A new action in Lisbon against the war in Gaza was announced today for May 11, two years after the death of journalist Shirren Abu Akleh and “four days before the Nakba, the catastrophe”, according to the organization.
Speaking to the Lusa news agency, Carlos Almeida, from the Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and for Peace in the Middle East (MPPM), said that the May action will be organized by the same four organizations that promoted today’s march in Lisbon, which lasted more than two hours and “brought together several thousand” people.
However, an official source from the Lisbon PSP Metropolitan Command declined to quantify the number of participants in the march between the Israeli embassy and the Assembly of the Republic.
The new action in May, also in Lisbon, scheduled by the CGTP trade union center, the CPPE – Portuguese Council for Peace and Cooperation, the MPPM and the Noise Project, will take place two years after the death of the Palestinian-American journalist from the Al Jazeera channel, shot by the Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank, according to the information transmitted by the United Nations in June 2022.
In addition, Carlos Almeida recalled, May 15 also marks the “Nakba”, an Arabic term meaning “Catastrophe”, the day after Israel’s proclamation of independence in 1948 and the date on which the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts began.
Carlos Almeida was speaking to Lusa at the end of today’s action, which began near the Israeli embassy, where participants began to gather before 15:00.
About 30 minutes later, the march to the Assembly of the Republic began, with slogans such as “Peace Yes, War No” or “It’s necessary, it’s urgent, a permanent ceasefire”, in a demonstration ‘dressed’ by posters and banners criticizing the war and Israel, as well as Palestinian flags, the flags of the organizing bodies and many keffiyeh, scarves that are a symbol of the Palestinian struggle.
Halfway along the route, PCP secretary-general Paulo Raimundo applauded the march and declared that “peace really needs more than these gestures”, while admitting that “these gestures are fundamental”.
“We can’t forget that tomorrow [Sunday] marks six months since the massacre, the genocide that is underway. Six months that seem like 40 years,” the communist leader told journalists, stressing the need to do “something so simple as to comply with the United Nations resolutions”.
Paulo Raimundo also noted the importance of political signals, arguing that the new government, led by Social Democrat Luís Montenegro, must assume “its role from the outset in clarifying what its position will be in the face of this genocide” and which side of the war it will support.
Another sign of “great importance”, he added, “is for the Portuguese state to recognize the Palestinian state once and for all”.
In this regard, Paulo Raimundo recalled that the PCP has already presented an initiative to this effect again, after having done so in 2011.
CGTP general secretary Tiago Oliveira also emphasized the “need to denounce the authentic genocide that Israel is committing against the people of Palestine, who have been massacred for more than 70 years”.
The ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip was triggered by the attack by the Islamist group Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023, which caused around 1,200 deaths and two hundred hostages, according to the Israeli authorities.
Since then, Israel has launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip that has caused more than 33,000 deaths, according to Hamas, which has ruled the small Palestinian enclave since 2007.
Israeli retaliation is causing a serious humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with more than 1.1 million people in a “catastrophic famine” that is already claiming victims – “the highest number ever recorded” by the UN in studies on food security in the world.