Students, workers and people in general, gathered today in the central Martí Park in the city of Ciego de Ávila to show their support for the demands for self-determination and peace of the nation of Palestine, attacked by the Zionist state of Israel.

After a year of continuous conflict in the Gaza Strip, where some 2.3 million Palestinians live, a genocide has been committed with more than 60,000 deaths to date, mostly women, children and the elderly.

At the meeting, chaired by Julio Heriberto Gómez Casanova, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in the province; Alfre Menéndez Pérez, governor; Nailyn Machado Ávila, first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Union of Young Communists, and political and governmental authorities of the head municipality, support for the sovereignty cause of that Middle Eastern nation was reaffirmed.

Alexis Valdés Hamadi, president of the Arab Association of Cuba in the province of Ciego de Ávila, recalled the background to the conflict, which dates back to the end of the 19th century with the emergence of the Zionist movement, a European-style nationalist doctrine for the creation of a Jewish, colonial and expansionist state in the lands of historic Palestine.

This confrontation did not begin a year ago, but is a process of several decades in which the eviction of properties from the original population, the Nakba (catastrophe), the disrespect for the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, and the Israeli government’s mockery of the Oslo Accords have taken place, commented Valdés Hamadi.

The president of the Arab Association of Cuba in the province also rejected the genocide committed in the Gaza Strip, the bombing of civilians in Lebanon and Syria, which reaffirms the inhuman and barbaric nature of the Zionist regime.

Today Palestine continues to struggle to recover the occupied territories, for its freedom and national dignity; this war is also a danger to world peace,» Valdés Hamadi warned, «hence every day we must be more united and in solidarity than ever before in the face of an empire that turns other peoples into another Palestine.

Miguel Antonio Martínez Castellanos, president of the University Student Federation at the University of Medical Sciences of Ciego de Ávila (UCMCA), demanded respect for international humanitarian law, condemnation of the murderers supported by the United States and other European powers, and demanded world solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

During this popular rally, the internationalist sense of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, who was assassinated 57 years ago in Bolivia, was also evoked.