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Creating new perspectives since 2009

 

Ramona Wadi

Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America.

 

Items by Ramona Wadi

  • The debate on UNRWA takes focus away from the realities of Palestinian refugees

    In the aftermath of the US decision to end its funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the EU has pledged to continue its financial support. In terms of the agency being able to continue providing services to Palestinian refugees, the news is undoubtedly welcome. However,...

  • Palestinians are dispensable as far as the PA is concerned

    The rhetoric of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas fools nobody. Less than a week after meeting retired Mossad officer Ari Shaul and reiterating his concerns about Israel’s demography, Abbas confirmed to Knesset members that a PA delegation is in Washington for talks with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The aftermath...

  • Clarifying the PA’s role in diluting the Palestinian right of return

    It is not only the Trump administration that wants to alter, to the point of negating, the Palestinian right of return. On Tuesday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas made statements that conform to the scheming of Israel and the US. Apart from insisting upon a future demilitarised Palestinian state,...

  • Where the bird disappeared

    Memory and metaphor intertwine in Ghassan Zaqtan’s “Where the Bird Disappeared” (Seagull Books, 2018), to the point that, at times, seeking to distinguish one from the other is akin to lacerating an insoluble bond. There is barely enough time to ponder the existence of Yahya and Zakariyya before the Nakba...

  • Collusion to preserve UN authority thwarts the Palestinian right of return

    It is possible that the arguments in favour of retaining the Palestinian right of return are falling into the semantics trap which Israel has been perfecting overtly over many decades. As the Trump administration is reported to be preparing its own definition of who are to be classed as...

  • Only compromised Palestinian leaders could describe their right to Jerusalem as ‘compensation’

    Not only has the Palestinian Authority lagged behind in matters of urgent decision making, but it also persists in making defeatist comments which will generate additional repercussions for the people of Palestine in relation to US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century”. In response to Trump’s statement...

  • Palestinian popular resistance must be free of PA impositions

    With the Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar still targeted by Israel for demolition, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has availed himself of the opportunity to call for mobilisation in the form of popular resistance. This, he maintains, is “the only means of struggle towards independence and statehood”, to the...

  • A ‘national betrayal’ by Fatah … or Hamas?

    As the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, brokered by the UN and Egypt, went into effect yesterday, Ramallah erupted into a litany of abominable comments. Senior Fatah official Azzam Al-Ahmad was quoted by Wafa news agency stating: “The truce between Hamas and Israel a few days ago is a...

  • Netanyahu has an ally in Argentina’s Mauricio Macri

    Argentina’s Foreign Ministry has recently demonstrated its competence in disseminating Zionist propaganda, as well as showing how the “two-state solution” continues to serve Israeli interests. In a series of tweets from its official account, “deep concern” was expressed over “the escalation of violence caused by the launching of rockets...

  • Fractured Destinies

    When a last request turns into a journey, Palestine becomes tangible. Rabai Al-Madhoun’s novel, Fractured Destinies (Hoopoe Fiction, 2018), weaves narrations of love, exile and loss, while edging continuously closer to understanding memory departing from choices that might have turned out differently without British and Zionist collusion to colonise...

  • When humanitarian aid and rhetoric serve the interests of the Israeli oppressors

    There has been yet another instance where the UN has preferred to try to predict the future instead of acknowledging the current deterioration in Gaza with the aim of permanently reversing colonialism. Israel has yet again refused the entry of fuel into the enclave which is needed to power...

  • ‘Farmer terrorism’ is the new Jewish settler slogan justifying the destruction of crops

    In less than three months, Jewish settlers have destroyed over 2,000 trees and grapevines in the occupied West Bank. Rights group B’Tselem has issued a detailed report on this destruction, including testimony from Palestinian farmers. Bales of hay and barley fields were also destroyed. The destruction wrought by Israel’s...

  • Playing with words and children’s lives in occupied Palestine

    The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory (UNOCHA) yesterday published a joint statement calling for the protection of children’s rights. As usual, the UN has expressed its perpetual and purported “deep concern” about the violation of children’s rights and has demanded that...

  • Netanyahu visits Colombia, and the international community perfects its silence

    As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Colombia for the inauguration of the country’s new President, Iván Duque Márquez, the international community should clarify its role once and for all as an intentional accomplice working against Palestinian rights. The last few weeks have been fraught with comments regarding Israel’s...

  • Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions

    “If the breath and heart remain steady as the eye slips from “centenary” to “half-century” to “decade,” this is because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has endured so long that it has acquired about it an air of timelessness, and normalised into background noise”. The introductory remark to “Moment of Truth:...

  • Palestinians are being impoverished by the manipulation of humanitarian aid

    In March, the World Bank issued a press release stating that the deterioration in Gaza’s humanitarian situation is preventing economic growth. Among the destabilisation factors mentioned were the lack of access to basic services, unemployment and cuts in UNRWA funding. Israel’s colonial violence was excluded completely from the analysis...

  • The opportunistic PA spells danger for Palestinians with Israel’s Jewish Nation State Law

    The Palestinian Authority continues to give examples of discrepancy on two levels within its rhetoric. In response to Israel’s Jewish Nation State Law — which only elicited “concern” within the international community despite it being a blatant attempt to legitimise the crime of apartheid by Israel’s colonial structure —...

  • The UN’s divisive tactics will not alienate Palestinians from their right of return

    Nobody takes the UN seriously anymore. It has bred an array of detractors from across the entire political spectrum while continuing to function as an organisation that facilitates the continuation of violence. For oppressors, the UN serves as a base from where aggression can be justified and later secured...

  • An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba

    The erasure of Palestinian memory is often wrongly associated with the past. When combined with narratives that exclude Palestinians from their ongoing displacement, it is imperative to challenge both the sources and the parameters of how, and from where, knowledge is gained. “An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba”...

  • Palestine and Palestinians should not be defined by Mahmoud Abbas

    The brief encounter in Moscow between Argentina’s legendary footballer Diego Maradona and the Palestinian Authority President generated international headlines. “My heart is Palestinian,” Maradona told Mahmoud Abbas. Even so, a heart aligned with Palestine slipped into an overlooked omission. “President Abbas has a country and has a right,” Maradona said....

  • One state or two states, Israel has the upper hand in manipulating Palestinian compromise

    Following the Middle East Quartet’s statement in 2016 which effectively rendered the two-state compromise obsolete, the international community, including representatives of the Quartet, have failed to come up with other strategies. International diplomacy has been based on extending the farce of allegedly working towards the impossible. There are other narratives...

  • A sporting event should be an opportunity to highlight illusionary ‘unity’

    Sporting events are imbued with illusions of unity. The FIFA World Cup is no exception. In the context of Palestine, however, unity becomes a departure point for questioning the colonial trajectories that have fragmented, rather than united, the Palestinians. Coinciding with the finale of the football tournament in Russia, European...

  • Purported neutrality at the UN is harmful to Palestinians

    On Monday, Israeli lawyer Yuval Shany was appointed to chair the UN Human Rights Committee – a body of experts that monitors the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 1(1) of the covenant states: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they...

  • What use is UNHRC agenda item 7 if it is manipulated to serve Israeli interests?

    Yesterday’s debate at the UN Human Rights Council exposed how options for Palestinians are being depleted. Other than recurring statements from countries and non-governmental organisations about Israeli violence and the importance of keeping standing agenda item 7 — “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories” —...