Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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PA praise for the UN’s pro-colonial stance betrays its own collaboration
In yet another scripted audience, the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh met the outgoing UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, and made an inaccurate statement about the UN and international law with regard to Palestine. “The United Nations is a guarantor of international...
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UNRWA, the EU and humanitarian aid all have a political agenda
The EU’s recent financial donation to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) leaves no doubt about the motive. As the agency continues to face an unprecedented year-on-year financial crisis due to the US cancelling its regular and very large donations and insufficient support from the...
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The international narrative about Gaza, the illegal blockade and Covid-19
Politicians are portraying Palestine in terms of a state of emergency, while avoiding any public recognition of the fact that colonialism has created permanent instability there that is exacerbated whenever humanitarian needs are amplified. Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza is once again the subject of a petition, signed by 24...
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The 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan is mired in a web of deceit
The 2021 Humanitarian Response Plan designed for Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) is expected to reach 1.8 million out of 2.45 million people who have been identified as vulnerable and in need of humanitarian aid, with 70 per cent of the allocated funds going to Gaza....
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Israeli infrastructure projects aid the de facto annexation of Palestinian land
If we were to listen only to the international community’s rhetoric about the impending Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory, the impression would be that the plans are more obsolete than the two-state compromise. It is impossible to forget how, at the first inkling of Arab leaders’ capitulation to Israel...
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The American Granddaughter
Identity and war are themes explored in Inaam Kachaci’s novel, The American Granddaughter (Interlink Books, 2020). The main character is Zeina, an Iraqi-born US citizen, who is thoroughly immersed in US culture while retaining links to her roots. She applies for a position as a translator with the US...
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Normalising deprivation through humanitarian aid
Last November, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that it ran out of funds, with Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini calling for $70 million in aid to ensure the continuation of basic needs and services for Palestinian refugees. The mismanagement of funds and corruption at the...
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Abbas facilitates Israel’s ‘no preconditions’ condition for negotiations
Thanks in part to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to restore relations with Israel, pressure is increasing on the leadership to resume negotiations with the occupation state “without preconditions”. During a virtual regional security meeting hosted by Bahrain, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi described the normalisation agreements between...
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The UN is not objecting to a ‘Plan B’ to annexation
The UN’s hypocritical manner of dealing with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People finds a contender in the way of the Palestinian Authority. On behalf of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN Riyad Mansour addressed a virtual UN meeting with a statement...
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Peace will come through decolonisation, not rhetoric on annual Palestine Solidarity Day
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres never misses an opportunity to illustrate how the international community has failed Palestine and its people. On 29 November, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People — or to be more accurate, the anniversary of the UN conspiracy to allow Israel to be...
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The EU reaction to settlements and security coordination reflects the PA betrayal of Palestine
Two statements from the EU within a few days of each other portray the duplicity of its policy towards Palestine. With the two-state compromise always looming in the background as a reminder of how the international community never intended Palestinians to have their own state, let alone liberate themselves...
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The PA excels in theatre of the absurd
If there is one thing in which the Palestinian Authority excels, it is theatre of the absurd. Following its announcement that, based on international reassurances, there will be a resumption of security coordination with Israel, the PA’s official news outlet Wafa published a news brief detailing the Palestinian leadership’s...
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A return to collaboration over Israel’s security narrative
US President-elect Joe Biden has not yet taken office, but Israel’s false security narrative is already taking precedence over everything else. Meanwhile, within the ranks of the Palestinian Authority which gambled with Palestinian lives during outgoing President Donald Trump’s tenure, the next step has been to uphold that narrative...
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The EU has played a waiting game to Israel’s advantage
There are a couple of meaningful things that the EU should do, without delay: it should drop the pretence that it supports the Palestinian people’s right to their own land, and it should clarify the purpose of its diplomacy, which is to safeguard the two-state rhetoric. On Monday, EU representatives...
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The PA needs to clarify its concept of ‘negotiations’ in abandoned Palestine
The US “deal of the century” may be scrapped when President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January, but its ramifications will not necessarily be anathema to the incoming administration. Just as outgoing President Donald Trump utilised decades of international and US foreign policy to make a series of concessions...
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A return to two-state politics is as harmful as the ‘deal of the century’ for Palestinians
The US elections were characterised by the drive to oust Donald Trump from the White House. The Palestinian Authority, crippled as it is with the Trump administration’s policies obliterating almost all of its political presence, joined the chorus supporting Joe Biden. For the PA, a Biden presidency represents an...
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Israeli settlement expansion sees the UN shy away from its duty, as usual
UN intransigence over Israel contrasts with Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk’s observations regarding Israel’s ongoing settlement expansion, not least because the latter boosts his arguments by providing some colonial context instead of remaining tethered to the two-state compromise. Following the recent announcement that plans for approximately 5,000 new settlement dwellings...
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Amazingly, the PA condemns Balfour while sticking to the two-state compromise
The Palestinian Authority’s annual outbursts against the Balfour Declaration do not match its politics. The document which normalised the colonisation of Palestine was published on 2 November, 1917. Palestinians quite rightly view it as one of the main causes of their current status. The PA, however, doesn’t seem to...
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Hunger strikes highlight Israel’s unjust detention of political prisoners
Calling for the freedom of one Palestinian political prisoner is what Israel expects from the international community. The latest detainee to go on hunger strike protesting against the administrative detention order that keeps him in prison indefinitely with neither formal charges nor trial is Maher Al-Akhras. His protest has...
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Palestinians don’t need a ‘victim status’ they have a right to an anti-colonial struggle
The US-Israeli narrative on Palestine goes a step further than the designated humanitarian label which the international community imposed upon the Palestinian people. As US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman predicted that up to ten Arab countries would normalise relations with the settler-colonial state, Palestinians, he said “must stop clinging to...
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An Army Like No Other: How The Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation
Haim Bresheeth Žabner’s detailed study of the origins and role of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are based on one main observation: Israel is defined by its military. An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation (Verso Books, 2020) delves into Zionist settler-colonialism and...
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The world is endorsing Palestine’s disappearance in the name of ‘peace’
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has left no doubt about the rationale behind the recent normalisation agreements with Arab states, praised by the international community as an opportunity to kick-start negotiations about the two-state compromise. In the background, the UAE’s lauded diplomacy, which postponed the annexation process and...
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The root problem of poverty in Palestine is not Covid-19, but Israel’s colonialism
The UN’s non-binding and generalised Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have provided a diversion in current EU and Palestinian politics. On the brink of experiencing additional dispossession and forced displacement as the normalisation agreements between Israel and Gulf states open the door to more anti-Palestine diplomacy in the region, Palestinians...
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Trump or Biden doesn’t really matter; Palestine and its people will be betrayed
The major political concessions to Israel made by US President Donald Trump have influenced both the occupation state and the Palestinian Authority in terms of who each would prefer to see winning next month’s presidential election. A recent poll revealed the Israeli public’s preference for Trump, while the PA...
