A petition, which includes over 120 initial signatories predominantly from the cultural sector, garnered 32,149 signatures by 4:10 PM today. Only 7,500 signatures are required for parliamentary discussion, as stated in the text, where signatories address the President of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar Branco.
The signatories are urging Portugal to take an active and significant role in promoting peace and defending human rights.
They seek parliamentary discussion of “three fundamental points”: an immediate call for a ceasefire; urging Israel to permit immediate entry of medical and humanitarian aid into Gaza through the United Nations; and recognition by the government and the Assembly of the Republic that genocide is occurring in Gaza.
The text states, “We want the Assembly of the Republic, where our elected representatives are, to speak out and recommend the government take an active role in defending human rights and ending the genocide in Gaza.”
For the signatories, it is “unacceptable to remain neutral in the face of what is happening in Gaza,” “unacceptable to witness genocide in silence,” “unacceptable for Europe to silently watch the deaths of children seeking food,” and “unacceptable to do nothing while war crimes are committed daily.”
They question, “When, in the future, someone asks how we could witness genocide from our couch and what we did to stop it, what will we answer? A group of citizens, from various political tendencies or without any, have come together to say that we are alert, eyes on Gaza, and we do not conform to the Portuguese state’s passivity towards this genocide.”
Among the first to sign the “Petition for the Government to recognize the genocide in Gaza and pressure Israel to allow aid into Palestine” are musicians like Adolfo Luxúria Canibal (Mão Morta), Ana Bacalhau, Paulo Furtado (The Legendary Tigerman), Ana Lua Caiano, David Santos (noiserv), Luís Nunes (Benjamin), Aldina Duarte, Ana Matos Fernandes (Capicua), Carlos Nobre (Carlão), Ana Moura, Salvador Sobral, and Sérgio Godinho, as well as actors including Albano Jerónimo, Carolina Amaral, Gonçalo Waddington, Isabel Abreu, Ivo Canelas, Nádia Iracema, Sara Carinhas, and Maria de Medeiros.
Directors like Edgar Pêra, Bruno de Almeida, Rodrigo Areias, Teresa Villaverde, and Pedro Serrazina, as well as writer José Luís Peixoto, choreographer Victor Hugo Pontes, visual artists such as Miguel Januário (±) and Rita Gomes (Wasted Rita), sculptor Rui Chafes, ModaLisboa director Eduarda Abbondanza, and fashion designer Alexandra Moura have also signed.
Among the more than 120 initial signatories are also politicians like Catarina Martins, Joana Mortágua, Marisa Matias, João Costa, and Marta Temido, and commentators such as Pedro Marques Lopes, Luís Pedro Nunes, and João Maria Jonet.
The petition is available on the Public Petition platform.
On Wednesday, over a hundred international and Palestinian organizations reported that starvation is killing 2.1 million people in the Gaza Strip, the entire population, and criticized the humanitarian aid distribution system managed by Israel and the United States through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
A total of 111 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Save the Children, and Oxfam, have warned of advancing starvation in the Gaza Strip, stating that even humanitarian workers “are dying slowly.”
The NGOs reported, “While the siege imposed by the Israeli government condemns the population of Gaza to hunger, humanitarian workers join the food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families.”
Before the current situation of widespread hunger in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli minister, Bezalel Smotrich, stated in August last year that “killing two million Palestinians by starvation could be justified and moral,” and another, Itamar Ben-Gvir, advocated bombing food storage warehouses.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is subject to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court on November 21, 2024, for using starvation as a weapon of war.
The latest phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered by attacks led by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023, in southern Israel, which caused about 1,200 deaths and more than two hundred hostages.
Israel’s retaliation has resulted in over 59,000 deaths, mostly civilians, destruction of nearly all of Gaza’s infrastructure, and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
Additionally, it included the imposition of a blockade of essential goods in Gaza, such as food, drinking water, medication, and fuel.
