last week. “We’re too small an island to import other people’s wars,” he mutters, wiping glasses etched with Knights’ crosses.

Malta’s government walks a familiar tightrope. Prime Minister Robert Abela reiterated Malta’s support for a two-state solution in a tweet that managed to mention both Israel’s right to security and Palestinians’ right to self-determination without drawing fire from either side—diplomatic choreography honed during Malta’s 2022 stint on the UN Security Council. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Ian Borg confirmed that Malta will co-sponsor the EU humanitarian corridor initiative announced in Brussels, pledging a field hospital tent and two medical officers fluent in Arabic.

Back in the living rooms of Birkirkara and Rabat, grandmothers light candles beside photos of grandchildren now serving with AFM peacekeepers in Lebanon. They know the Mediterranean is a liquid bridge: what happens on one shore eventually laps against the other. As Israel masses armour on the edge of Gaza City, Malta listens, prays and prepares—because in this sea, no story stays foreign for long.