Article by Rui Paz, Collaborator of the International Department of the CC

The decision to build illegal settlements in East Jerusalem by the Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government, therefore proceeding with the former governments’ guidelines, confirms Tel Aviv’s disposition in intensifying the Palestinian people oppression policy, despising international law and provoking the Middle East ‘s peoples. Being supported by imperialism, besides some circumstantial statements, the Israeli regime is nurturing a more and more dangerous situation for peace throughout the world, marked by a deeply racist and terrorist State doctrine. The Palestinian territories’ colonization and ethnic cleansing, illegally under occupation, the Gaza Strip squeezing and the Arab population’s massacre, during the so-called " melted lead" operation, are assigned within the Sabra and Schatila, of Jenin’s massacres’ continuity, and other atrocities committed by the Israeli governments and troops.

The NATO circles’ support and benevolence before the crimes Israel has been committing for decades against the Palestinian people, proves the total coincidence of Tel Aviv and the Middle East imperialism ‘s objectives and methods. Shulamit Aloni, the Israeli writer and former Knesset MP and Labour Party ex-member, says, during a interview to the Jungenwelt, that " its terrible, but Israel is not a democracy. We live within an ethnocracy (racial dictatorship) with a Jewish order and democracy". Aloni continues, explaining "Israel, together with its army, practises a brutal form of apartheid, within the occupied territories". The Israeli Home Office , obliged 4577 Palestinians toleave behind their homes, in East Jerusalem, denying their right of residence, in 2008. A number, 21 times superior to the average during the last 40 years. In the Scheich Dscharrah quarter, Israeli, Palestinians, opponents to the military occupation regime and pacifists protest against the Arab population homes’ destruction, every weekends. Jochen Stoll, the "Pax Cristi" and " Forum for Peace" envoy, and upon a two years’ presence in East Jerusalem, explains the goal is the " judaizing" of whole quarters, that is, the Palestinians’s expulsion and the occupation by the Jews. The Jewish population does not settle as neighbours within a town, but as settlers and occupants, who hold the power. Stoll concludes " East Jerusalem is a delayed bomb, which rapidly draws near its explosion."

With the Prime-Minister Ariel Sharon’s annexation and religious provocative policy, such as the unleashed against the Jerusalem Mosque, in 2000, the Israel regime is playing with fire and trampling on, not only, the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights and the international law, along with provoking war and the rebellion of a thousand million Muslims throughout the world.

We Portuguese, who during our recent history, lived intensively the Guinea -Bissau, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa peoples’ struggle for their liberation, bearing in mind, the military cooperation between Israel and the then existant South African racist regime. Israel cannot nor ought to follow and apply a State doctrine, set on the denial of the Palestinian people’s existence. As well stated in the historical process towards the fall of fascism in Portugal and the 25 th April Revolution, a people oppressing other peoples cannot be free.