Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Palestine and its people will pay the price for the PA’s disloyalty
We still don’t know what US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century looks like. At the UN Security Council meeting last Tuesday, US Ambassador to the international organisation, Nikki Haley, only hinted at “thoughtful detail” and recognition “that realities on the ground in the Middle East have...
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Humanitarian aid is overtly politicised, just not in favour of the Palestinians
The 2019 humanitarian plan for Palestinians in the occupied territories will allocate $350 million for aid intervention, according to Ramallah’s Minister of Social Development Ibrahim Al-Shaer and UN envoy Jamie McGoldrick. The people of Palestine remain divested of their legitimate human and civil rights in order to retain the...
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Italy’s Salvini said what the international community knows it can’t say: ‘Support Israel’
It is no secret that the right wing has appropriated and manipulated the definition of “peace” in today’s poisonous political climate. Peace is now synonymous with power, and little is being done to challenge this notion on a political level, to the point that one can speak of collusion...
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Seeking protection for the Palestinians at the UN empowers the criminals
The debate on whether Palestinians should be granted international protection continues. Adalah’s November 2018 Report to the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territories says that, since Israel “failed to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for the violation of such...
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The PA has found its ‘waiting’ counterpart
During another routine meeting, this time the 17th session of the Assembly of State Parties of the International Criminal Court, the Palestinian Authority’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Riad Al-Maliki, complained of the ICC’s procrastination in investigating Israel for war crimes. Al-Maliki is reported to have expressed his “disappointment” during...
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The PA is authoritarian yet lacks authority
It is easy to lose count of the number of futile challenges made by the Palestinian Authority to Israel since the collapse of the last negotiations led by Former US Secretary of State John Kerry between 2013 and 2014. The repeated challenge given prominence by the Times of Israel...
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Reject UN ‘solidarity’ and stand with the Palestinians
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s statement marking International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People could not debase itself much further. Guterres calls for “all actors… to take bold steps and restore faith in the promise of UN General Assembly Resolution 181,” also known as the UN Partition Plan...
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The international community has no right to determine Palestinian narratives
There is a lot of unfortunate truth in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment of international diplomacy. Without having to make any concessions on settlement expansion or Jerusalem, Israel is enjoying a “diplomatic flourishing”. This renders all the previous hyperbole on Israel’s isolation, from Israeli officials and purported Palestinian...
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Does the international community even care about Khan Al-Ahmar?
This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar will be demolished “very soon”. Needless to say, the purported international community’s preoccupation with the issue and mainstream media furore are nowhere to be seen. Khan Al-Ahmar is old news; it is repetitive. It...
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Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance and Survival
Israel’s prolonged colonisation and military occupation of Palestine has given rise to a consistent form of resistance that is implemented in everyday life, yet rarely recognised. This form of subaltern politics is practiced daily by women who have to contend with impositions and restrictions ranging from stereotyped misrepresentation in...
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Leaving Palestinian children behind on World Children’s Day
World Children’s Day is, sadly, a day like any other; its symbolism is nothing other than an international gimmick to proclaim rights while simultaneously taking them away. For Palestinian children, the commemoration reeks of hypocrisy and opportunism. On this day, despite Israel’s colonial violence and military occupation being common...
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Israel and the international community are normalising the forced displacement of Palestinians
A Washington Post editorial sums up the mainstream aftermath of Israeli aggression against Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is credited with purportedly “choosing peace” in the enclave: “The ceasefire and humanitarian respite that Mr Netanyahu has accepted are far better than another war.” The Post is wrong. Netanyahu...
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Sustaining cycles of Israeli aggression in Gaza
It is time, once again, for the hyphenated “Israel-Gaza” paradigm – an invention that suits mainstream narratives. As the media mulls the possibilities of another Israeli military aggression against Palestinians in Gaza, it is pertinent to take a step back to remember how, since “Operation Protective Edge”, Israel regularly...
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UN politics for Palestinians determined by convenience
The UN promotes its penchant for convenience at the expense of Palestinians and hardly anyone expresses concern. Perhaps because “concern” is the UN’s monopoly over the political squalour that produces an entire spectrum of human rights violations against Palestinians. In an interview with The Times of Israel, UN Deputy Special...
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Palestinian education must move away from the imposed humanitarian agenda
As the media hype over Khan Al-Ahmar fades away, mainstream narratives have yet to find another sensationalist violation to exploit. It is disheartening to see that the disappearance of the Palestinian village from the headlines also means that the fate of the Bedouin community it houses will be forgotten...
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Normalising external narratives in Palestine’s spaces for education
In collaboration with the Palestinian Ministry of Education, the EU launched a competition across schools in Gaza and the occupied West Bank called “Know Europe”. The aim, according to EU Deputy Representative Tomas Niklasson, is “to introduce ourselves again to students of Palestine: introduce our values, culture, history and...
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PA is ‘deliberating’ on marginalising the Palestinian people
With the US set to reveal details of the “Deal of the Century” in the forthcoming days, the Palestinian Central Council scheduled time for “deliberation upon important matters” to arrive at stale conclusions which highlight the Palestinian Authority’s penchant for presenting past recommendations as purportedly new stances. It took the...
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Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History
Nur Masalha’s latest book, “Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History” (Zed Books, 2018) presents an accurate distinction between the Palestinian return to history and the purported Zionist reclamation – the latter failing in its endeavours to justify its claims historically. In discussing Palestine’s rich history, the limitations of Zionism...
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Amid torture accusations, the PA consolidates its links with the CIA
The news that the US and the Palestinian Authority are planning for CIA Director Gina Haspell to visit Ramallah comes just as Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report which accuses Hamas and the PA of torture. Titled “Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent”, is based on a two-year...
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Kushner demands higher levels of betrayal from the PA
After the US unilaterally recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, withdrew all funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and closed the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Mission in Washington, Senior Advisor to the US President Jared Kushner had the audacity to announce that a...
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Khan Al-Ahmar exposes the misplaced priorities of the PA and the international community
The Palestinian Authority and the international community made a PR spectacle out of Khan Al-Ahmar and its impending demolition. Suffice to say that when facing human rights violations which are listed as war crimes, protocol is given precedence and the media follows suit. Two recent statements testify to this...
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Excuses, excuses when the stone-thrower is an Israeli settler and the victim is Palestinian
In 2015, Israel approved a law that stipulated a 20 year prison sentence for individuals caught throwing stones. The intention was to target Palestinians involved in resistance activities, despite the discrepancies between armed Jewish Israeli settlers and Palestinians in terms of weapons available for them to use. “Tolerance towards...
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The PA is exploiting Khan Al-Ahmar to maintain its two-state rhetoric
It is disconcerting that the decision to demolish the village of Khan Al-Ahmar is being tied to the two-state compromise by Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. At a meeting in Ramallah with a delegation from the European Parliament last Monday, Hamdallah declared that Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian...
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Closing UNRWA will not alter Israel’s role in creating Palestine refugees
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has recently had its mandate extended until 30 June 2020 “in the absence of a solution to the Palestine refugee problem”. Meanwhile Israel and the US are consorting to eliminate the existence of Palestinian refugees by redefining them...
