Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Electrical Palestine. Capital and Technology from Empire to Nation
Review rating: 4/5 Fredrik Meiton approaches the Zionist colonisation of Palestine from an industrialisation angle in his book “Electrical Palestine. Capital and technology from Empire to Nation” (University of California Press, 2019). The study traces the plans of Pinhas Rutenberg to electrify Palestine and how the implementation of these plans...
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Prevailing reactions to Khan Al-Ahmar are harming Palestinians
The silence generated over the Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar should be provoking an outrage of different proportions. Last year, the village was a focal point to the exclusion of all other ongoing demolitions. Ahead of the Israeli elections on 9 April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly...
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Palestine doesn’t need an ‘international peace conference’ which will reject liberation strategies
Palestinian media are reporting that Mahmoud Abbas has appealed to the African Union to support, and participate in, a possible international conference “to take care of the peace process.” As always, the Palestinian Authority leader’s rhetoric shifts between the similarities in the Palestinian and African struggle against colonialism, while...
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Gantz and Ya’alon: two sides of the same coin
Former Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon has aligned himself politically with Benny Gantz, the former Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff and chairman of the Israel Resilience party. The Israeli election propaganda is generating considerable speculation and reactions. Yetserday, considerable attention was given to the fact that Gantz indicated...
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A single Latuff cartoon has provoked Israel into exposing its own duplicity
Overseas humanitarian missions are relished by Israel, for they provide an excellent façade and distraction from its most definitely non-humanitarian agenda against the Palestinians. The latest Israel Defence Forces (IDF) search and rescue mission in Brazil following the collapse of a dam was no exception. Upon completion of the...
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The UN persists with obsolete frameworks for Israel’s political benefit
Years after the two-state paradigm was declared obsolete, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process has informed the Security Council that, “The possibility of establishing a viable, contiguous Palestinian state has been systematically eroded by facts on the ground.” The statement is an attempt to transform...
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The History and Politics of the Bedouin. Reimagining Nomadism in Modern Palestine
Review Rating 4/5 Seraj Assi’s study on nomadism sheds light on previously obscured understandings which have contributed to the Bedouin being discussed from a colonial context. The History and Politics of the Bedouin –Reimagining nomadism in Modern Palestine (Routledge, 2019) explores the history behind the external impositions on the population....
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Humanitarian aid and strategic interests … for the EU
Palestinians are in dire need of humanitarian aid. So dire, in fact, that the EU has no qualms about conditioning financial aid in terms of acquiescence to the two-state paradigm. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is not an exception to this type of political...
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Have USAID’s intentions ever been truly humanitarian?
The decision to stop funding USAID projects in Palestine is another tactic by the Trump administration to block all humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, even when such assistance is inherently compromised to suit US interests. It follows hard on the heels of cuts to US donations to the UN Relief...
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The Gaza protest casualties are not just statistics; where is the colonial context, UN?
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories (OCHA) released statistics on Monday showing that 254 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the Great March of Return protests in March last year. A total of 23,603 Palestinian women, children...
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The PA's bid for full UN membership will not benefit Palestinians
The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to measure its purported success by international standards. After assuming the presidency of the Group of 77 (G77), new plans are underway to launch a bid for Palestine to become a full UN member, according to PA Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki. It is already...
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The PA will promote its false construction of Palestinian identity at the G77
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will today assume the presidency of the Group of 77 developing nations (G77) at a ceremony hosted by the UN General Assembly. According to PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the appointment, which he described as “an important historical event added to the political achievements...
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Representing Palestine. Media and Journalism in Australia since World War I
Review Rating: 4/5 The elimination of the Palestinian narrative from mainstream media is not a new phenomenon. Peter Manning’s study, Representing Palestine. Media and Journalism in Australia since World War I (IB Tauris, 2018) explores this tactic through an in-depth analysis of Australia’s oldest newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald. Manning’s research...
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The international community upholds deprivation by supporting Israel and the PA
What happens when the UN is unequivocally supporting the claims of the Palestinian Authority leadership to the detriment of the Palestinian people? There is nothing unusual about the international community’s stance; it did, after all, legitimise a colonial presence in Palestine in the first place, while Palestinians’ rights have...
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Erekat’s tweets about Bolton’s visit to Jerusalem totally miss the point
US National Security Adviser John Bolton has visited Occupied East Jerusalem during a visit to Israel, which prompted PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat to tweet, “Bolton’s support for occupation, apartheid, illegal settlements, annexation of territory occupied by force is unwavering.” There is nothing new about Erekat’s observation; Bolton is a...
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Israel’s plan to ‘worsen conditions’ for Palestinian prisoners is an opportunity for unity
Depriving Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails of their basic rights is a “moral duty”, according to Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. News reports have confirmed that the Israeli cabinet has approved plans to “worsen conditions”, after Erdan set up a committee specifically tasked with devising “harsher” conditions...
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The Palestinian children killed by Israel in 2018 have been forgotten by the world
Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP) paints a bleak prospect for Palestinian children in revealing that in 2018, at least 56 were killed by Israel. Individuals who witnessed some of the murders have insisted that the targeted children were unarmed and posed no threat to the state or its...
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Life Lived in Relief — Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics
Refugee narratives beyond those which reach the mainstream media are fraught with complexities, while humanitarian aid remains insufficient. Ilana Feldman’s treatise “Life Lived in Relief — Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics” (University of California Press, 2018) focuses on the discrepancies between the political and purportedly apolitical dynamics of...
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Who is being held to account for Palestinians’ food insecurity?
Palestinians’ food insecurity made brief headlines with the announcement that the World Food Programme (WFP) will be cutting food aid due to insufficient funds. An estimated 190,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank will be affected; 27,000 through the suspension of food aid and 165,000 who will...
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The UN’s vision of ‘peace’ for Palestine excludes ordinary Palestinians
The UN is now adamant that the Palestinian Authority should return to govern the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge, this hypothesis was raised by the US and has seldom been questioned, ostensibly due to other pressing factors such as delivering the necessary humanitarian...
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Rest in My Shade
Review Rating: 5/5 There is always a time between the concepts of the present and forever which is inscribed in our remembrance. It is the beauty of memory which enables us to transcend and live within this truth. “Rest in My Shade” (Interlink Books, 2018) explores this reality through an...
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Palestine and its people will pay the price for the PA’s disloyalty
We still don’t know what US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century looks like. At the UN Security Council meeting last Tuesday, US Ambassador to the international organisation, Nikki Haley, only hinted at “thoughtful detail” and recognition “that realities on the ground in the Middle East have...
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Humanitarian aid is overtly politicised, just not in favour of the Palestinians
The 2019 humanitarian plan for Palestinians in the occupied territories will allocate $350 million for aid intervention, according to Ramallah’s Minister of Social Development Ibrahim Al-Shaer and UN envoy Jamie McGoldrick. The people of Palestine remain divested of their legitimate human and civil rights in order to retain the...
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Italy’s Salvini said what the international community knows it can’t say: ‘Support Israel’
It is no secret that the right wing has appropriated and manipulated the definition of “peace” in today’s poisonous political climate. Peace is now synonymous with power, and little is being done to challenge this notion on a political level, to the point that one can speak of collusion...