On the day that ​mark the 50th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation, in 1967, of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and West Jerusalem, and also in the Syrian Golan Heights, as part of the Egyptian Sinai and Lebanese Shebaa Farms, the Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation (CPPC) reaffirms its solidarity and determination in pursuing its historic intervention for the just cause of the Palestinian people.

Evoking half a century of occupation of all Palestine, followed by a first wave of expulsion of Palestinians with the creation of the State of Israel, in 1948, is to denounce the successive crimes and massacres committed against the Palestinian people; is to recall the leveled villages, the stolen lands, the demolished lands; is to remember the thousands of prisoners, including children, and the millions of refugees spread over the world; is the have present the daily humiliation imposed upon Palestinian populations, with the settlements, the control posts, the wall of segregation, the siege of the Gaza Strip, and the dramatic conditions of survival imposed by the Israeli authorities and its zionist policy upon the Palestinian people.

These last decades were even more marked by the tenacious resistance of the Palestinian people, who fights courageously against the Israeli occupation and pursues its daily struggle for their inalienable national rights. A firm and unshakable resistance that has counted upon the solidarity of the global forces of peace, of national liberation and social progress. Including Israel, where the peace movement and the progressive forces fight for the end of the Israeli occupation, for the fulfillment of international law, for peace and stability in the Middle East.

CPPC has always assumed the defense of the rights of the Palestinian people, organizing a vast number of actions – of national and international dimension and expression — to denounce and condemn the Israeli occupation, to affirm the right of the Palestinian people to their State and for a just peace in the Middle East. Given its international importance and impact, we highlight the World Conference of Solidarity with the Arab and Palestinian People, in Lisbon, in 1979, with the participation of Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), who came for the first time to a Western European country. CPPC promoted, by its own initiative or in partnership, numerous conferences, seminars, debates, demonstrations, rallies and petitions, visits and missions to the Middle East, including the occupied Palestinian territories and, importantly, a regular action of information that contributed to widen the field of Portuguese in solidarity with Palestine and the struggle of their people against military aggressions and occupation by Israel.

Sure of the fairness of the Palestinian people's cause and the path of solidarity, CPPC reaffirms its committement to continue to intervene for the end of the illegal Israeli occupation and the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian State, along the borders before June 1967, with capital in East Jerusalem, and the respect for the right of return of refugees, the fulfillment of international law and the successive United Nations resolutions.

June 5th 2017
CPPC National Leadership​