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The MPPM expresses its deep concern at the continuing deterioration of the situation in Palestine and the dangers of an escalation of military confrontation widespread in North Africa and the Middle East. The living conditions of the Palestinian people become worse day by day, and Israel persists, with impunity, in the way of deepening colonization of the occupied territories and refusal to recognize the national rights of the Palestinian people. It is unacceptable that the proposed recognition of Palestine as a Member State of the United Nations - a proposal just and legitimate, according to international law and the legitimate aspirations of national liberation of the Palestinian people, which will be taken to the UN in the coming weeks - is the subject of resistance, threats and blackmail by the Israeli authorities and the U.S..

It was with heartfelt emotion that many people who gathered at the Casa do Alentejo, Lisbon, on last May 16 at the invitation of MPPM, to mark the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba - the Catastrophe - responded to the interventions of the different speakers.

First spoke Maria do Céu Guerra, President of MPPM, who described the long process of occupation of Palestinian land by the Zionists and the consequent expulsion of its inhabitants.

Fixing its inception in 1897, following the first Zionist Congress held in Basel, which established as a goal to create a home for the Jewish people in Palestine, an objective confirmed five years later with the creation of the Jewish National Fund to acquire land in Palestine that should be handed "empty of its Arab inhabitants." Since then, the Palestinian people were persecuted, expelled from their land, deprived of their possessions, decimated.

Last Wednesday, 4th of May, took place in Cairo, the ceremony of ratification of the agreement signed on the eve, puting an end to the division between Fatah, the Palestinian movement that rules the West Bank, and Hamas, the Palestinian movement who controls Gaza Strip.

The MPPM welcomes this initiative, which may constitute a decisive step towards the recognition by the international community of a sovereign Palestinian state, independent and viable, formed within the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

The agreement was signed by the representatives of 13 Palestinian resistance movements, in particular, in addition to Fatah and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Palestinian People Party.

The National Directorate of MPPM - Portuguese Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and Peace in the Middle East - has been following with great attention the contestation that currently takes place in many countries of the Arab world against the dictatorial regimes in force there.

Consequence of decades of poverty, unemployment, successive increases in the cost of living, corruption, nepotism, disproportionate and unlawful enrichment of the ruling classes, oppression and repression carried out in obedience to the economic and political interests of Western powers, the events that take place now represent the desire of people for an authentic social justice, the exercise of fundamental freedoms and the establishment of democratic governments.