The spiral of violence in the Israeli-Hamas conflict is extremely worrying and every effort must be made by the international community to calm the situation and engineer a truce.
The Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7 were shocking beyond words and have been rightly condemned by most countries. Israel has the right to defend itself and to retaliate for such heinous acts of barbarity.
About 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas and 200 people are still being held hostage. Its terrible crimes can never be justified.
Self-defence, however, does not include the deliberate targeting of civilians and residential areas in Gaza, nor the forced evacuation of one million Palestinians and cutting the supply of food, water and fuel.
Thousands of Palestinians, most of them civilians, and half of them children, have already been killed in Israeli retaliatory strikes. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. This is unbearable.
This amounts to the collective punishment of the civilian population and is not permissible under international law.
We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, protests in the Arab world and the potential for outside actors to get involved, which would complicate matters further and see the whole region erupt.
The possibility of Hezbollah intervening and attacking Israel from Southern Lebanon is real and the potential for Iranian involvement cannot be discounted.
A major diplomatic initiative is urgently needed to prevent this cycle of violence from spiralling out of control. The US has a special responsibility to persuade Israel to agree to a ceasefire and allow supplies to reach of Gaza.
The US is the only country with some clout over Israel.
The recent US veto at the UN Security Council of a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire is disappointing. Twelve countries, including Malta, voted in favour while the UK and Russia abstained.
The vote shows that global public opinion is that the conflict has gone too far and, at the very least, a pause is needed to prevent the people of Gaza from being punished terribly for Hamas’s acts of terrorism.
The EU must urge Israel to agree to a ceasefire and respect international law – and Malta should be a strong voice in favour. Regional actors with any links to Hamas, such as Turkey and Qatar, must intensify their efforts to persuade it to release the hostages and to stop any attacks on Israel.
Arab countries with diplomatic relations with Israel, such as Egypt, Jordan and the UAE, and those considering opening them, such as Saudi Arabia, must make it clear it cannot be business as usual with Israel if international law is not respected.
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been at a standstill and the two sides are approaching a point of no return. This cannot be allowed to happen. The two-State solution seems like a distant dream but it is the only viable solution.
Unfortunately, Israel has consistently ignored UN resolutions, built illegal settlements in the West Bank, thrown Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem and continues to kill Palestinians in the occupied territories with impunity.
The Palestinians have suffered for far too long and deserve better. They have a right to an independent State of their own living side by side with Israel.
On the other hand, Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Hamas must be isolated so that Israel can negotiate in good faith with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, stop building illegal settlements, stop stealing Palestinian land and make the conditions possible for a Palestinian State to be viable.
This is the policy that the US, Israel’s strongest ally, has the moral obligation to pursue.