The Palestinian Authority announced that it will submit a proposal to the 66th. Session of the United Nations General Assembly to recognise Palestine as a United Nations Member State.
1. The Portuguese Communist Party supports this claim by the Palestinian people. A claim and an inalienable right that, in PCP’s view, is inseparable from the demand that Israel, all UN Member States and international organisations comply with the UN Resolutions that recognise the national rights of the Palestinian people, namely the right to establish a Palestinian State, free and sovereign, within the borders prior to 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital; the end and dismantling of all settlements and the wall of separation; the right of return of all Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the compensation to the Palestinian people for more than six decades of occupation.
A claim of the most elementary justice that has to be necessarily associated with the accountability and condemnation of the Israeli State for the continuing crimes it has been committing for decades against the Palestinian people.
2. More than 100 countries have already recognised the Palestinian State and its rightful aspiration to be a full member of the United Nations. The matter will now be subject to appreciation by the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly.
Portugal will be present in both bodies, since it presently holds the mandate of a non-permanent member of the Security Council.
Hence, the PCP demands that the Portuguese government – and has to this effect presented a Resolution in the Assembly of the Republic – take a clear stand in the Security Council, in the UN General Assembly, as well as in the European Institutions to which it belongs, to support this continuously denied rightful claim of the Palestinian people, both due to the hypocrisy of the so-called “international community” and the criminal action of the Israeli State.
3. The Portuguese Constitution establishes in its Article 7 that the Portuguese State is guided in its international relations, among others, by the principles of respect for the rights of the peoples, namely to self-determination, independence and development. Applying these principles to the Palestinian issue requires that Portugal stand in favour of the recognition of Palestine as a full right Member State of that organisation, while at the same time denying any solutions that exert unacceptable diplomatic pressures on the Palestinian Authority – namely via the European Union – aiming to postpone and deny the materialization of this right of the Palestinian people and the fulfilment of the most basic principles of the United Nations Charter and of International Law.
4. The PCP welcomes, and embraces, the initiatives that several organisations – specially the trade union movement, the peace movement and the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian cause – and public figures have carried out during the past weeks, highlighting the fact that once again the Portuguese people shows a true and consequent feeling of solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people.
