United Platform for Solidarity with Palestine praises recent statements by foreign affairs minister
Around 200 activists from the United Platform for Solidarity with Palestine (PUSP) staged a new demonstration in Lisbon yesterday, this time demanding that Portugal’s government cut diplomatic relations with Israel and expel the Israeli ambassador.
Speaking to Lusa from the protest outside the Israeli embassy, Ana Nicolau, head of PUSP, accused Israel of using disproportionate means against Palestinians in Gaza, describing an attack on Rafah, in the south of the enclave and close to the border with Egypt, as “terrible, frightening and unacceptable“.
She stressed she was heartened by recent statements by Portugal’s head of diplomacy, João Gomes Cravinho – who said that Hamas cannot be blamed for everything and that Israel can no longer claim that the response to attacks by the Palestinian Islamist movement is a self-defence manoeuvre.
“But we need actions to accompany these words. We want pressure to be exerted to achieve an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and for Portugal to support South Africa in the case brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as well as Chile and Mexico at the International Criminal Court (ICC),” she explained.
“We want diplomatic relations with Israel to be severed and the Israeli ambassador in Lisbon to be expelled because he is the representative of the Zionist State,” Ana Nicolau added.
Israel must be made to understand that many governments, “including those that once defended Israel 100%”, have changed their opinions, she said.
“Joint actions to cut diplomatic relations, to expel Israeli ambassadors from the countries where they have embassies” would send a “message of change” and reject “being complicit or having relations with a genocidal State“, she explained.
Ana Nicolau said it is “urgent to put an end to Israeli impunity“, and “demanded that the member countries of the European Union (EU) impose economic sanctions on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and that the United States stop funding the war, “because they have as much Palestinian blood on their hands as Israel“, writes Lusa.
The “All Eyes on Rafah” demonstration went on for almost an hour and a half – and included (as other recent demos have, a contingent of jews AGAINST the Israeli offensive).
Some of the slogans heard were: “Israel is a murderous State, long live the struggle of the Palestinian people”; “Ceasefire now”, and “Israel, how many Palestinians have you killed today?”.
Symbolic, says Lusa, was the minute’s silence by demonstrators who lay motionless on the ground to represent the death toll in Gaza.
The news agency concluded its report by summarising the events of the last few months: the October 7 massacre by Hamas fighters of over 1,140 people – as well as the kidnapping of around 240, 100 of whom have since been released – followed by Israel’s response which this far has killed more than 28,600 Palestinians and wounded roughly 68,000 more, “most of them civilians” – particularly women and children.
Meantime, a new demonstration is already being planned for Monday, in Porto, backed by trade unionists and various civic associations.
Source material: LUSA
