About a hundred demonstrators dressed in traditional Palestinian scarves – kufiya – gathered this Saturday in front of the old Cadeia da Recção in Porto, for the liberation of Palestine, carrying the country’s flags and posters reading Free Palestine.
As Palestinian music blared from the loudspeakers, shouts of “Free Palestine” and posters reading “Free Palestine” or “End the Siege of Gaza,” Ana Paula Cruz of the Collective for the Liberation of Palestine (CLP) told Lusa that Today’s demonstration in Porto serves to demonstrate the “colonial oppression of the State of Israel” and also to remind that a “massacre is currently taking place in the attempted ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
“While our political representatives raise Israeli flags and illuminate blue facades, pro-Palestinian demonstrations are banned across Europe and the genocide remains unpunished,” activist Ana Paula Cruz complained.
The activist states that the Collective for the Liberation of Palestine (CLP) – a movement founded in May and has several dozen members, including some Palestinians living in Portugal – today wants to show its solidarity with the Palestinian people and “express to their anger” in a public space where they make that anger public.
Ana Paula Cruz criticizes the political representatives of the European Union for supporting this conflict “very poorly” and “not condemning the genocide currently taking place in Gaza and the West Bank.”
“It is necessary to stop supporting a colonial state that is the Israeli state. Several European leaders have come publicly to show their solidarity with the Israeli people and to express their condolences to the victims on the Israeli side and to say and remember that they stand with Israel. and that they defend Israel’s right to defend itself and not speak in relation to the Palestinian victims,” the activist declares.
“Not a word is said about the right of the Palestinian people to resist and their right to be victims of genocide,” he said, repeating that “ethnic cleansing” is currently taking place.
Ana Paula Cruz also recalled that last Friday, the State of Israel gave the United Nations 24 hours to remove thousands of people from the Gaza Strip, and that as these people were leaving, they were bombed.
“We are talking about crimes against humanity and clear violations of international law,” he concluded in a conversation with Lusa.
Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, had refused to withdraw the population that Israel had requested. Israel had ordered a move south of the enclave, a move that could signal a ground offensive against Palestinian territory.
The Gaza Strip, a small, poor enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants that has been under a land blockade for several years, is now under siege and water, electricity and food supplies have been cut off by Israel.
The Islamist group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel a week ago with thousands of rockets and the incursion of armed militiamen by land, sea and air.
In response, Israel bombed several Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip from the air and imposed a total siege of the territory, cutting off water, fuel and electricity supplies.
The attacks have already caused thousands of deaths and injuries in both areas.
Source: DN
