Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Another Israeli offensive against Gaza will expose US and UN complicity
Ever since Israel’s Operation Protective Edge military offensive in 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy has been to seek the normalisation of bombing the Gaza Strip. This has involved evading the kind of lengthy, wide-ranging aggression which attracts unwanted media attention, and has regaled Israel with a shift in...
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Speaking against settlement expansion is just a chore for the EU
The European Union’s fluctuations on Israel’s colonial settlement expansion are more prominent since the bloc’s refusal to issue a statement regarding US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century. In response to Israel’s announcement that it would be building additional settlements in Har Homa and Givat Hamatos, the...
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The PA is blindly accepting international impositions on Palestinians
Israel and the Palestinian Authority have been trading the same rhetoric about not having a suitable partner for diplomatic negotiations. The senior adviser and spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, recently took the statement further to again assert the PA’s distaste for legitimate armed resistance. This was his...
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EU delaying tactics bring it closer to Trump’s deal
For all its purported peace-building efforts and support for Palestinian rights, the EU is committed to supporting Israel’s colonial-settler expansionism. Its feeble response to US President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” was accentuated in the recent decision to refuse to pass any official resolutions until after next...
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From a boycott to another peace conference, Abbas is rejecting Palestinian demands
We should forget all about Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s hyperbole regarding a full boycott of Israel and the US, including security coordination. During his address to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, he communicated the expected diplomatic suggestion, another international peace conference “to bring real peace between the...
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PA acquiescence to UN resolutions determines Palestine's disappearance
Further proof of the Palestinian Authority’s rejection of Palestinian land, history and memory was articulated recently by Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, who basically discounted Zionist colonisation and the Nakba by referring to a lacerated map as “the only recognised map of the State of Palestine”. As expected,...
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Abbas is a mouthpiece for international impositions on Palestine
The Palestinian Authority has learned nothing from decades of futile UN Security Council Resolutions. Do the people of Palestine really need international consensus regarding the already very clear illegality of US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century? Pushing on regardless, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is pursuing repetitive, useless...
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These Chains Will Be Broken. Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons
What the news reports eliminate, Ramzy Baroud’s new book, These Chains Will be Broken: Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, 2019), pushes to the fore. Palestinian prisoners, misrepresented through statistics, news reports, exploitation and glorification, tell slivers of their stories in this collection of first-hand...
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The PA will opt for losing Palestine if it means keeping its ‘authority’
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to provide proof of his worthlessness when it comes to political decision-making. If the US “continues” with the so-called deal of the century, Abbas has threatened only the possibility of a full boycott. The US “peace plan”, which enhances Israel’s strategies for forcibly displacing...
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Trump’s deal seeks to break Palestinian prisoners’ resistance
Palestinian prisoners – the bulwark of Palestinian resistance – have faced several levels of exclusion and exploitation throughout the decades. Building upon this trajectory, US President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” proposes a humiliating surrender in return for conditional freedom. It is not just the distortion of resistance,...
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The Palestinians face a double battle as the repercussions of Trump’s plan emerge
Just a day before US President Donald Trump revealed the details of the purported “deal of the century”, the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh made a last-ditch attempt to disfigure what Palestinians have been fighting for since Israel established its colonial presence in Palestine. The US plan, he...
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Charles’ words on Palestine must not go unnoticed
Prince Charles’ visit to the occupied Palestinian territories has garnered media attention. Words of sympathy, far from a political message, were the subject of his speech in Bethlehem after touring historical sites and meeting with Palestinian refugees at the Aida refugee camp. Nevertheless, his statement has resonated with Palestinians. The...
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ICC delays, Israeli belligerence and PA complacency
As expected, the International Criminal Court has cranked its bureaucratic delays into motion over the proposed investigation into Israeli war crimes. The ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s statement was deemed to be “too long and exceeded the amount of pages allowed for filing” such a proposal. This has been...
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No opposition from the international community as Israel alters the two-state paradigm
The EU is predicting an increase in Israeli demolitions of Palestinian dwellings and structures in the occupied West Bank, thus perpetuating the problem of displacement. Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett has described the plan to apply Israeli sovereignty to Area C as “a real and immediate battle for the...
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Israel’s fear of prosecution strengthens Palestine narratives
Israeli media has reported that the International Criminal Court (ICC) could issue secret arrest warrants for Israeli officials involved in war crimes against the Palestinian people. According to a senior Israeli official who spoke to Israel Hayom, “The very fact that an ICC investigation will be launched will make...
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For Palestine, international consensus has become a platform for inaction
In a recent meeting with representatives from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Secretary-General Saeb Erekat once again wasted an opportunity to demand the implementation of the Palestinian right of return. UNRWA’s mandate renewal, Erekat declared, “reflects the international political...
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More war crimes are Israel’s plan for the immediate future
Israel’s main bone of contention with the International Criminal Court’s possible investigation into war crimes in occupied Palestine is about settlement expansion. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s declaration in November 2019 which basically insisted that Israeli settlements are not illegal, affirmed US support for annexation of the occupied...
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Israel’s renewed campaign against UNRWA is an attack on Palestinian education and liberation
The international community has still not caught up with, or refuses to acknowledge, Israel’s commitment to countering each purported victory for the Palestinians with yet more violations. These countermeasures implemented by Israel, notably to prevent the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from fulfilling its mandate,...
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EU financial aid and the fragmentation of Palestinian society
European Union (EU) funding for Palestinian human rights organisations is not without its caveats. In line with its purported state-building initiatives, the EU has long imposed restrictions upon Palestinian organisations and their endeavours, in return for financial aid, thus stifling an important part of grassroots mobilisation in terms of...
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UN diplomacy will continue to shelter Israel from accountability
A mere two days before the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced an investigation into Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people (as well as those alleged to have been committed by others in the Occupied Palestinian Territories), the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace...
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Torture of Palestinian detainees prevails in Israeli jails
In comments to Al Jazeera regarding Israel’s use of torture against Palestinian detainees, Qadura Faris, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, declared: “The Israeli security wants to leave a mark on the psyche of those it detains: resistance has a price, and it is hefty.” Torture methods used by Israel...
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Palestine Past and Present
The ostracisation of Palestine by the international community to facilitate its exploitation by colonial Israel is portrayed excellently in Palestine Past and Present (Nova Publishers, 2019). This collection of academic essays, edited by Tristan Dunning, the author of Hamas, Jihad and Popular Legitimacy, presents a concise yet thorough assessment...
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Accountability, culpability to achieve justice for Palestine
Israel has reacted in typical belligerence to the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s announcement that there are sufficient grounds to investigate war crimes committed against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories. The ICC’s statement is by no means a definite confirmation of prosecution – it states that...
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Palestinian human rights cannot be addressed without decolonisation
The latest report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is a stark reminder of how Israel’s colonisation process in Palestine has created differences that are irreconcilable with the framework of human rights and international law. In particular, the CERD pointed out the discrimination inherent...