Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s book When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine (Hardie Grant Books, 2026) opens with excerpts from her speech to the UN General Assembly on 30 October 2024. “Those of you who have not uttered a word about what is happening in Gaza…
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The inherent violence in the two-state paradigm
Regardless of the Israeli election result, France will still pursue the two-state paradigm. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot completely missed the point with this statement. The Israeli elections did not factor in two-state politics. Neither did Zionist colonialism. Colonial expansion has one aim: to displace the indigenous population and replace…
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Whose interests does the ceasefire serve?
A new report released yesterday by the UN Commission of Inquiry states that Israel is still committing genocide in Gaza after the ceasefire agreement which was reached on 10 October 2025. Referencing earlier reports concluding that Israel had committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza, the report…
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Book of Wills
“In Gaza, where the world wavers between silence and forgetting, the written word becomes a final sanctuary – a fragile, luminous act of survival,” Reem Ghanayem writes in the Editor’s Note to the bilingual edition of Book of Wills (Akoya Publishing, 2026). Both erasure and preservation are recorded in this…
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The failed humanitarian paradigm exposes governments’ complicity in violence
The international community prefers not to address the fact that violence poses a permanent threat to food security and, as a result, to any humanitarian paradigm. On Monday, the World Food Program (WFP) announced that 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza will be left without food support due to funding shortages. For…
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Olive theft is just one component of Israel’s colonial structure
Observations have become the only way in which the UN feigns intervention against Israeli colonial violence. A recent press release published by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted the increased violence by Israeli settlers against farmers during the olive harvest. The UN Special Rapporteurs…
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Resisting Erasure: Libraries in Palestine and Palestine in Libraries
In the foreword to Resisting Erasure: Libraries in Palestine and Palestine in Libraries (Litwin Books, 2026), Emily Drabinksy writes about the difficulties encountered while indexing articles about settler colonialism and apartheid in the occupied West Bank in 2003. “The thesaurus I was required to use did not include such terms…
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The international community does not object to permanent forced displacement
Mere days after Israel’s High Court of Justice ordered a detailed plan for the return of over 33,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israeli forces from Tulkarem, Jenin and Nur al-Shams refugee camps, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the forced displacement is permanent. The difference between the occupied West…
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If You Cannot Say Genocide: Essays on Conscience and Witness
“What task is left to art when words are turned into weapons?” Yahia Lababidi’s If you Cannot Say Genocide: Essays of Conscience and Witness explores the depth of this question impressed upon the reader in the preface. For the author, who is a Muslim of Palestinian descent, the question is…
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One year since the ceasefire, the UN commemorates its failures
Nothing spells hypocrisy more accurately than the UN commemorating its failures. In a press release titled One year after ceasefire announcement, killings continue across Gaza, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator, Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator’s Office expresses its purported concern “about continued crimes under international law, including war crimes.” That…
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The Board of Peace’s commitment is tied to Israeli colonialism
Three years since Israel commenced its genocide in Gaza, the Board of Peace issued a statement in which one sentence particularly stands out. “The President fulfilled his commitment to the people of Israel.” The sentence refers to Hamas releasing Israeli hostages, but the entire statement carries further weight that displaces…
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When diplomacy aligns with the defunct
In August this year, the EU’s High Representative Office issued a statement noting that the E1 settlement project which envisages 1,200 housing units, “harms the prospect of the two-State solution.” Yesterday, 500 former politicians and diplomats wrote to the EU to state the same rhetoric. The only difference is that…
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Wired to Steal: Zionism and the Shaping of the Western Mind
Wired to Steal: Zionism and the Shaping of the Western Mind (Olive Branch Press, 2026) addresses a gap in analysing settler colonialism and colonial violence. The disruption of humanity through dehumanisation, which can lead to genocide as it did in Gaza, is analysed through a neurobehavioural framework. Using this framework,…
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Trivialising memory with gratuitous gratitude
From scant details reported on the Bureau of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People’s meeting with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, it would seem as if the representatives arranged a meeting to thank and praise each other. The Palestinian people were just an…
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Abbas’s UNGA speech omits important historical realities
When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned of a greater danger than threats to the two-state politics during his UNGA prerecorded speech, he rendered the warning invalid by making the threats sound recent and new. Not only was Abbas warning the wrong audience, he also used the same audience’s language…
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What is the extent of the UN’s impunity when it comes to the two-state politics?
Once again, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stressed that there is no other option to the two-state paradigm. Speaking at a meeting hosted by France, Canada, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Guterres noted that there was a contradiction between diplomatic support…
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How silencing dynamics work in the international arena
For the second consecutive year Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was denied a visa to travel to the US to attend the UN General Assembly. According to the US State Department, sanctions were extended due to “their failure to reform, contrary to their commitments to the United States, and their…
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There is no real aversion to ethnic cleansing from the international community
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz reiterated the plan to forcibly transfer Palestinians out of Gaza. Noting that 70 per cent of Gaza has been emptied of Palestinians, Katz said that Israel was merely waiting for US approval. “The IDF is prepared, once given the directive to eliminate Hamas, to finish…
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‘In accordance with international law’ guarantees Israel’s impunity
Praising the bare minimum in terms of statements in support of Palestine has long been treated like a diplomatic breakthrough. BRICS’s New Delhi Declaration was no exception. Following the 18th summit held in Delhi, BRICS referenced Palestine in its statement among many other political concerns and reiterated all the rhetoric…
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Rendering the two-state paradigm obsolete required international complicity with colonialism
The two-state paradigm is already obsolete. Therefore, when the Board of Peace’s High Representative Nickolay Mladenov gives yet another reason why the two-state will become obsolete, the warning does nothing but repeat the absurdity of the international community’s futile attempts to promote solutions without addressing colonialism, colonial violence and, since…
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All of Israel’s plans and actions amount to Palestinian erasure
During Israel’s genocide in Gaza, people around the world understood that diplomacy was not truly averse to the erasure of Palestinians. When Israel spoke openly of its plan to empty Gaza of Palestinians, it was granted weapons and diplomatic support. When forced transfer was revealed to be part of the…
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Israel’s plan for forced transfer with international complicity remains on the table
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that the military would not withdraw from the territory it occupied in Gaza, Defence Minister Israel Katz asserted that the plan for forced displacement was merely frozen. Speaking at a conference hosted by Ynet and Yedioth Ahronot themed “Decision Time: Democracy and Society”,…
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The EU’s complicity with Israel renders support for UNRWA negligible
The EU, as well as individual European countries, have criticised Israel’s forced entry at the Qalandia Vocational Training Centre and the seizure of UNRWA’s installations in East Jerusalem. In a statement that reads as futile as any other, Israel was urged to “honour its obligations and to halt all disruptions…
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International condemnation of settlements does not target Israel’s colonial plan
The discrepancy between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements and those of the EU shows where the political deficiency lies. Predictably, the EU’s failure to address settler-colonialism and Israel’s existence as a colonial enterprise is failing to curb expansion. Words without action fulfil nothing except the publication of futile statements.…