Please allow me to welcome the presence of the Palestinian Ambassador, who is in the galleries following our debate.

Since 2011, the PCP has been tabling projects to recognise the State of Palestine, in accordance with UN resolutions.

This is an inevitable decision that has been refused time and time again, based essentially on two fallacies:

The first is that the recognition of the State of Palestine must be dependent on the European Union.

The very same European Union of hypocrisy that, in the face of the genocide taking place in Palestine, is silent regarding the Israeli regime, maintaining the association agreement in force even though, as has been shown, Israel systematically violates human rights.

But it is important to stress the significant number of countries in the European Union that have already decided to recognise the State of Palestine with the exercise of their sovereignty.

These decisions embarrass the Portuguese government, which stubbornly wants to leave Portugal on the shameful list of the minority of countries in the United Nations that do not recognise the State of Palestine.

The second fallacy is that the recognition of a state must be dependent on the options, paths and decisions of the state it recognises.

In other words, Portugal admits to recognising the State of Palestine as long as it determines how the recognised state is organised and who runs it

A clear confusion between recognition, interference and colonialism.

In the same way that it should be up to the Portuguese people alone to define their path, it is up to the Palestinian people to define how they organise themselves and who their legitimate representatives are.

The Assembly of the Republic has an obligation to comply with constitutional principles and to uphold the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law, and this requires the government to intervene in the institutions it is part of in order to stop Israel's pretensions to not only prevent the creation of the State of Palestine, but to openly assume the objective of expelling the Palestinian population from their land.

The recognition of the State of Palestine by Portugal does not in itself resolve the dramatic situation, but it is a political signal of great importance against the genocide that the Israeli regime is carrying out, with tens of thousands of deaths, including thousands of children.

We have reached a moment where there is no more room for manoeuvring.

Either the Portuguese government continues to have its hands stained with blood, conniving with Israel's brutal disregard for human rights and international law and its criminal policy of aggression, occupation and colonisation with the political and military support of both the US and the European Union, or it gives a strong political signal by recognising the State of Palestine.

This and only this is the choice we have to make today.