Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Professor Kamel Hawwash
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My letter of resignation from the Labour Party to Sir Keir Starmer
Dear Sir Keir, I am a British Palestinian academic who has been a member of the Labour Party for a number of years but it has moved away from many of them under your leadership. I am convinced the country needs a change of government to a Labour Government for the...
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Jenin teaches us that Palestinians need a unifying strategy to beat the occupation
The Palestinian cause is facing an existential threat as an extreme right-wing Israeli government, which includes fascists, continues in power and sees an opportunity to make substantial gains in the pursuit of a Greater Israel, while the international community looks away. In the absence of what should be united support...
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Instead of attending another security meeting with Israel, the PA should bolster resistance against it
The English saying goes, “once bitten, twice shy”. A more damning Arabic saying roughly translates to “the mind of someone trying something (that has failed again) is surely ruined”. Both apply to the Palestinian Authority (PA) which has decided to join the Aqaba follow-up security meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh...
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Truss’s UN speech and her promise to consider moving the British Embassy to Jerusalem
The new British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, delivered a speech to the UN that continued to expose her hypocrisy when talking about freedom, democracy, sovereignty and British values, to back-up her support for the Ukraine against Russia’s aggression and occupation, while not referring to Palestine and Israel’s occupation and...
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Shireen Abu Akleh’s legacy should trigger sanctions on Israel
Israeli forces today assassinated a Palestinian icon. She was not the leader of a political faction or a member of a resistance group. Shireen Abu Akleh was a Christian female Palestinian journalist and reporter for Al Jazeera who came to be known to the Arab world during the Israeli...
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The extinction of the PLO, if Palestinians let it happen
The situation in Palestine gets worse by the day. However, this is not only from Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, including Sheikh Jarrah, but from the behaviour of the now self-proclaimed Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. A matter of a few days has separated the illegitimate meeting of the Palestinian...
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The use and abuse of administrative detention by Israel
The Palestinian people rightly saluted Hisham Abu Hawash as a brave man who was prepared to die in pursuit of his freedom. On 4 January, the occupation state of Israel agreed to his release following his almost five-month long hunger strike. Images of Hisham’s frail, almost skeletal body were...
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The Biden-Bennett battle of wills on the US Consulate in East Jerusalem
Any hopes that the removal of Benjamin Netanyahu from power would bring us closer to a revitalised peace process or less oppression of the Palestinian people have been dashed. The new Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, has been unequivocal in his rejection of attempts to draw him and the Palestinians...
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The olive harvest in Palestine threatened by settler terror
Ask any Palestinian about their connection with Palestine, wherever they live, and the olive tree would figure prominently in what Palestine means to them. This would be alongside the flag and the Kufiyah. It would be difficult to find a Palestinian house that does not store and consume large...
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Palestinians must ensure that Nizar Banat did not die in vain
The past few weeks have seen us waking up to news of more Palestinian deaths in Gaza or another attack on the peaceful residents of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem. However, yesterday, I woke to the news of another very different Palestinian death; this time it was the result of...
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Palestinians do not want anti-Semites at our rallies
As Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain, I was proud to work with our partners to organise the estimated 150,000-strong march from London’s Marble Arch to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington on Saturday. Our partners were the Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Stop the War...
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What are the Palestinians to do to secure their rights now that they are not entitled to self-defence?
Over the past few days, our TV screens have been filled with wall-to-wall coverage of the Israeli attacks on Palestinians across historic Palestine in which they have not distinguished between residents of Jerusalem, Jenin, Lydda or Gaza. While Palestinians try to survive the most horrendous onslaught in Gaza, and...
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If Israel has committed no war crimes, then why does it refuse the ICC probe?
On 5 February, Palestinians saw a long tunnel open and a light flicker in the distance for justice. The International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber I “decided, by majority, that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine, a State party to the ICC Rome Statute, extends to...
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Increasing settler violence goes unchecked by the Israel 'Defence' Forces
As I was reading an article headlined “Israel says 600 children given Covid jab had no serious side effects”, my twitter feed was filled with messages expressing outrage about a video of some other children: Palestinian children. Israel arrested 5 Palestinian children aged 7-11 today after they were picking flowers...
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It is time to make it official and brand Israel as an apartheid state
No one should throw accusations of racism around lightly because, if proven, then swift action must follow. The trade union movement in Britain, which represents over six million British workers, concluded recently that Israel is a racist state that practices apartheid against the Palestinian people. The Trade Union Congress (TUC)...
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While the UAE builds bridges with Apartheid Israel, Palestinians are being forced to demolish their homes
While I was watching the red carpet being rolled out at Abu Dhabi airport to welcome the passengers on board flight LY971 from Tel Aviv, a tweet appeared on my timeline showing Khaled Bashir, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, demolishing his own home in Jabal Al-Mukaber. Khalid Bashir, a Palestinian...
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From fighting BDS to fighting delegitimisation: Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs code for battling accountability
The Israeli Ministry for Strategic Affairs is shifting its focus from fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), to fighting deligitimisation. It was initially established in 2006 for Avigdor Lieberman, and he was given the role of coordinating security, intelligence and diplomatic initiatives regarding strategic threats, including Iran, and...
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The deal of the century is unpalatable for both Israel and Palestine
As US President Donald Trump’s term nears its end, his deal of the century to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has stuttered, and is possibly defunct. To Palestinians, it is a plan constructed on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desk and does not meet the bare minimum of their demands...
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Ten years after Israel’s hijacking of the Mavi Marmara, we cannot forget those who it killed
It is ten years since a live broadcast from the Mediterranean on Aljazeera TV came to an abrupt end. On 31 May 2010 I was watching human rights activists on the MV Mavi Marmara laden with humanitarian supplies for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip describing their fears as...
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Israel’s new government is being lauded despite Apartheid and annexation
When it comes to Israel, the international community has once again been exposed for the double standards and hypocrisy it reserves to support the rogue state. Many so-called western democracies have fallen over each other to offer congratulations to an Apartheid state for forming a government that will entrench...
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The PA's response to the coronavirus shows that Palestine is ready for statehood
The US and Israel, as well as its supporters, seek to deny the Palestinians their rights to freedom, justice and equality by claiming that the people are not ready for statehood; that they have not as yet built their institutions that would allow them to govern themselves. However, in...
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Israeli Apartheid
If any country which claims to be a democracy, its potential prime minister declares that the votes of a significant minority are not part of the democratic ‘equation’, they would be rightly condemned as racists. That is exactly what Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu declared when claiming he had won the...
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To Israel, Palestinian blood isn’t just cheap, it is worthless
Those interested in human rights should remember the name of Omar Haitham Al-Badawi, from Al-Arroub refugee camp near Hebron. He was hit by Israeli gunfire outside his house. An eyewitness said that a gas canister had set fire to an area near his house. He pulled a towel from...
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Like the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque is also under threat
Not a day goes by without another Israeli attack on various aspects of Palestinian life, be it through home demolitions, land confiscations, the abduction of youngsters in the night or attacks on their holy places. A good source of factual information about Israel’s attacks is the UN Office for...
