Palestinians in Gaza Rally Behind Venezuela, Reject US Imperialism

Caracas, March 30, 2015 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Scores of Palestinians rallied in  Gaza City this past weekend in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, expressing their categorical rejection of President Barack Obama’s Executive Order branding Venezuela a “national security threat” earlier this month. 

This latest instance of U.S. aggression has provoked an international outcry with Palestinians joining a plethora of other nations, including important multilateral blocs such as the CELAC, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the G77+China, in demanding the immediate repeal of the White House decree. 

The rally, which was organized by the leftwing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), featured numerous representatives of popular organizations in the Gaza Strip, who could be seen waving Palestinian and Venezuelan flags, displaying posters of President Nicolas Maduro and the late president Hugo Chávez, and vigorously chanting slogans opposing U.S. aggression against Venezuela.

The Gaza Strip is home to over 1.8 million Palestinians who have since 2007 lived under illegal Israeli siege and recurrent massacres, the most recent of which this past summer claimed the lives of well over 2100 people. More than two-thirds of the deaths were civilians. 

Nonetheless, despite these grave conditions of Israeli siege and occupation, which have been likened to those of an “open prison” and condemned as “genocidal”, the Palestinian people do not hesitate to stand behind the people of Venezuela, explains Ishaq Khury, PFLP spokesperson in Venezuela.  

“Although the Palestinian people in Gaza live in the largest concentration camp in the world, they are free and dignified people who always stand up to defend other peoples who suffer the same imperialist/Zionist aggression”. 

“The Palestinian people, the Venezuelan people, the peoples of Latin America have common objectives, common enemies, so we are united in the struggle for liberation, for freedom, for independence, and beyond that, for an alternative world, a socialist world,” Khury told Venezuelanalysis.  

Under late President Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has emerged as one of the most vocal champions of the cause of Palestine solidarity worldwide, leading the diplomatic charge against Israeli war crimes internationally and forging important diplomatic and economic ties with the Palestinian Authority, including oil deals, emergency aid, and scholarships for Palestinian medical students. 

However, for Susana Khalil, a Palestinian-Venezuelan whose family was ethnically cleansed from the territory now known as Israel in 1948, this solidarity goes beyond a strategic alliance. 

“The Palestinian people feel deeply connected to the Bolivarian process in which they feel closely involved as participants”. 

“The Palestinian cause, the Bolivarian process are causes of our times. They are the cries of freedom, liberation, justice, dignity, of people’s democracy against the colonialist and imperialist anachronisms,” explained Khalil, also a spokesperson for the Canaan Association of Aid to the Palestinian People, to Venezuelanalysis.