Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Cutting ties with Israel might be impossible due to international complicity
UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk has suggested that the international community should consider cutting ties with Israel if it goes ahead with further colonial settlement expansion and annexation, according to a report by Al Jazeera. Non-binding requests or suggestions from the UN, however, are unlikely to go beyond rhetoric,...
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America is anything but an honest broker in Palestine-Israel
At Israel Hayom’s Forum on US-Israeli relations, US envoy Jason Greenblatt made sure that references to the Palestinian people and their history were as obscure as possible. Palestinian history and memory are not about resentment and repetitive stories, as Greenblatt implied. On the contrary, both are imbued with war...
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The international community is facilitating Palestine’s demise
The UN has contributed another contradiction in its assessment of Palestinian prospects following the “Peace to Prosperity” summit. Instead of highlighting how and why the UN has failed Palestine, a recent statement from Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, emphasised the absence of an international...
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The international community has enabled the ‘peace to prosperity’ sham
The “Peace to Prosperity” workshop was all about making a statement on the normalisation of the colonial state of Israel. Forget simply normalising “ties” with Israel; eliminating the settler-colonial context of the state in order to dismiss legitimate Palestinian claims is the primary objective of the US. Despite divergences...
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Decolonise Palestine to achieve liberation
Palestinians have rejected the Manama summit taking place today for several legitimate reasons – all pointing to how the US prelude to the so-called “deal of the century” normalises Israel at an unprecedented level. This normalisation will drastically reduce Palestinian prospects for liberation, which are already precariously low, given...
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International consensus has stripped Palestinians of their legitimate rights
The Palestinian Authority’s spin on “legitimate Palestinian endorsement” is equivalent to its fast fading status. Since US President Donald Trump broke away from international consensus on Jerusalem and unilaterally declared the city as Israel’s capital, the PA has been seeking the limelight by rhetorically opposing US actions against Palestine. In...
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Haley’s UN legacy adds to the international conspiracy against the Palestinians
Nikki Haley has told Israel Hayom that, “I really didn’t know that much about Israel,” an admission which did nothing to hinder her stint as US Ambassador to the UN from becoming an opportunity to be the colonial state’s main cheerleader. Or, as she puts it, to stand up...
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The PA’s probable approach to the ICC plays into Israel’s hands
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman claims that Israel has “the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.” In response, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declared its intent to file a complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Since finding itself ostracised by the...
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The Book of Disappearance
In The Book of Disappearance, Palestinian novelist Ibtisam Azem has crafted a masterpiece which immediately leads the reader to ponder the historical foundations of the 1948 Nakba, as well as the Zionist intentions and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the land where they belong. In a fictional narrative that...
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Peddling the lie of economic incentives to obliterate Palestinian demands
The dangerous farce of finding a purported solution for Palestine continues. To detract from issues such as the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians and the Palestinian right of return, a new twist has been added to the Bahrain summit – pitting Palestinian business leaders against the Palestinian people, who...
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The race to fail Palestine: the two-state compromise and Trump’s ‘deal of the century’
As the unveiling of US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” remains uncertain and probably postponed, the international community has pitted itself against the proposal and deeming it an incentive to stand unequivocally in favour of the two-state compromise, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly described as...
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Time to stop the external manipulation of ‘what Palestinians want’
US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” and the forthcoming economic summit in Bahrain have reaped a multitude of analysis, not least from US officials themselves. Jared Kushner, senior advisor to US President Donald Trump, has now undertaken to impose his definitions regarding the difference between the Palestinian...
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Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees
No matter how prevalent refugee stories have become in the media, the dissociation between the terminology and the people keeps growing. Jehan Bseiso and Becky Thompson address this absence of humanity through the anthology “Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees”. Indeed, this collection dispels the limited concept of...
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Opponents of the Bahrain Summit must assert Palestinians’ unequivocal right to liberation
As preparations continue for the “Peace to Prosperity” workshop to be held in the capital of Bahrain next month, opposition to US-Israeli scheming grows. The Confederation of Palestinian Communities in Latin America (COPLAC) is reported to have denounced the summit and its aims, and urged Arab countries to refrain...
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The EU should be calling out Israel colonialism for its violence and incitement
Palestinian school textbooks are once again under public scrutiny, this time after a report published by Israel’s Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) claimed that material was “more radical than previously published”. The EU has since confirmed that it will be funding an assessment...
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The PA’s appropriation of ‘national rights’
Ever since the US ostracised the Palestinian Authority, there has been a change in rhetoric that attempts to equate the struggles it is facing with those of the Palestinian people. Israel’s deduction of tax revenues has also become another battleground where the PA seeks to portray itself as steadfast...
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The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The Theatrics of Woeful Statecraft
The international community, through the Oslo Accords, has created an intricate web of terminology that points towards a permanently stalled state-building process. In their book, The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank: The Theatrics of Woeful Statecraft (Routledge, 2019), Michelle Pace and Somdeep Sen expose what lies beneath the...
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The two-state compromise and Trump’s deal of the century both normalise Israel
From the details which have emerged so far about the Bahrain economic summit, the US has made clear that the first phase of its so-called “deal of the century” will not involve any political discussion. An unnamed US official described this decision as an opportunity to show that, “You...
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The international community makes a mockery of human rights
While Palestinians commemorated their ongoing Nakba and perpetual trauma inflicted by Zionist settler-colonialism, the US and Israel lauded each other on the 1st anniversary of Donald Trump’s unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the US Embassy relocation from Tel Aviv. In the words of US Ambassador to...
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The UN is a mouthpiece for Israeli propaganda, not a threat to the colonial state
Only a few days before the Palestinian commemoration of the 1948 Nakba, in which the indigenous people of Palestine were massacred, displaced and ethnically cleansed to pave the way for the European Zionist colonial project, Germany issued a statement declaring its intention to oppose “any unfair treatment” allegedly exhibited...
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The PA wants the EU to help, not the resistance
The EU must clearly and unequivocally state that it has abandoned the Palestinian people to complete political isolation. The recent Israeli air strikes on Gaza have not only revealed the UN’s scheming in terms of protecting Zionist colonisation of Palestine, but also the EU’s interests when it comes to...
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The Woman From Tantoura
An unfulfilled desire has no sanctuary other than remembrance. Radwa Ashour’s novel, The Woman from Tantoura (Hoopoe Fiction, 2019), explores the ramifications of memory and how its story is told. Chronology, while important, plays a lesser role than emotions, while memory takes on its own trajectory. “The story moves...
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As far as the UN is concerned, blaming Palestinians is the only available strategy
Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip has become a normalised regular occurrence. Since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the Israeli government has warned continuously of another large-scale assault to be waged against the enclave, while carrying out regular military incursions which inflict permanent damage upon Gaza and its civilian...
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What defines the EU’s relations with Israel and the Palestinians?
As the Palestinian Authority’s financial deficit continues to get worse, the European Union has announced that it will be assisting humanitarian endeavours for Palestinians with an additional $24.7 million of aid. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, declared that the EU will retain its role as “the most...