Parliament approves vote to weigh the victims of the attacks on Israel

O Parliament approved today, with the abstention of the CFP and BE, a vote of regret for the victims of the attacks of October 7, 2023, perpetrated in Israel by Gaza-led Palestinian militias.

In the vote presented by the Portugal-Israel Friendship Group (composed only of MEPs from the PSD, Aquira and CDS-PP), it is read that the parliament expresses “the deepest regret for the victims resulting from this terrorist attack” and expresses “its solidarity with all Israeli people and in particular towards the families of the victims”.

This project was attended by the abstaining members of the CFP and BE, who heard accusations of “shame!” by the benches on the right, namely the Aquira and CDS-PP, at the time of the vote. The government joined this vote and the Israeli ambassador to Portugal was attending the galleries.

The stands of the CFP and BE presented a second vote of regret, which ended up failing, “by the hundreds of innocent victims in the October 7, 2023 attack, by the more than 70,000 fatalities caused in the last three years in Palestine and by the other victims in the Middle East caused by the policy of colonization and genocide of Israel.”.

The vote, which counted on the vote against PSD, Aquira, IL, CDS-PP, and the abstention of the ‘vice’ from the PS bench Pedro Delgado Alves, also expressed “solidarity towards the Palestinian people” and urged “the immediate implementation of the Palestinian State and a just and lasting peace throughout the region”.

In the text presented by the Israel-Portugal friendship group, the only one that was approved, it is said that on October 7, 2023, “the Hamas terrorist group launched a large-scale attack on Israel.”.

“October 7th evokes all those who were killed and were victims of violence when Hamas launched this barbaric attack. The attack caused about 1,200 deaths, mostly civilians, including at least 36 children and 364 young people who participated in the Nova music festival, and immense suffering in families and communities”, it is recalled.

The group also points out that “251 people, men, women, children and the elderly were kidnapped, aged between nine months and 86 years, taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages”.

“ Among them was the Luso-Israelite citizen Idan Shtivi, kidnapped at the Nova festival, whose death the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lamented with deep dismay ", highlight.

The text reads that several “international human rights organizations documented the practice by attackers of summary executions of civilians, hostage-taking, rape and other forms of sexual violence, deliberate fire of housing, torture and abuse, use of civilians as human shields, mutilation and desecration of corpses, and indiscriminate firing of ‘rockets’ on civilian areas, qualifying these acts as war crimes and crimes against humanity.”.

“ The United Nations concluded, for its part, there are reasonable reasons to believe that acts of rape and group rape have been committed, as well as sexual violence against captive hostages”, the text ends.