Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Fareed Taamallah
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Rain season and the rituals of predicting the rain in Palestinian heritage
In my village of Qira near Salfit, as in many Palestinian villages, we wait for the first drops of rain with a mixture of longing and unease. Rain is not only the beginning of the agricultural season; it is a reassurance that life can continue despite everything happening around us.…
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The settlers who kill Palestinian farmers and imitate their lives
In the hills of the occupied West Bank, a strange and painful irony unfolds every day: the same Israeli settlers who seize Palestinian land, burn our olive trees and shoot at our farmers now imitate the very way of life they are destroying. As a Palestinian farmer, every October, when…
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Trump’s so-called peace plan offers no justice, no peace
I skipped the olive harvest in my village near Nablus to listen to Donald Trump’s much-anticipated speech before the Israeli Knesset and the subsequent summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. I had hoped—perhaps naively—that the US president, now once again playing a central role in Middle East diplomacy, might finally acknowledge Palestinian…
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Between olive groves and gates: A Palestinian’s struggle for land and livelihood
As a Palestinian living in Ramallah, with ancestral roots in the village of Qira in the Salfit Governorate, life has long been intertwined with the land. For generations, my family has cultivated olive trees in Qira, a tradition that sustains both livelihoods and cultural heritage. Yet this year, the olive…
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Johnson’s visit to the illegal Ariel settlement will not make it legitimate
As a Palestinian on whose stolen land the settlement of Ariel was built, and who lives in a nearby village, I was deeply outraged by the visit of the US House Speaker Mike Johnson to the illegal settlement of Ariel last Monday. This visit aims to legitimise the theft of…
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Settler attacks in the West Bank: Memories of the pre-Nakba period
The Gaza Strip has been witnessing a genocide perpetrated by the Israeli occupation army since October 2023, while the West Bank is witnessing systematic ethnic cleansing by terrorist settlers under the protection of the Israeli occupation army. This atmosphere brings to our mind, as Palestinians in the occupied territories, the…
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Commemorating the Nakba: Will Europe fix what it broke?
On Nakba Day this year, I was invited to attend several events in Europe to speak about the Nakba and the genocidal war waged by Israel against the Palestinian people. Although this was not my first time visiting Europe, it was my first time participating in Nakba Day events outside…
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While Gaza suffers physical genocide, the West Bank faces economic genocide
While the world is preoccupied with the horrific genocide in the embattled Gaza Strip, Israel is killing hundreds of Palestinians, seizing more land and strangling the occupied West Bank economically. On 22 May, following the International Court of Justice decisions against Israel and the recognition of Palestine by three European…
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How do ordinary Palestinians view the Iranian attack on Israel?
On the night of 14 April, Iran launched drones and missiles towards Israel after it vowed to avenge the bloody attack on its Consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus. The Iranian attack is the first direct attack against Israel from Iranian territory. The Iranian attack coincided not only with the…
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Israel is exploiting the war in Gaza to deny Palestinians access to their West Bank land
Abla Lafi is 59 and from the village of Turmus Ayya, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She is passionate when speaking about her olive groves, which the Israeli army and illegal Jewish settlers prevent the villagers from harvesting. “This is our own land,” she said defiantly. “How…
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How do Palestinians in the West Bank view the truce and the prisoner exchange deal?
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are following the truce in Gaza with great interest and hope. This is due primarily to their wish to help stop the destruction and genocide against their fellow Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They feel powerless to get humanitarian aid and medicine into the…
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Ramallah’s Farmers’ Market is taking a stand against annexation
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been making a conscious effort to support local farmers to help them face Israel’s efforts to annex their farms. Volunteers of the Sharaka group, in cooperation with the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, launched “Souk El-fallaheen“, a weekly Farmers’ Market that began this month…
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Israel is forcing out Palestine’s watermelon farmers before it takes their land
For Palestinian Murad Sartawi, the watermelon is symbolic for its colours: red, green, black and white, resemble those of the flag of his country. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and in the northern Jordan Valley produced around 100,000 tonnes of watermelons each year in the 1980s, but this figure…