The First Minister of Scotland, SNP leader John Swinney, has announced an aid package of £500,000 to Palestinians. Swinney stated online that the aid fund aims to:
support access to food, healthcare, clean water and shelter.
The funding will come in addition to £600,000 already provided last year. This has reportedly assisted over two million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. In times of an unprecedented genocide, in Gaza and beyond, any amount of such valuable aid is desperately needed.
First Minister @JohnSwinney met Palestinian Ambassador to the UK Dr Husam Zomlot and discussed the situation in Gaza and the West Bank.
During the meeting, the First Minister announced a further £500,000 funding to support access to food, healthcare, clean water and shelter. pic.twitter.com/tIZAsd6zhx
— First Minister (@ScotGovFM) July 27, 2026
SNP’s aid pledges
While any help is no doubt appreciated, more than £53bn is needed to rebuild “only part of what was destroyed” amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Still, that must start somewhere. Where better than from another small, sympathetic nation ruled from beyond its borders?
The ongoing “wide-scale military operation” across the West Bank, ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intensified on 26 July. Settlers are marauding through villages and attacking Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera. Hundreds of civilians have been murdered by settler militias and IOF alike.
Swinney told Scottish paper the National:
In Gaza and the West Bank, civilians are still being killed by Israeli forces, families are still living in fear, and millions of people are still in urgent need of humanitarian support. The UN warns that the Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians – including women and children.
This additional £500,000 contribution reflects the Scottish Government’s continued commitment to helping people affected by this humanitarian crisis.
Through the Occupied Palestinian Territory Humanitarian Fund, the extra financial support that I am announcing today will help deliver vital assistance including food, healthcare, clean water, shelter and protection services, reaching people most in need while supporting local organisations working on the ground.
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Scotland’s government appears committed to helping nations desperately in need of aid assistance.
The present SNP government is committed to increasing Scotland’s International Development Fund by 25% over the course of this Parliament.
In addition to its £500,000 and £600,000 aid commitments to Palestine, Scotland’s government pledged a quarter of a million to assist Venezuela following the nation’s disaster earthquakes. The double earthquakes took at least 5,270 lives and possibly dozens of thousands more remain unaccounted for.
Funding from the Scottish Government of £250,000 was given to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). Again, it is to support access to shelter, food, water and medical care in the worst affected areas.
Alongside aid funding to Venezuela, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Services (SFRS) sent three firefighters to assist the South American nation. They served as part of the UK’s international search-and-rescue response, which includes staff from 14 different fire services.
International Development Minister Simita Kumar said that Scotland owns a historic, “proud tradition” of standing with other communities in their “darkest hour”. She stated:
My heart goes out to everyone in Venezuela who has lost their loved ones or their home in the wake of these devastating earthquakes. The scale of suffering is immense, and I am deeply concerned for everyone caught up in the crisis, including the hundreds of thousands of children who most urgently need support.
Scotland has a proud tradition of standing with communities in their darkest hours and will play its part in supporting the international humanitarian effort in Venezuela. This funding will help get vital assistance to those who need it most.
The ‘interim’ Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez awarded Cuban rescue servicemen and women for their efforts. Meanwhile, US SOUTHCOM withdrew its troops, and there was great discontent over the presence of a Zionist emergency contingent on Venezuelan soil. In relation to the Israeli presence, formally expelled from Venezuela since Hugo Chavez’s rule, one Chavista movement leader stated:
Venezuela does not need that humanitarian aid. Simply lifting the sanctions and unfreezing our resources would be enough. We do not need handouts from anyone. Venezuela has sufficient resources.
Venezuela remains sanctioned internationally, is being brazenly robbed of its oil revenue by US corporations, and still has £2bn of its gold reserves locked away in the Bank of England.
‘Alarming’ London pulls back internationally
In this context, the UK government has been rolling back its international aid budget. This is despite its repeated decision to continuously enable illegal wars and genocide — typically at Zionists’ behest.
What international aid cuts began under the Sunak-Tory government continued, worsened even, under the Starmer-Labour government. As with warmongering, Burnham doesn’t seem set to change track.
The UK government is still taking what Oxfam describes as a “sledgehammer” to overseas aid. It already cut from 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) to 0.5%. Now it plans to further cut it to 0.3% by 2027…
Kumar, the same Scottish minister, slammed in particular the confirmed 90% cut to the UK’s aid budget for Malawi. Kumar labelled the unexplained aid cut an “alarming” move. She has said:
The newly published UK aid allocations are deeply concerning. The scale of the reductions now confirmed for Malawi is particularly alarming.
A cut of almost 90% over three years represents a fundamental change in the UK’s development relationship with one of Scotland’s longest-standing international partners. Similar reductions are planned for Rwanda and Zambia.
At a time when these countries continue to face significant economic, social and climate-related challenges, cuts of this scale risk undermining hard-won progress and will be felt most acutely by vulnerable communities.
We strongly urge the UK Government to reconsider the scale of these reductions and to set out clearly how it intends to maintain meaningful support for countries facing significant development challenges.
To make matters worse, the UK government still refuses to inform the Scottish government about whether its airports might be facilitating illegal US-Zionist bombings. No amount of aid can fix that…
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Featured image via the Canary
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