The PCP condemns the murder, by the Israeli occupier's military forces, of Ziad Abu Ein, a Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Chairman of the Committee Against the Apartheid Wall and the Settlements. Ziad Abu Ein was murdered when he was taking part in a demonstration by Palestinian activists, near Ramallah, against the confiscation of Palestinian lands and the destruction of crops and olive trees in the occupied territories of Palestine.

This is a true crime, which comes on top of many others and which confirms how, after the Gaza massacre, Israel has intensified a set of actions which seek to consolidate the occupation and annexation, namely through the policy of settlements.

As developments in Israel - with new initiatives of a racist, xenophobic and fascistic nature - show, the Israeli authorities are not committed to a peace process and, on the contrary, carry out a policy that disrespects international law, the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and the most elementary human rights.

The murder of Ziad Abu Ein is an unspeakable provocation against the Palestinian people which must be condemned in a clear and unequivocal way by the Portuguese government. The PCP considers that this act makes it even more urgently necessary to move towards the recognition of the State of Palestine and to put an end to Israeli occupation, creating the conditions so that the State of Palestine may be possible and viable, truly independent and sovereign, set up with the borders prior to 1967 and with Jerusalem as its capital.

The PCP conveys to the entire Palestinian people, to the Palestinian Authority and to Fatah - the Palestinian organization to whose Revolutionary Council Ziad Abu Ein belonged - the condolences of the Portuguese Communists as well as our unflinching solidarity with the Palestinian cause.