Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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The political isolation of Palestinian prisoners
Before the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle became fragmented by concessions to Israel and the international community, Palestinian prisoners were considered an integral component of the struggle for liberation. After the Oslo Accords, Israel retained the upper hand in detaining and imprisoning Palestinians, aided by the Palestinian Authority’s security coordination with...
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Legacy of Empire. Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel
Gardner Thompson’s book, Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel (Saqi Books, 2019) opens with a brief observation that contradicts all mainstream propaganda which spouts the pro-Israel Zionist narrative. “This is not a story of the inevitable,” he writes. The book presents a meticulous account of the...
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The international community is complicit in Israel’s torture of Palestinians
The torture suffered by Palestinian prisoner Samer Arabeed at the hands of Israel’s Shin Bet interrogators has proved, once again, that the prohibition of such treatment as enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute and the UN Convention Against Torture is little more than a series of...
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The PA imitates mainstream politics and violates Palestinian rights
The media has profited from pointing out the blunders of US President Donald Trump, yet it has failed persistently to draw attention to the connections between them which have led to the latest calls at the UN General Assembly for Arab states to normalise ties with Israel. Arab leaders,...
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The Joint List MKs have endorsed one form of colonisation over another
The Joint List members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, have endorsed Benny Gantz to lead the next Israeli government following last week’s General Election. This is another betrayal of the Palestinian cause. Out of the four factions in the bloc, Balad was the only party to repudiate the...
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While Israel alters Palestine, the EU condemns, observes and retreats
The closest the international community ever got to an unequivocal condemnation of Israel’s settlement expansion since 1967 was through the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016), albeit containing the usual flaws which spare Israel’s colonial presence since 1948, not to mention the ubiquitous endorsement of the two-state compromise. Instead of...
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To protect Israel’s colonial project, Palestinians are treated like a humanitarian project
The latest report on Palestine by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) displays the increasing deterioration of the Palestinian economy as a result of dependence upon Israel and the ongoing Israeli military occupation. The Palestinian economy is reported to be “near collapse”, while Gaza is deemed...
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The Sea Cloak & Other Stories
Literature about Palestine by Palestinian authors is like a deluge of insights into what is missing from what we proclaim to know. Our knowledge is dominated by news reports and statistics, while stories from the Palestinian people are sometimes used to substantiate the generalised media coverage. Nayrouz Qarmout’s short...
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Annexation, the two-state illusion and forgetting the Palestinians
If elected again, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, and the international community is scrambling to issue statements pointing out that such a move would have no legal effect. For Israel, of course, such warnings are not disconcerting. Neither are...
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Israel killed Palestinian civilians deliberately, so why is the UNHRC speculating about it?
When the Great March of Return protests started in March last year, the Palestinian people’s call was clear, with a collective, entirely legitimate, demand to return to historic Palestine. Israel’s response was to position snipers at the border, shooting to kill or maim Palestinians exercising the fundamental right of...
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Netanyahu’s Hebron visit speaks of impunity for state and settler violence
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Hebron yesterday follows the plans to increase the settler presence in the city. Prior to the upcoming Israeli elections, Netanyahu continues to seek validation from the right-wing by pledging Israel’s permanence and expansion over Palestinian territory. “We are not coming to dispossess anyone,...
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Palestinian refugee students must not be incidental to humanitarian endeavours
Despite financial setbacks caused by political agendas and misconduct allegations, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) ensured that its schools opened on time for the new academic year. Commissioner General Pierre Krähenbühl described education as central to UNRWA’s mandate, yet the agency is not past attaching importance to...
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Netanyahu and Bolsonaro find common ground in oppressing indigenous populations
While the Amazon forest burns and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro continues to trade insults and blame, indigenous communities face displacement and annihilation. These communities pose the biggest obstacle to Bolsonaro’s intent to allow access to local and international exploitation of the country’s natural resources. In a message to counter the...
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The PLO endorses the humanitarian paradigm
At the G7 summit in Paris, US President Donald Trump speculated publically about the purported “deal of the century”, which infuriated the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). If one had to rely on the PLO’s statements, though, it would seem as if there were no precedents that permitted Trump to...
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Palestinian narratives must be protected from PA exploitation
Official Palestinian media are playing a major role in disseminating Palestinian narratives, according to Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, that is. Departing from the fact that the Palestinian Authority and its media still portray Israel’s colonisation as a mere “conflict”, there is a discrepancy between the people’s concept of Palestinian...
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Calls to depoliticise humanitarian aid threaten Palestinians’ political struggle
With the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) facing a financial deficit of $150 million, PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat is calling upon the UN Secretary General to hasten the investigations into the allegations of corruption and misconduct at the agency. Now that the Netherlands, Belgium and...
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The PA’s ‘rights’ rhetoric normalises US-Israel violence against Palestinians
The Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic meetings with the US are a form of normalisation. In the last two years, the US has enabled Israel to fast-track its colonisation process, while Palestinians have been coerced into living the deterioration of their prospects and political rights. On Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh...
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Will the UN act if the US recognises Israel’s sovereignty over West Bank?
The UN has advanced no further than acknowledging that Israel is seeking to “advance a claim of sovereignty” over settlements in the occupied West Bank. As the Israeli elections approach, the main contenders – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz from...
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The PA’s support for international agendas shuns the Palestinian right of return
The Palestinian Authority has not ceased to display where its compromised loyalties lie. With each public statement or declaration, it is evident that the PA is working for diplomatic conjectures and, as a result, against Palestinian freedom. In a meeting in Ramallah with the Dutch representative to the occupied Palestinian...
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The Palestinian Idea. Film, Media and the Radical Imagination
The colonisation of Palestinian landscape and minds, author Greg Burris argues, is imbued with spaces in what he terms “the radical imagination” that breaks through Israeli impositions. Film and media are perceived as the medium with the “capacity to break the Israeli stranglehold on reality and open a window...
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Washington is facilitating further collective betrayal of Palestinian political rights
Palestinians want their land and rights restored; it’s a simple demand which the international community has succeeded in mangling in order to promote colonial agendas. US President Donald Trump has contributed to the external scheming by adding speculation over what concept of a “state” is envisaged for the Palestinians,...
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1967 must not be the only reference point for Israel’s colonial presence
Various Israeli politicians over the years have justified settlement expansion as being necessary for peace. The Oslo Accords facilitated this propaganda with an interminable “interim” period during which settlement construction has continued unhindered. The definition of “peace”, meanwhile, has largely been left to Israel and the US, with the...
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The UN is playing a role, not fulfilling its mandate
Action by the US and Israeli against Palestine is nothing new. The Palestinian Authority, however, has been pointing out this alliance lately as if it has just discovered it. In keeping with its penchant for dissociation, the PA is isolating decades of history from the present circumstances. The net...
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Reclaiming Palestinian rights from Palestinian narratives
US Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt has made a series of remarks at the UN Security Council regarding the “fictions of international consensus” when it comes to a solution for Palestine. What he does not acknowledge is the fact that the UN’s collusion in enabling Israel’s colonial project is...