Nakba Day Celebration

The Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was evoked in the public session with which the MPPM - Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and for Peace in the Middle East - marked the Nakba Day, on May 24, at Casa do Alentejo, in Lisbon.

António Delgado Fonseca, a military participant in the 1974 Carnation Revolution,chaired the meeting and recalled that the Palestinian people continue to face daily aggressions, expropriations and expulsions that continue since the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948.

Journalist José Goulão denounced the contrast between the attention given to certain conflicts, namely the war in Ukraine, and the silence covering the violent occupation of Palestine by Israel.

Giulia Daniele, Researcher at ISCTE's Center for International Studies, focused on an extensively sustained characterization of Israel as an "apartheid state".

Hindi Mesleh, a Palestinian living in Portugal denounced that the Nakba did not end in 1949, it continues today, only in a more insidious, less visible, but no less destructive form.

For Carlos Almeida, Researcher at the History Center of FLUL, the impressive popular manifestation at the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh proves that, in 74 years of the Nakba, the Palestinian resistance did not give in and Zionism did not win. For him, Shireen reflected two of the lines of strength of the Palestinian resistance: the struggle against oblivion and the struggle against silencing.

The session ended with an appeal to strengthen solidarity with the Palestinian people, namely by signing the European Citizen Initiative that aims at stopping trade with the illegal settlements.