Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Abbas' trip to Latin America helps to marginalise Palestinian aspirations
As Guatemala prepares to open its embassy in Jerusalem next week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has embarked on a trip to three Latin America countries: Venezuela, Chile and Cuba. Landing in the Venezuelan capital Caracas yesterday, Abbas met President Nicolas Maduro at the presidential palace Miraflores. He thanked...
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Addameer report points to bleak future for Palestinian children in Jerusalem
Palestinian NGO Addameer has published a detailed factsheet about the repercussions faced by Palestinian children detained and prosecuted by Israel. While many reports are available on the subject, Addameer has narrowed its focus to the targeting of Palestinian children in Jerusalem, analysing the escalation of Israel’s aggressive policies in...
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Israel and the international community have isolated the Palestinians
Last week Palestinian and Israeli human rights organisations filed two petitions seeking to stop Israel snipers shooting at Palestinian civilians participating in the Great March of Return Protests at the Gaza border. In petitions filed by Adalah, Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel...
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As the US eliminates references to Israel’s occupation, violence against Palestinians becomes the norm
The latest US annual report on human rights violations, released last Friday, carried an intentional omission. There is no longer any mention of the occupied Palestinian territories. In a move which normalises Israel’s colonial project and military occupation yet further, the relevant entry reads: “Israel, Golan Heights, West Bank...
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Abbas continues to appease Israel, the US and the international community over Jerusalem
Last Saturday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas made the distinction between political corruption and the Palestinian people, albeit unwittingly. What remains to be done is articulate the dissociation between the PA and the Palestinians it claims to represent, to ensure that there is no opportunistic appropriation of the struggle...
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Determining humanitarian relief at the expense of Palestinian political rights
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing a $300 million financial deficit which, according to the organisaiton’s spokesman in Gaza, Adnan Abu Hasna, may jeopardise services to Palestinian refugees after August this year. Israel and the US have lobbied...
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Palestinian Citizens of Israel. Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space
Israel’s colonial violence against Palestinians has produced several trajectories encroaching upon the indigenous population and their geophysical space. As a result, Palestinian resilience and resistance has been diverse, a uniting factor operating against what Sharri Plonski describes as “Zionist erasures” in her book “Palestinian Citizens of Israel: power, resistance...
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PA hypocrisy is exposed on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day
Last year, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day was marked by the initiation of a mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, led by Marwan Barghouti. Today, the occasion is marked by reminders and statistics of the violations incurred by Palestinians as a result of Israel’s colonial violence. According...
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More punitive measures by Abbas’s PA expose his contempt for Palestinian resilience
While Palestinians are investing their time and, in some cases, life and limb to assert their right of return to historic Palestine, the head of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, remains committed to colonial collaboration and vestiges of power. Unsurprisingly, the PA has barely recognised the legitimacy of the...
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We need to challenge the ICC statement which gives Israel the benefit of the doubt
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is back on the scene, with more evidence that it gives Israel the benefit of the doubt. ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s statement last Sunday indicated that her office has monitored the demonstrations in Gaza which have resulted in Israel killing 29 Palestinians and...
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B’Tselem report details isolation policies detrimental to detained Palestinian children
Thanks to social media, we have become accustomed to seeing footage of Israeli soldiers terrorising Palestinian families in the middle of the night as they break into their homes to arrest their children. What happens after the children are blindfolded and taken to interrogation centres, although documented, receives less...
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Israel and Chile are partners in the oppression of their indigenous populations
Israel is continuing its decades-long strategy of exporting its military violence to Latin America. Last month, the Chilean Armed Forces website revealed that the governments of Chile and Israel signed an agreement for cooperation in military education, training and doctrine during an official visit to the country by Israeli...
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The UN disregard for Palestinians’ right of return colludes with Israeli violence
The Palestinian “Great March of Return” has exposed the frailty of Israel’s fabricated narratives, yet once again the international community prefers to speak about “sides” in the conflict. As the planned march draws nearer, the Jerusalem Post reported that UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay...
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Irresponsible rhetoric allows violence against Palestinians
In diplomatic circles, language hardly changes from one scenario to the next. It is only the accusations levelled against different political actors that convey part of the context, which always disregards allegations of violence in order to maintain the level of impunity for all aggressors. The latest UN Human...
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It couldn’t be clearer how out of touch with his people Abbas is
Polls by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) are exposing the dissociation between the Palestinian Authority and the people. As Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas scrambles for a semblance of political coherence which he seeks to achieve by blaming Hamas, the Palestinian people are largely...
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Israel’s bone of contention is Palestinian resilience, not the Gaza tunnel network
In February, Israel asked the international community to contribute $1 billion towards a plan for the Gaza Strip’s shattered infrastructure. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the international community is obliged to make such a financial commitment due to Hamas supposedly ignoring the basic needs of Palestinian civilians...
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Those who exploit Palestinian rights make a noise about exploitation
The Palestinian Authority has exerted its best efforts to appear to be taking defiant steps in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s announcements regarding Jerusalem. Yet it cannot conceal the fact that masquerading as the representative of the Palestinian people has resulted in political deficiencies. On Tuesday, the PA...
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The Last Earth. A Palestinian Story
To impart narratives of displacement, it is important to listen to the echoes of such trajectories. Ramzy Baroud’s latest book, The Last Earth: a Palestinian story, propels this dimension immediately to the fore. The reader takes a step back to listen, imagine and realise the immense contradictions, where life...
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Drones and desensitisation in the Palestinian cause
Footage has emerged across Israeli media of drones dropping tear gas canisters on Palestinian protestors close to the border in the South of Gaza last Friday. The Times of Israel and Haaretz have both reported the targeting of the protest with slightly differing narratives. The former reported that an Israel...
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How institutions are concealing Palestinian rights
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories (OCHA) has published a report detailing the ramifications of Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank city of Hebron. The statistics provided, as well as details of the violations by the Israeli military and...
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Palestine in Black and White
Beyond the accessible narratives in the form of reports and news briefs which run the risk of normalising decades of colonial violence against Palestinians, art manages to impart the dimensions that can easily be lost or given less importance within mainstream media. Mohammad Sabaaneh’s book, “Palestine in Black and...
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Guatemala’s appropriation of the concept of return
As expected, the international community has largely gone silent about the announcements by the US and Guatemala to relocate their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. While an aberration in terms of protecting human rights, the initial furore and subsequent dismissal from international institutions’ priorities follows the same political...
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PA accusations of ‘capitulation’ should prompt some introspection
The Palestine Football Association (PFA) has been campaigning since 2015 for the relocation of six Israeli football clubs based in the illegal Jewish settlements spread across the occupied West Bank. The approaches to FIFA, football’s world governing body, were a major step down from the original intention to have...
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Recognition of Palestine is tethered to an absence of vision
One statement from Mahmoud Abbas’s speech to the UN Security Council last week focused upon the recognition of Palestine by UN member states; this has been overlooked. The context given by Abbas is, though, contradictory. Recognition, he said, has “further strengthened the status of the State of Palestine.” However,...