{Português}

The Brazilian Center for Solidarity with the Peoples and Struggle for Peace (Cebrapaz) expresses its grave concern about the tensions in occupied Palestine and the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people, since, once again, the occupation authorities decided to provoke the revolt with the imposition of control over the entrance to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem last week.

We denounce and reiterate our repudiation of the attempt by the extreme right-wing Zionist leadership that governs Israel to present its brutal 50-year occupation of Palestine as a religious conflict. We know that this lie only serves to maintain the occupation and that the advances on Al-Aqsa, the third holiest place for Islam, is nothing more than a provocation and an illusion in this sense.

Claiming to defend “security,” the Israeli authorities risked a tension not only with the Palestinian people but also with Arab neighbors by installing equipment and other control measures (such as even the prohibition on men under 50 from entering Al-Aqsa), in violation of the agreements on the site.

We strongly reject the repeated and sustained attempt by the Israeli leadership, aggravated under the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, to change a situation that is already unfair for the Palestinians to promote the actual annexation of Jerusalem, contrary to the so-called “international consensus” about the place.

This year, we mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the 50th anniversary of the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, the 70th anniversary of the United Nations’ proposed partition of Palestine and the 10-year blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip.

That is why we again emphasize, in addition to the growing movements of solidarity with the Palestinian people, the unsustainability of the current configuration in the region and the urgency of the liberation of Palestine!

We defend, in solidarity with the Palestinian people under occupation and alongside all peace-loving forces, the free and sovereign State of Palestine, on the frontiers before the 1967 war – when Israel militarily occupied the neighboring Arab territories, mainly Palestinian – and with East Jerusalem as its capital, the return of the refugees and the release of all Palestinian political prisoners imprisoned by Israel!

For the end to apartheid, to colonialism and to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, now!

Antônio Barreto
President of Cebrapaz