Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
-
Cuban support for Palestine should mirror Castro’s anti-colonial legacy
Palestine continues to face an increasing contradiction which is becoming normalised in diplomatic arenas. During this year’s first UN Security Council session debating the Middle East and the Palestinian Question, Cuban representative Humberto Rivero Rosario made an observation that has been lacking in official rhetoric, but one that was...
-
Israel able to detain former hunger-strikers due to international silence
Israel’s tactic of repeatedly detaining former Palestinian prisoners who went on hunger strikes has this time targeted Muhammad Al-Qeeq, following his participation in a protest organised by national organisations in Bethlehem demanding the return of the bodies of Palestinians murdered by Israel since October 2015. According to Ma’an news agency,...
-
Israeli sophistry flies in the face of international laws and conventions
In a recent interview published in the Times of Israel, Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett affirmed clearly that the international community would, with time, accept the entire colonial structure which has wreaked so much destruction upon Palestinians. Seemingly emboldened by Trump’s insistence on moving the US Embassy from Tel...
-
Israeli retaliation exposes international complicity
Promoting its settler-colonialism as a response to UN Security Council Resolution 2334 has been acknowledged and articulated clearly by the Israeli government. On Monday, Social Equality Minister Gila Gamliel signed grant agreements totalling $625,000 with the Israeli mayors of Beit El, Kiryat Arba and Har Hevron Regional Council; the...
-
Israel is using prison as collective punishment of the Palestinians
A report compiled by Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights has explained the statistics of the arrest and imprisonment of Palestinians by Israel in 2016. The figures are staggering. A total of 6,400 Palestinians were arrested, including 1332 children, of whom 300 are still imprisoned,...
-
Diplomacy and disappearing Palestine
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has added to the tirade against UN Security Council Resolution 2334. Despite the absence of rhetorical aggression in comparison to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s postulations, Rivlin has outlined the Israeli ambition to see Palestine disappear in a manner that can be disguised within the diplomatic...
-
Limited opportunities and flawed choices
The US decision to abstain, rather than use its veto, at the UN Security Council last Friday has generated a limited spectrum of possibilities and definitely raised Israel’s ire, given its retaliatory antics against countries supporting the resolution in question. Israel’s façade, particularly the democratic fantasy which it has...
-
Israeli tantrums and diplomatic gamesmanship shift attention from Palestine
Last week’s UN Security Council Resolution 2334 can be summarised as a collective international effort to provoke the type of drama in which opportunism and retaliation consolidate their dominion over oblivion. Outgoing US President Barack Obama departed conveniently from the usual veto over resolutions deemed hostile by Israel due...
-
Jerusalem highlights the extent of Palestine's fragmentation
As Israel’s colonial ambitions prevail largely unhindered, Jerusalem has been bequeathed with further unwarranted contention. Speaking during a reception at the Israeli embassy in Washington, Ambassador Ron Dermer declared that moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would constitute “a great step forward” for Israel’s peace; the...
-
Addressing humanitarian concerns in a political vacuum
In launching the Humanitarian Response Plan for Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities made an appeal for $547 million. Robert Piper stressed the implosion faced by Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank due to the illegal...
-
The consequences of a corrupt Palestinian leadership
The latest poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) has depicted clearly what the Palestinian Authority and the international community are intent on ignoring. The divide between the internationally-recognised Palestinian representation and the Palestinian people it is supposed to represent has become more prominent,...
-
Israel’s fictitious apprehension
In Israeli rhetoric, there seems to be two main trends of its self-proclaimed apprehension. One, which is hardly ever commented upon publicly, is related to the issue of colonialism and dependency. In the absence of such dependency as exhibited by the international community, there is a possibility of Israel’s...
-
Israel’s promotion of colonial plunder
Israel continues to exploit regional problems in order to maintain its foreign policy that allows it to divert attention away from the colonisation of Palestine. Western countries are perpetually enticed by military and surveillance technology. Food security – a basic necessity which Palestinians are deprived of – has been...
-
The PA’s complicity betrays Fidel’s legacy of anti-colonial struggle
It has been reported in Haaretz that the Palestinian Authority will be dedicating a street in Ramallah to the late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro “as a gesture of gratitude”. Elsewhere, the PA continues with a strategy of colonial complicity that should render the organisation unworthy of even mentioning...
-
Purported international solidarity is devaluating Palestine
Another symbolic international day for Palestinian rights has degenerated into the usual stale observations and recommendations that do little other than try to impart a semblance of balance between the coloniser and the colonised. Perhaps the UN has preferred to remain loyal to the monstrous history it spawned by...
-
The international diplomacy of Israel’s founders: deception at the United Nations in the quest for Palestine
In this fast-paced narrative of diplomatic events, John Quigley illustrates the extension of Zionist colonial violence and manipulation at an international level. The International Diplomacy of Israel’s Founders: deception at the United Nations in the quest for Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2016) opens with the concept of hasbara, which...
-
Palestinian hunger strikers in the face of oblivion
Convenience and contempt continue to serve Israel well. As news resurfaces regarding the probability of force-feeding two prisoners who are on hunger strike in protest at their administrative detention with neither charge nor trial, it is clear that a degree of sensationalism and the cultivation of a public persona...
-
Facilitating torture and impunity
A new Israeli bill exempts interrogators from recording interrogations of “suspected terrorists”...
-
The dangers of dissociation
The latest Israeli legislation seeking to ban the Muslim call to prayer in Jerusalem has united Palestinians — Muslims and Christians alike — in overtly collective resistance. Over the past few days, there has been gradual defiance in protest against the discriminatory bill; this has included churches reciting the...
-
Neither Israel nor the PA want education to succeed in Gaza
For Palestinians whose concept of education remains an integral part of both intellectual development and anti-colonial struggle, the news that 15 new schools are set to open in Gaza next year is most welcome. According to Ma’an news agency, Gaza’s deputy education minister Ziab Thabet has announced that the...
-
Comments by the PA ambassador to the UN flaunt the authority’s ulterior motives
It is a pity that the Palestinian Authority’s international antics do not harvest the ensuing humiliation selectively for the leadership and its representatives. An automatic disclaimer clarifying misrepresentation ought by now to become an imperative, in order to assert Palestinian independence away from the rhetorical farce which has impacted...
-
Knowledge, memory and the imposed deterioration of Palestine
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas clearly has no qualms about adding speculation to the narratives surrounding the probable murder of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat. On the 12th anniversary of Arafat’s death, Abbas gave a provocative speech similar to those allegedly revelatory discourses reserved for UN meetings whenever it...
-
EU and Israeli reciprocity works to a formula
Within the space of a couple of weeks, two contrasting news items have yet again portrayed how Israel and the EU have not veered away from the convenience of impositions and subjugation respectively. Construction of illegal settlements and demolitions of Palestinian homes have long provided a source of quiet...
-
Colonialism as a concoction of France, Israel and the PA
There has been a misplaced media emphasis upon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated refusal to participate in the international peace conference proposed by France. Three distinct but interlinked narratives are being isolated for one purpose; to portray the international community as a benevolent entity attempting to appease a...