Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Israel shows there is no limit to the imagination of colonial violence
Forget the importance of preserving and protecting wildlife. For Israel, certain wildlife also serves a purpose in colonial violence. In December last year, Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir proposed building moats for crocodiles around prisons holding Palestinian prisoners. This month, Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman created a loophole…
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The road to normalising colonial expansion in Gaza
Normalising genocide was a way to normalise colonial expansion in Gaza. Only three weeks after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed plans for three Israeli settlements, the Nachala settler group organised a march last Sunday, in which settlers and ministers, including Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Economy Minister…
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When does observation become a humiliating spectacle?
Last week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) led a virtual visit to Al Mawasi, Khan Younis, in Gaza for diplomats from twelve countries. Israel’s restrictions on entering Gaza has made it difficult for in person visits; hence the virtual tour…
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What context is left out of humanitarian aid announcements?
Humanitarian aid, wherever it comes from is, is becoming murkier. The only clear aspect about humanitarian aid is that each scheme announced signifies a bid for political influence at the expense of the forcibly displaced population of Gaza. US Ambassador to the UN Jeff Bartos recently urged UNRWA donors to…
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Funding failed paradigms for Palestinians in Gaza
Humanitarian aid is a failed paradigm, be it the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees or the Board of Peace’s scheming. UNRWA has always faced funding problems and it was never structured to deal with ongoing colonial expansion. The Board of Peace, on the other hand, has failed…
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Like Israel’s colonial expansion, the UN’s narratives also place Palestinians at risk
Little exposure has been given to the Yellow Line and the Orange Line in Gaza. Given the genocide, Israel’s military occupation in Gaza should have generated equal scrutiny at the very least. However, Israel’s current presence in Gaza has followed the same pattern of oblivion as in the occupied West…
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Colonial expansion is always accompanied by the international community’s unspoken consent
It takes little to ascertain that the reason for Israel’s genocide in Gaza was colonial expansion. Israel made no secret of it from the start, with talks about forced transfer and attempts to involve the international community in its war crimes. Settlement leaders were also very vocal about resettling in…
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The international community is not opposing Netanyahu’s threat
“Another principle of the government, of the broad national government that I intend to lead, is that there is no room for two states. Between the sea and the Jordan River there is no room for two states,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently asserted. Inverting the Palestinian slogan to…
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The Keys to my House: A Gaza Diary
Sami al-Ajrami’s account of the first six months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza starts with a tenacious link to home and homeland. A week after Hamas infiltrated Israel, al-Ajrami decides to leave his home in Gaza, taking his two nineteen-year-old daughters with him. “This isn’t a rented apartment in some…
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The EU does not need to clarify its support for Israeli colonialism
Israeli colonialism entrenched an apartheid system. The reality has been documented multiple times and acknowledged even within Israel, most prominently by the non-governmental organisation B’Tselem in 2021. Recently, the EU High Representative Kaja Kallas was reported to have used the term apartheid during a visit to Mexico. Kallas has made…
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Symbolism for Palestinians is impunity for Israeli colonialism
There is no disputing that human rights discourse safeguard the interests of former and current colonial powers. When the ceasefire was announced, it carried strong symbolism for the international community, as it provided the veneer of having acted in cohesion to halt a genocide that it willingly allowed in the…
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When the international community’s absolutes lead to genocide
When anyone from the international community deems a purported solution as the only viable option for Palestine, it must be immediately assumed the contrary is applicable. For years, the UN and world leaders have affirmed the two-state paradigm as the only solution, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres qualifying it…
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The international community is fast losing its diplomatic relevance
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz gave a clear example of what happens when colonialism in its current form – with genocide as its armour – is capable of when left unchecked. On Monday this week, Katz declared that Israel will not withdraw from territories it occupied in Lebanon, Syria and…
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The Board of Peace extends Israel’s security narrative
While the debate on Hamas refusing to disarm continues, Israel is still killing Palestinians in the background, or in plain sight, depending on which narrative one employs. For Palestinians, the genocide is a reality, while for mainstream media, it is just background noise for news reports. International diplomacy follows the…
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Settlers, sanctions and impunity
From 1st January 2008 to 31st December 2025, Israeli settlers killed 61 Palestinians and injured 3,778. The findings of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, which partly discusses settler violence, note that “Israeli authorities have consistently acknowledged settler violence as…
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Violence and Crime Among the Palestinian Community in Israel: The Shattering of the Indigenous
Through concise but extremely detailed chapters in their book Violence and Crime Among the Palestinian Community in Israel: The Shattering of the Indigenous, Nohad ’Ali and Asad Ghanem break down the politics, science and sociology of a rising violence and crime rate among Palestinians in Israel. Setting the scene immediately…
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The US creates convenient loopholes for Israel
Seizing 70 percent of Gaza is not part of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on Tuesday at the House Appropriations subcommittee meeting. “We have a plan. That plan does not envision such a thing. Netanyahu made that statement, but it is not part…
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As Israel encroaches upon Gaza, the UN should be reckoning with its colonial complicity
“A hundred percent of Gaza should be for the Palestinian people, right? That’s what we want to see. And we’ve been calling on Israel to pull back from its occupation from the so-called yellow line and that will continue to be our position,” UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric stated last week.…
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The EU’s fragmented focus rewards colonial violence
The EU focus on sanctioning Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tells only a fragment of the story. Ben Gvir may be the face of Israel’s colonial dehumanisation at the moment, but Israel is the structure in which colonial dehumanisation is embedded. In a letter sent to the European…
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Resolutions are disconnected from the Palestinian reality
If Israel is not held accountable for colonialism, colonial violence and genocide, no amount of resolutions can provide even the slightest remedy for the Palestinian people. Last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) adopted a resolution which will keep the institution busy with the collected data, but fail to change…
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Dehumanisation, colonialism and its accomplices
Colonialism is dehumanising. It is something akin to a spectacle that several world leaders and ministers have partially woken up to that fact, after a video showing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir humiliating the kidnapped Global Sumud Flotilla activists generated much negative attention on social media. Israeli ambassadors were…
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Dishonouring Palestinian memory of the Nakba at the UN
Another Nakba commemoration has passed. At the UN, the rhetoric remains unchanged. It is chilling that even after a colonial genocide which Israeli officials called Nakba 2.0, the UN is determined to never mention colonialism. The UN will never, not even on the anniversary of the Nakba, face the Palestinian…
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Ongoing Return: Mapping Memory and Story Telling in Palestine
“The geography of Palestine is one, from the river to the sea. The settler military works in different ways to create a fragmented reality for Palestinians,” Rana Barakat writes in the preface to her book Ongoing Return: Mapping Memory and Story Telling in Palestine (University of North Carolina Press, 2026).…
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The Nakba between hypocritical remembrance and oblivion
On the eve of the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the silence around the world speaks volumes about oblivion. At the UN, a brief program, so far tentative, lasting 2 and half hours, is what the international institution will dedicate to an ongoing rupture that escalated to genocide. The…