Afzal Syed
Palestinians are grieving over the death of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez after a two year struggle with cancer. He was an outspoken leader in support of Palestine and sensitive to the sufferings of Palestinians. In Jan 2009, Hugo Chavez severed all diplomatic ties with Israel over its 22 day offensive on Gaza, calling it as “State terrorism” and “Cruel persecution of the Palestinian people”. Israel killed about 1400 Palestinians out of which 320 were children. Taking a stand for Palestine on numerous occasions, offering them friendship in need and friendship indeed, he became a favorite among Palestinians everywhere. In 2011, Venezuela supported Palestine’s attempt to be recognized as an independent state by UN. President Chavez wrote a personal letter to general secretary of UN supporting recognition of statehood for Palestinians and condemning Israeli occupation.
President Chavez’ courageous support for the Palestinians was indeed a slap on the face of corrupt Arab leaders who are always after protecting their own power structure and amassing wealth. They are at odds with each other on stupidly trivial affairs at the expense of serious issues and have shown no regard for the plight of their own people.
Revolutions do breed in such conditions as Arab Spring has proved it. The cruel selfish and despotic leaders like Khadafi of Libya, BenAli of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Saddam Husain of Iraq and Saleh of Yemen have fallen so far and hopefully many more will follow. For so many years, they have not been able to use the platform of the UN to effectively mobilize world opinion in favor of Palestinians even though an ugly injustice and clear occupation was quite obvious.
The world is keenly watching the results and changes Arab Spring is going to bring. However it will be unfair to expect a textbook type reformation and stability from people who were oppressed for generations. Perhaps they will have to first undo the ill effects of decades of subjugation before they could even put their freedom to work constructively. In every country, the history has shown that the post- revolutionary period is always full of challenges and testing hardships. But freedom will always empower people to overcome them. Yet for Arabs, ball is now in their court and world is waiting with goodwill to rejoice their fruits of emancipation.