On the thirtieth anniversary of the massacres at Sabra and Shatla MPPM demands an end to the crimes of Israel

Thirty years ago, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon and occupied the capital Beirut. Occupants launched Lebanese militias against Palestinian refugee camps and, in Sabra and Shatila, many hundreds - possibly thousands - of Palestinians, mostly women and children, were savagely massacred. On 16 December of that same year, 1982, the UN General Assembly classified the massacres (no votes against) as an act of genocide. All those responsible for the massacre remain unpunished, including Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defense minister and military chief of the invasion of Lebanon, and who would later become Prime Minister of Israel.

The massacre of Sabra and Shatila is a particularly heinous in a long series of crimes that have marked the history of Israel, from its inception to the present day. Yet earlier this month of September 2012, Israel repeatedly bombed the Gaza Strip, causing casualties among the civilian population. According to the latest annual report (2011) of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 until the end of 2011, the Israeli military killed 6721 people in the occupied territories, of which 1258 (24.3%) were minors. The number of injured stood at 19,728, of whom 6073 (30.8%) minors.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the barbaric massacre of Sabra and Shatila, the Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and Peace in the Middle East (MPPM):

• Condemns the ongoing crimes of the Israeli occupation and the silence that surrounds them, in particular the silence of the Portuguese government

• Calls for strengthening the solidarity of the Portuguese people to the cause of liberation of the Palestinian people and demands that are fulfilled the many promises and UN resolutions that never, for decades, were out of the paper, requiring the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories in 1967 and the constitution of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee situation

• Warns that the continued Israeli aggression towards neighboring countries are eloquent testimony that should not be underestimated the permanent threat of an Israeli attack against Iran that, if consummated, would constitute a tragedy of enormous proportions for the region and for the world.