The Palestinian Authority was blasted on Tuesday for their public show of support for the Maduro regime in Venezuela by United States Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, JNS reported.
“The Palestinian leadership should be focused on providing a better future for Palestinians, but instead focuses on supporting the morally bankrupt Maduro who has stolen Venezuelans’ future and destroyed the Venezuelan economy,” Greenblatt said in a tweet.
The U.S. would like to see the regime of Nicolás Maduro replaced by the country’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó.
“Not so strange bedfellows: #[Hezbollah] publicly supports #Venezuela’s Maduro—a terrorist organization and a swindler who has harbored foreign terrorist groups and run Venezuela into the ground. Both are enemies of their people,” Greenblatt added in a subsequent tweet.
Increasingly isolated in South America and the West, Maduro has sought to deepen ties with Russia, Iran, and their proxies, including the Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah.
An investigation by ABC Spain from last year suggests that Hezbollah has found a safe haven in Venezuela for their criminal activities, such as money laundering and drug trafficking, specifically from Margarita Island north of the mainland in the Caribbean Sea.
“Training between Iran and Venezuela has increased in the past few years as part of a larger plan between the Venezuelan regime, consisting of increasing the number of Hezbollah operatives and their supporters across Latin America,” Johan Obdola, President of the Canada-based Global Organization for Intelligence (IOSI) and former counter-narcotics chief in Venezuela, told Fox News on January 10.
“(Hassan) Rouhani and (Nicolas) Maduro have established a very firm and close relationship, which was of course initiated by (Hugo) Chavez,” he added.
On Sunday, Israel joined the U.S., Canada, and other nations in South America and Europe, in recognizing Guaido as Venezuela’s interim leader. In a carefully worded statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in a video, saying, “Israel joins the United States, Canada, most of the countries of Latin America and countries in Europe in recognizing the new leadership in Venezuela.”
Netanyahu’s remarks were praised by U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, who wrote that it was “great to have Israeli support for a prosperous Western Hem!”
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