Several hundred people gathered today at a vigil for Palestine in a Lisbon garden, a solidarity movement “against war and genocide” that is intended to be permanent and to counter the “inaction of the world’s governments”.
In the Amélia Carvalheira garden, in the center of Lisbon, behind the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, red balloons with the names of destroyed villages and a small pamphlet are attached to tree trunks and recall the events of 1948, the Nakba (Catastrophe in Arabic) which is being commemorated today on its 76th anniversary.
In this way, we remember the expulsion from their homes and lands of some 750,000 Palestinians before and after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, which coincided with the first Arab-Israeli war. Misca, 1848; Sabalan, 1948; Al-Manaba, 1948…. The names of some of the dozens of villages razed to the ground.
In the garden, along with many young activists, there are also musicians, poets and painters. There are João Reis, Rita Blanco, Dalila Carmo and Isabel Abreu.
“We can’t go on watching that genocide, that slaughter, whatever you want to call it. Innocent children, women, being killed by that criminal, by that dictator, and with the support of the Europeans and the United States, everyone pretending that ‘yes, but also…’, and no one coming forward,” actress Rita Blanco told Lusa, together with her friends.
On the pitch, two large Palestinian flags. Lots and lots of ‘keffiyeh’, the Palestinian headscarf. There was also a banner on the grass: “No more aggression, for a free and independent Palestine”.
The vigil was called by the Unitarian Platform in Solidarity with Palestine (PUSP) in Lisbon, not far from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon, where there is an occupation of premises by the Young Climate Activists, similar to what is happening at the Faculty of Fine Arts, in solidarity with Palestine and for the establishment of a lasting ceasefire.
“We can’t continue to look at images on Instagram and normalize violence. It’s already happened, and it happens on social media. The trivialization of evil, as Hannah Arendt said,” Rita Blanco continues.
“We’ve seen all the horror and we’re still standing there waiting for what? I don’t know what can be done, but at least I don’t want to stay at home, I don’t want to carry that weight on my conscience.”
Dima Mohammed, an academic and activist, was one of the speakers at this solidarity protest, which had an “open mic” format. She recently returned from Ramallah, in the West Bank, where she was born.
“What is happening is a huge pain,” he told Lusa.
“It’s our pain, but there’s also a lot of fear, of the very violent and uncontrolled attacks by the settlers. There isn’t a single house in Ramallah that is safe. The settlements were built in such a way as to make it easy for any settler to kill someone in their home. And Ramallah is one of the safest places”.
During his recent visit to Ramallah, Dima Mohammed also felt a “source of hope”, shared by the Palestinian population.
“The only source of hope I felt was the student movements around the world. Everyone was talking about it, every day there was talk of the new universities where another camp had taken place. It’s having a big impact on the West Bank, because the governments of the world are letting Israel do whatever it wants.”
The hope that “the peoples of the world will move”, in a situation that is almost borderline and suggests mixed feelings.
“In Palestine I felt both the abandonment of the world’s governments and the solidarity of the peoples. And we have hope for that. The conversations denounce a deep fear, but they don’t want to talk about fear. But then the conversation changes to talk about the students of the world. I was there last Saturday, there were demonstrations all over the world, and people were sharing the protests on social media,” says the Palestinian activist.
“There is hope that this gap between the peoples and governments of the world will finally be resolved. It is the only hope for our Palestine. The complicity of governments is shameful, but the solidarity of peoples is the only source of hope.”
The hope that tries to counteract the deep after-effects of a conflict that seems to have no end, such as the hypothetical “two-state” solution.
After its military victory in 1948, Israel forbade the return of displaced persons and refugees because it would have meant a majority Palestinian population within its borders. On the contrary, to this day, after successive generations, six million Palestinians remain settled in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, or in the territories of the West Bank occupied by Israel.
In Gaza, refugees and their descendants make up around 75% of the 2.4 million inhabitants. And according to a UN estimate released on Tuesday and based on figures from the Hamas government’s health ministry in Gaza, at least 50% to 60% of the more than 35,000 Palestinians killed in the enclave by Israeli forces are women and children.
All these figures, all this data, seemed to be present in the more than 200 people present at the vigil, a protest that has spread across the country.
“In Porto, there are vigils every day, in Lisbon and Braga every Wednesday,” explains Júlia Branco, 23, one of the organizers of this initiative.
“What is happening in Gaza and Palestine is a huge crime that affects those who are there and the whole world. It is the culmination of all the oppressions that exist in the world,” he said.
“Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and it is our responsibility as people with rights and freedom of expression to do our utmost. Including political pressure, so that our representatives also do something. We must continue until Palestine is free. It’s our duty,” he says with conviction.
Nearby, at a stall, Palestinian poet and filmmaker Dima Akhram is busy surrounded by participants looking for a keffiyeh, or solidarity pin.
“There are two options, either the international community takes a stance in defense of international law, in which everyone must be equal before the law, or the chaos will continue and worse situations than the current ones will occur,” he told Lusa.
At this point, chants began to break out, accompanied by clapping: “Down with Zionism, it will fall, it will fall / and long live Palestine to resist, to resist”.