All of us welcome the Israeli ceasefire in Gaza but we remain very concerned by the ongoing catastrophe. Yes, the 2,000-pound bombs are not indiscriminately raining down on civilians but, just six days after the agreement was reached, Israeli occupation forces are firing on displaced Palestinians, injuring five people including a child.
Over 12,000 seriously injured people, many of whom are children, need to be evacuated immediately for treatment; the devastated healthcare system needs to be rehabilitated immediately to meet the needs of over 111,160 wounded people as well as thousands of other chronic cases; thousands of unexploded bombs need to be defused; hospital supplies, water, shelter, food, electricity and sanitary systems need to be reinstated.
Our neighbours, the Palestinian people, are still dying from injuries, disease and starvation. The genocide has morphed but it has not subsided.
The residents of the West Bank are terrified as Israeli forces intensify their assaults in what is becoming increasingly like their indiscriminate and homicidal actions in Gaza. The people of Jenin are locked down under constant curfew in terror of the Israeli military forces who are shooting, killing and targeting the healthcare system in particular.
In Jenin’s besieged hospitals, medical supplies are running out and doctors are afraid they may soon have to operate without anaesthetics. The staff, patients and visitors have not been able to leave their hospitals and patients cannot enter.
A two-year-old girl, having been being shot by a sniper as she sat on her mother’s lap, bled to death in a car last Saturday because her parents were prevented from reaching the nearby Al-Shifa hospital.
“It is very dangerous. We cannot help thousands of people in need. We are so scared,” said a Jenin attorney on Sunday evening (Doctors Against Genocide press conference 26/1/2025).
Demands by the Israeli right wing (including Israeli Finance Minister Bezabel Smotrich and former national security minister Itamer Ben Gvir) for ethnic cleansing, mass arrests, more violent seizures of Palestinian land and mass deportations are growing.
Twenty-six communities in the Palestinian West Bank have recently been decimated and their land stolen by government-backed violent Israeli settlers.
Now, too, US President Donald Trump is calling for the forced mass displacement and deportation of Palestinians from their homeland as if re-enacting the terrible massacres, forced displacement and ghettoisation of native Americans, or Stalin’s mass pogroms: as if the Palestinian people today are nothing but dispensable commodities.
Demands by the Israeli right wing for ethnic cleansing and more violent seizures of Palestinian land and deportations are growing- Yana Mintoff
While we may be lulled into a false sense of complacency, deep down we know that the forces of evil will not be stopped so easily.
Resistance to these clear violations of the Geneva Convention (such as ethnic cleansing, enforced displacement and starvation) must increase not decrease.
This is not a respite; it’s a tight window of opportunity to unite against war criminals.
Health workers are taking the lead globally. The Doctors Against Genocide campaign is for Not Another Child, Not Another Hospital and their petition includes basic demands such as the complete protection of health workers in Palestine, the full implementations of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza and a humanitarian corridor for unimpeded, life-saving patient referrals and movement of humanitarian personnel and essential health supplies.
Civil society in Malta has called repeatedly on our government to clarify its position in favour of human rights and to impose sanctions against Israel for its continuing violations of the Geneva Convention.
We are peace-loving people and for us to retain a peaceful region we need to take a clear stand against war criminals. Indeed, Malta has recently voted in favour of UN resolutions calling for everything that supports Israeli illegal occupations to be sanctioned.
Article 1.3 of our constitution proclaims that Malta is an actively neutral state working for peace, security and social progress while adhering to the principle of non-alignment with any military alliance. We are so fortunate to live in peace without the presence of military bases. But we cannot afford to rest on our laurels.
We cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that US and NATO leaders are courting our political elite and both Labour and Nationalist top brass have been seduced. This is not just shameful but it risks making us complicit with the Israeli state’s genocidal agenda. We shall stand in solidarity with the increasing number of innocent victims of US-Israeli military aggression until these terrible injustices end.
Yana Mintoff is a political activist.