Malta rallies as Gaza burns: vigils, aid and political pressure mount

**“Gaza is burning,” minister says as Israel unleashes major bombardment – Maltese streets echo with calls for peace**

Valletta’s usually sun-drenched Republic Street fell unusually quiet yesterday evening as 300 Maltese – Palestinians, Arabs, Jews and Maltese citizens – stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside Parliament, candles flickering in the warm March breeze. Their silence was broken only by the haunting Muslim call to prayer and a single cardboard sign scrawled in English, Maltese and Arabic: “Għinuna. Help us. Gaza is burning.”

The vigil, hastily organised by the Malta Palestinian Community Association, came hours after Israeli jets launched one of the heaviest 24-hour bombardments of the five-month war. Health authorities in the strip report at least 400 Palestinians killed since Monday night; Israeli officials say the offensive was triggered by a Hamas rocket barrage that killed one Israeli soldier.

For many Maltese, the numbers are abstract; for others, painfully personal. Foreign Minister Ian Borg told parliament on Tuesday afternoon that Malta “unequivocally condemns the collective punishment of civilians” and backs an immediate EU humanitarian pause. “Gaza is burning, and the rules-based order is going up in smoke with it,” Borg said, earning rare cross-party applause. His remarks place Malta in a small caucus of EU states – alongside Ireland and Spain – pressing for stronger language at Friday’s Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels.

Yet the crisis is also being felt far beyond the corridors of Castille. In the narrow alleys of Valletta’s old Jewish quarter, once home to a thriving Sephardic community expelled in 1492, descendants of those refugees now watch the Levant on fire again. “My grandmother fled Jerusalem in ’48; my uncle lives in Tel Aviv,” says Rachel C., 34, who asked not to give her surname. “I lit a candle for him tonight, but also for the pharmacist in Gaza who used to send us thyme. Both are terrified. War has no winners.”

Malta’s unique historical layering – Arab rule for 220 years, Jewish merchants, Catholic Knights who hailed from every corner of Europe – makes the Holy Land feel oddly close. Schoolchildren still learn that the Knights of St John fortified Valletta with taxes raised on Levantine cotton; the Co-Cathedral’s floor is paved with 400 marble tombstones of crusader knights who died dreaming of Jerusalem. That memory feeds today’s activism. “Our islands were once a bridge between civilisations,” Fr. Joe Borg, lecturer at the University of Malta, told the crowd. “When bridges burn, we all fall into the sea.”

Practical solidarity is growing. Dar tal-Providenza, the Catholic charity, has diverted €50,000 originally earmarked for a parish kitchen refurbishment to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, after board members voted unanimously on Monday. Meanwhile, 27-year-old ceramist Leila Sammut from Sliema has raised €8,000 in 48 hours by auctioning hand-painted tiles depicting the olive branch on Malta’s 1975 independence commemorative stamp. “Art feels useless when children are buried under rubble,” she admits, “but giving up is worse.”

The Malta Chamber of Commerce estimates that 112 local companies import Israeli tech components; two have already reported cancelled orders from Libyan partners who refuse “any product touched by occupation”. Economists warn of only marginal impact on GDP, but the moral ripple is real. “Business cannot be divorced from conscience,” chamber president Marisa Xuereb posted on LinkedIn, urging members to donate medical supplies through the Arab-Maltese Chamber instead.

Back in Valletta, the vigil ended with a rendition of “Il-Hares,” Malta’s unofficial hymn calling for divine protection. Some wept; others simply stared at the mobile-phone images emerging from Gaza – a father carrying the shoeless body of his daughter past shuttered bakeries that mirror the closed shops of Strait Street. As the crowd dispersed, organisers collected 1,400 signatures on a petition demanding that Malta’s EU commissioner insist on an immediate arms-export ban on states violating international humanitarian law. They will hand it to MEP candidates next week, just as campaign billboards begin to paper the islands.

War in the Levant is, once again, a local story. And in a country whose national motto is “Virtute et constantia,” courage and perseverance, Maltese citizens are determined that their voice – small, but amplified by history – will not be the one that stayed silent.