MPPM warns that peace in Palestine and the Middle East is only possible if the national rights of the Palestinian people are recognized

The actions unleashed in Gaza and Israel this morning prove — as the MPPM has repeatedly warned — that it is not possible to have peace in Palestine and, consequently, in the Middle East, by continuing to trample on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and persisting in maintaining the colonial occupation and the violence of the military forces and settlers.

1. At 6:30 this morning (4:30 in Lisbon), activists from Palestinian resistance organizations launched a large-scale surprise attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, in what they have dubbed "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood" and which they claim is a response to the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the increase in settler violence.

The operation comes after thousands of settlers made provocative visits to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem in recent days. It also follows a major increase in Israeli settler violence against Palestinians.

Israel retaliated with "Operation Iron Swords", with air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip.

According to the latest reports, there were 198 dead and a thousand wounded among the Palestinians, and more than 70 dead, several hundred wounded and dozens of prisoners among the Israelis, in addition to the seizure and destruction of military equipment.

2. In this year marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe), more than five decades after Israel militarily occupied the entire territory of historic Palestine, we must not forget — and the Palestinian people remember this at every turn — the campaign of ethnic cleansing that accompanied the formation of Israel and which continues to this day.

Around 2.2 million people live in Gaza, where this action started, descendants of these successive waves of ethnic cleansing. Since 2006, Israel has imposed a criminal blockade on the territory that the United Nations has already deemed unfit to sustain human life. Between March 2018 and December 2019, a series of peaceful demonstrations dubbed the "Great March of Return” were brutally repressed by the Israeli army — 223 killed and more than 9,000 injured — amid silence from the international community.

The Israeli occupation forces' assaults on Palestinian settlements and refugee camps, as well as settler violence and arbitrary arrests, are the daily routine that Palestinians, men and women, young and elder, face on a daily basis.

As of yesterday, at least 247 Palestinians, most of them young, had been killed by Israeli forces and settlers.

3. The lamentations of those, including the Portuguese government, who hypocritically condemn the violent resistance actions of the oppressed and have for decades been silent (or worse, collaborated) in the face of the violence of the occupation, the hundreds of settlements and hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in occupied Palestinian territory, the arrests and murders to which the Palestinian people are subjected, are unacceptable.

Those who for decades have lived with the absence of any real political process leading to a solution that respects the rights of the Palestinian people have no moral authority to complain today about the storms they have provoked.

A worsening of the situation and a spread of violence throughout the Middle East cannot be ruled out. The MPPM recalls that Israel, with the support of "Western" countries and primarily the United States, is the largest military power in the region and the only one with nuclear weapons.

Peace in the Middle East and a solution to the Palestinian question necessarily require a solution that respects the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to a free and independent homeland, including the right of refugees to return.

The MPPM reaffirms its solidarity with the Palestinian people and their inalienable right to resist the occupation until the victory of their just cause.

October 7, 2023

The National Directorate of the MPPM