After taking a beating in the media for failing to come up with aid for earthquake-stricken Haiti, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has now agreed to pitch in $50 million to help the poor Caribbean Sea nation, news agencies are reporting.

The aid will be directed through the United Nations.

"The kingdom, by instruction of King Abdullah, is donating $50 million ... to assist the Haitian people," foreign ministry spokesman Osama Nugali told Agence France-Presse today.

-- Los Angeles Times

With one in five Gazans living in abject poverty, according to the United Nations, extra money and food are hard to come by.

Still, some are putting together what they can to donate to the people of Haiti.

On Monday, a local group began a drive to collect money, blankets, food and other items for donation to Haiti through the Red Cross, the Palestinian Maan news agency reported.

However, getting goods into and out of the Gaza Strip is difficult due to the Israeli blockade, and food and clothing donations have been turned away.

"People may be astonished at our ability to collect donations from our people [in Gaza]; we tell them that this is a humanitarian campaign and our people love life and peace," said Jamal Khudary, head of the Committee to Break the Siege, which organized the initiative.

"We feel for [the Haitians] the most because we were exposed to our own earthquake during Israel’s war on Gaza," he told Maan.

 

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is one of the world's wealthiest countries. But though it's generous when it comes to building Islamic religious schools and mosques throughout the world, Saudi Arabia has been rather miserly when it comes to the suffering of the people of Haiti, which was struck by a cataclysmic earthquake that  destroyed its capital and killed tens of thousands. 

Certainly, Haiti is a world away from Saudi Arabia. And it's a mostly Christian country, rather than Muslim. But that hasn't stopped other wealthy Middle East countries from pitching in.