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MPPM – Portuguese Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and for Peace in the Middle East, joining the appeals of high international instances, calls for the immediate release of Palestinian children held by Israel in order to safeguard their rights and their physical integrity in the present context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the end of April 2020, 185 Palestinian minors were being held in Israeli prisons and detention centres. Every year, Israel takes 500 to 700 Palestinian children to military courts, and it is estimated that since 2000, more than 10,000 Palestinian children have been held in the Israeli military detention system.

The current Covid-19 pandemic poses an increased risk to children detained by Israel. Under the conditions to which prisoners are subjected, it is impossible to avoid the risk of contagion to the detainees. However, even in a time of pandemic, the number of arrests has increased.

Israel has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and...

The 15th of May marks the day of Nakba – the catastrophe that, in 1948, befell the Palestinian people, accompanying the unilateral proclamation of Israel's independence. In the following weeks, more than 700,000 people were driven from their homes and lands by Zionist violence, in an ethnic cleansing that gave rise to what is, to this day, the largest refugee community in the world.

This anniversary of the Nakba is marked by the real danger of a repetition of the 1948 tragedy. Following Netanyahu's plans, the announced program of Israel’s coalition government foresees the annexation of extensive areas of the West Bank, an internationally recognized Palestinian territory. This announced annexation represents a blatant violation of international law, of the resolutions passed by the UN for more than 70 years and even of the agreements signed by Israel, including those resulting from processes conducted by the USA in the last 30 years. It confirms Israel's bad faith in negotiations...

On the 46th anniversary of the April Revolution, MPPM salutes the liberation movement, led by the military with broad popular support, which returned to the Portuguese their freedom and their fundamental rights, opened the way to reconciliation with the peoples subjected to the colonial yoke and allowed the return of Portugal to the fellowship of nations after 48 years of almost total international isolation of the fascist, obscurantist and colonialist regime.

The Constitution of the Republic, promulgated in April 1976, reflected the deep aspirations of the Portuguese people, repressed during the dictatorship: the values of freedom, democracy, social justice, national independence, peace, solidarity. It enshrined the rights acquired by the Portuguese and also the commitments entered into, namely in international relations. And if, regarding individual and collective rights, despite the upheavals, notwithstanding advances and setbacks, there has been undeniable progress, in what concerns...

On April 17th, Palestinian Prisoners' Day, MPPM reaffirms its solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners and administrative detainees in Israeli jails, reiterating its support for their courageous struggle for the freedom of their people, for the recognition of their status as political prisoners, for the respect of their rights and their dignity, against the degrading conditions to which they are subjected in Israeli prisons.

In this year 2020, Palestinians locked up in Israeli jails — already systematically subjected to torture, ill-treatment, punishment and humiliation — face an increased threat to their health and lives as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The conditions of detention of Palestinians in Israeli prisons do not meet the minimum international standards established by international humanitarian law. Added to this is the institutionalized framework of medical negligence by the Israeli authorities and the repeated refusal even by the Supreme Court of Israel to...

On Land Day and the second anniversary of the start of the Great March of Return, a European coalition of organizations, including MPPM, is launching a petition calling on the European Union to stop using Israeli drones to control its maritime borders.

The Hermes drones, manufactured by Elbit Systems, the largest Israeli military company, were developed specifically to be used by the Israeli armed forces to keep the Gaza Strip under the inhuman siege it has been subjected to by Israel for more than ten years. According to Human Rights Watch, these drones were actually used to deliberately target civilians in the Gaza Strip during the massacres of 2008-2009. Elbit Systems drones were also used to kill civilians in Lebanon in the 2006 war waged by Israel.

At a time when Israel is using the pandemic as a smokescreen to accelerate the de facto annexation in the West Bank and increase repression, and maintains the blockade of Gaza, where, with scarce resources, any effective response for two...

Today, in Palestine and in all its diasporas around the world, Land Day is celebrated. This year, the Palestinian people recall the events of 1976 in a particularly difficult situation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The predictable advance of the disease, propelled by the deficient sanitary conditions in which the majority of the Palestinian population lives, especially in the refugee camps and in the Gaza Strip, makes us fear the worst. At the same time, Israel is intensifying its abuses against the Palestinians, raising obstructing measures of support and prevention of the pandemic taken in the Palestinian communities and exploiting the situation to speed up the de facto annexation of the Palestinian territory.

On March 30, forty-four years ago, the Israeli army brutally repressed a large popular movement that had risen among the Palestinian community within the territory of the State of Israel in protest against the plan decided a month earlier for the expropriation of an area...

On March 8, proclaimed International Women's Day by the UN General Assembly in 1977, MPPM pays tribute to women around the world and their struggle for freedom, justice, equality and the elimination of all forms of discrimination, and in a very special way to Palestinian women.

To Palestinian women living in the West Bank under relentless occupation, where Israeli settlements proliferate and the shameful “Apartheid Wall” is spread; to those living in East Jerusalem, subject to an accelerated process of Judaization and expulsion of its legitimate inhabitants; to those living in the Gaza Strip, suffering an inhumane blockade that has lasted for 13 years and subjected to frequent attacks by the Israeli armed forces; to those living in the State of Israel, subject to discriminatory and racist legislation that denies them equal rights with Jews; to those who live in refugee camps, in foreign countries or foreigners in their own country, victims of successive campaigns of ethnic cleansing...

On February 6, the Portuguese Parliament approved a Vote «Condemning the "Trump Plan" which constitutes an assault on the national rights of the Palestinian people and International Law» on 6 February last.

The Vote was presented by the Portuguese Communist Party parliamentary group and was adopted with the support of the MPs from PS (Socialist Party, in government), BE (Left Block), PCP, PEV (Green Party) and Joacine Katar Moreira (independent), votes against by PSD (Social-Democratic Party), CDS-PP (Democratic Social Center), PAN (People, Animals, Nature) and Chega (Enough), while the Liberal Initiative (IL) abstained.

The text of the Vote classifies the «Deal of the Century» as a «clear assault on the national rights of the Palestinian people, as well as on International Law and decades of UN resolutions that recognise and enshrine them», considering it «a new and more serious stage in Israel's illegal occupation and annexation of Palestinian territories».

The Vote states that the...

Portuguese cartoonist Vasco Gargalo is the target of an unfounded accusation of anti-Semitism and an appeal for his dismissal by an international Zionist organization, under the pretext of the cartoon entitled Crematorium, now republished in a commentary on the “peace plan” presented by the United States.

Vasco Gargalo, stressing that he will continue to fight for freedom of expression and freedom of the press, says: “It is my view on this attack. When I made the cartoon I knew it was strong, that it would touch on the issue of Holocaust victims, but I don't really add anything to what I see. It's a comparison I made of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Vasco Gargalo, speaking to Lusa news agency, said this Wednesday that he had received, in addition to accusations of anti-Semitism, also death threats, because of the cartoon, published online on the Cartoon Movement platform on 15 November 2019 and which he republished last week, in a commentary on the “peace plan” presented by...

The Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and for Peace in the Middle East (MPPM) firmly condemns the content of the so-called “deal of the century” for the resolution of the Palestinian question, presented on 28 January by US President Donald Trump, supported by the still Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Presented with imperial arrogance, the so-called “Peace for Prosperity” plan tears up all the resolutions passed over decades by the UN on the Palestinian issue, and even tears up the agreements, such as Oslo, promoted under the aegis of the United States of America since the 1990s. The “Plan” is fully in line with the positions of the Israeli extreme right and takes the form of a diktat that seeks to impose on the Palestinian people, whose representatives were not even considered worthy of consultation, the total renunciation of their national rights, recognized and enshrined in international law.

Legitimising annexation and continuing the ethnic cleansing of...