Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Diplomatic protests mean nothing without action against Israel’s settlement expansion
A diplomatic protest by European ambassadors against Israel’s settlement expansion was perceived as an attack on the state itself by the Deputy Director-General of its Foreign Ministry, Aliza Bin Noun, in December, local media have reported. According to Bin Noun, the complaints were uncalled for because Israel is “making gestures...
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Israel’s apartheid should have consequences for the colonial state
While Palestinians have been calling out Israeli apartheid for years, it was the non-governmental organisation B’Tselem that made the headlines a year ago with its designation of Israel as an apartheid state. Twelve months later, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has expressed concerns that the label will stick, for...
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Abbas and his ‘optimism’ spell danger for Palestinians
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is arguably more partial to fairy tales than politics. His latest address to the Fatah Revolutionary Council sums up all that is wrong with his leadership: incompetence; collaborative complicity with Israel and any other political entity that offers the PA a shard of security;...
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Mahmoud Abbas and his loyalty to US-Israeli interests
To prevent Hamas from politically gaining the upper hand over the Palestinian Authority, Israel heeded the US call to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s rule by providing concessions for Palestinians. The concept, which Israeli Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, has been vocal about, is that improving the Palestinian economy will lessen resentment...
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The UN war crimes probe is still tarnished by decades of colonial support for Israel
The UN will be funding an open-ended investigation into Israeli war crimes against Palestinians, departing from this year’s aggression against Gaza. For the first time – and this is what is infuriating Israel, which has controlled the UN narrative through security rhetoric, so far – the mandate will allow...
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Pointing out the UN’s culpability must start taking root
Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk once again exposed the UN’s inaction over Israel’s international law violations. “On the fifth anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 2334 by the United Nations Security Council, the international community has to take its own words and its own laws seriously,”...
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Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance
“The occupation has remained unchallenged by an international order that seems willing to legitimise it as long as there is no accepted agreement to end it.” Sara Roy’s succinct observation, made towards the end of her book, “Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance” (Pluto Press, 2021), sums up the impunity...
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Palestinian people should own their struggle, away from the politicians
Sometimes, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) finds good reason to issue stark condemnations. Recent comments by Knesset Member Mansour Abbas, who is part of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s coalition government, have raised the ire of Palestinian officials. Abbas is no stranger to spouting colonial rhetoric since taking up...
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The PA has no politics of its own, only compromise
In October, US State Department Spokesman Ned Price opposed “the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm, and it damages the prospects for a two-state solution.” During a virtual meeting earlier this month between US and Palestinian officials to...
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Biden extends Trump’s legacy, while the PA 'waits'
Now that Israeli media has announced that US President Joe Biden shelved the opening of the US Consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians, will the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki explain what sort of trust Ramallah was placing in US diplomacy? Just a month ago, al-Maliki expressed that PA officials...
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The US keeps turning a blind eye to Israel’s settlement expansion
Israeli media have been pointing out that the Biden administration in Washington is not too bothered about the occupation state’s illegal settlement expansion. There is little reason to doubt the veracity of the claim. So far, US President Joe Biden has managed to maintain a fine balance between his...
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Israel faces no delegitimisation threats
Israel’s allies are fond of adamantly asserting that they will oppose any efforts to delegitimise the settler-colonial state, yet these “efforts”, apart from singling out the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) are barely specified. Who is trying to delegitimise Israel internationally, and how can that happen, when the...
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The PA exposes its dependence on Israel and the international community
Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas’s UN General Assembly speech will remain a reference for a while longer. As Israel plans further settlement expansion, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for Abbas, said that Israel’s settlement expansion “will push the Palestinian leadership to accelerate its implementation of the ultimatum” announced during...
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America’s pro-Israel diplomacy at the UN hits a new level
Israel seems to have acquired another formidably biased ally in the latest US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Her Trump era predecessor Nikki Haley once said, “If there’s anything I have no patience for, it is bullies – and the UN was being such a bully to Israel...
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The Lost Orchard: The Palestinian-Arab Citrus Industry 1850-1950
Memory trajectories and their loss are well portrayed in Mustafa Kabha and Nahim Karlinsky’s book, “The Lost Orchard: The Palestinian-Arab Citrus Industry, 1850-1950” (Syracuse University Press, 2021). In the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian towns and villages is well known in terms of Palestinian...
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The UN’s International Day of Solidarity with the 1947 Partition Plan and the two-state compromise
UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres’s simplistic tweet does not suffice for a remembrance day created by the UN, let alone to acknowledge international complicity in the colonisation of Palestine. The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is farcical, unlike the 1947 Partition Plan, which remains associated with...
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Can Belgium set a precedent by labelling Israel’s settlement products?
Labelling Israeli settlement products “strengthens extremists, does not help promote peace in the region, and shows Belgium as not contributing to regional stability,” according to Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Idan Roll. He lashed out at Belgium’s announcement that it would start applying more restrictive measures on goods produced by...
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The PA’s diplomacy hurts Palestine
Yet another attempt at managing symbolic gestures by the Palestinian Authority, this time by Prime Minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh. “Whoever cannot punish Israel can at least help Palestine,” he stated during a meeting at the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo, in the presence of members of the Standing Committee on Foreign...
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While Israel colonises Palestine, the UN’s Guterres offers nothing but ‘hope’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has provided another reason why Palestinians should not rely on the international community for a political solution to the colonial-occupation of their land by Israel. Rather than international law, Guterres offers nothing but hope. How are Palestinians expected to articulate their demands when all that...
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Declaring an independent Palestinian state meant accepting losses for Palestinians
The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, Wafa, ran a news brief yesterday commemorating the anniversary of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) “Declaration of Independence”. In other words, as Wafa clearly stated, Yasser Arafat accepted the two-state compromise in 1988, thus paving the way for Palestine’s swift disappearance. The declaration of an independent Palestinian state remained largely...
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The UN prioritises political compromise over Palestinian rights
Three weeks ago, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz designated six Palestinian civil society organisations as terror groups, on account of links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). On Sunday, the Israeli army’s Central Command declared the organisations to be “unauthorised” in the occupied West Bank,...
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Will the UN heed its Rapporteurs’ warning on Israel’s settlement war crimes?
“The Israeli settlements are a presumptive war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and should be treated as such by the international community,” UN Special Rapporteurs, Michael Lynk and Balakrishan Rajagopal declared in a statement earlier this month. This goes a step further than the...
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UNRWA at 70: Palestinian Refugees in Context
Situating the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) within the colonial and humanitarian context provides a great deal of insight into the situation of the refugees. UNRWA at 70: Palestinian Refugees in Context (Palestinian Return Centre, 2020) brings together a collection of...
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Israel cannot escape its legacy of violence
“Israel has been defined too many years by the Israel-Arab conflict,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett complained in a recent interview with The Times. However, even Bennett’s intentional omission of Palestine, in keeping with the normalised but erroneous use of “Israeli-Arab conflict” preferred by diplomats, screams out the...