Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
-
The ‘Peace Day Effort’ offered ambiguity and impunity
The EU’s Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process, Sven Koopmans, has succeeded in carving out a niche for ambiguity amid all the non-binding UN resolutions, peace initiatives, normalisation agreements and the two-state compromise. The Peace Day Effort, which was held on the sidelines of the 78th UN...
-
Israel seeks complete impunity at the UN
The Israeli Government Press Office reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advised UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to “change the attitude of the organisation’s institution towards the State of Israel.” If the UN and its institutions were to truly alter their approach in line with international law and human rights,...
-
The humanitarian paradigm complements Israel’s settler-colonial violence
A late commemoration of World Humanitarian Day in Gaza marked not only that the international community considers Palestinians as an afterthought, but also how far removed diplomats are from the politics that created the perpetual humanitarian crisis in the enclave. Diplomats from Chile, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Norway, the UK...
-
Abbas should stop exploiting the Palestinian resistance
It ought to be pointed out to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas that he has no political legitimacy to speak about the aspirations of the Palestinian people. They are capable of speaking for themselves, and are in no need of their anti-colonial resistance to be exploited internationally by Abbas...
-
Marginalising Palestinians from their own politics
In an example of how Palestinians are routinely marginalised from their own political trajectory, the event which Saudi Arabia will be co-hosting along with the Arab League and the European Union at the forthcoming UN General Assembly under the theme “Peace Day Effort for Middle East Peace” will exclude Palestinians and...
-
How the PA contributes to Palestine’s obliteration
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, and the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh is paying homage to the occasion of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s squandering of Palestine. As the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee’s (AHLC) meeting approaches, Shtayyeh warned during a meeting with Norwegian Special...
-
The PA’s quest for control at the expense of the Palestinian people
When the Abraham Accords became public knowledge in 2020, the Palestinian Authority temporarily made a spectacle out of itself pretending to oppose the normalisation of relations of Arab countries with Israel. After all, didn’t Yasser Arafat himself normalise relations with the occupation state? And wasn’t Mahmoud Abbas a key...
-
The PA will write its own downfall
If the Palestinian Authority is concerned about anti-colonial resistance, it is certainly acting in a way that will bring about its political downfall. This week, the PA’s security services killed Palestinian Abdul Qader Zaqdah at the Tulkarem Refugee Camp, merely for preventing the security services from removing barriers enacted...
-
The PA’s concept of popular peaceful resistance is political acquiescence
The Palestinian Authority has revealed its increasing discomfort with the rise of Palestinian anti-colonial resistance in the occupied West Bank. The narrative of Hamas as the epitome of Palestinian resistance can no longer be relied on to foment discord between resistance groups, as armed resistance now denotes a unified...
-
Palestinians are subjected to humanitarian blackmail
In his recent briefing to the UN Security Council, the international organisation’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, noted that the current situation in the occupied West Bank is further impacted by the funding deficits and fiscal problems faced by the Palestinian Authority. What Wennesland...
-
The international community feigns ignorance over Israel’s colonial violence
In May this year, the Norwegian Refugee Council warned that over 6,550 students risked the loss of their education if Israel went ahead and destroyed 57 schools in the occupied West Bank. Last week, Israel demolished an elementary school for Palestinian children living in Ein Samiyah. The school was...
-
Paraguay consolidates its historical ties with Israeli colonialism and indigenous repression
Under the presidency of Horacio Cartes in 2018, Paraguay announced that it would be relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following the unilateral step by the Trump administration in Washington. Three months later, new President Mario Abdo Benitez reversed the decision and relocated the embassy back to...
-
Levin speaks against Israel’s apartheid to protect its settler-colonialism
When former Israel Defence Forces General Amiram Levin said, “I am not pitying the Palestinians, I am pitying us,” he provided some context to his statement about “absolute apartheid” in Israel. Of course, apartheid does not reflect well on the perpetrator, but the perpetrator in this case has chosen...
-
Israel diplomat argues for symbolic recognition of Palestine for Israel’s benefit
Australian diplomacy with regard to Palestine has recently veered towards clarifying Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, as well as clearly declaring settlement expansion to be a violation of international law. Although not setting a timeframe for when the government will start adopting the terminology, the Australian Foreign Minister,...
-
A single acknowledgement of Israeli settler ‘terror’ changes nothing
For the first time, the US State Department has described the murder of a Palestinian — 19-year-old Qusai Jamal Matan — in the occupied West Bank as a “terror attack” by “Israeli extremist settlers”. So far there has been no attempt by Washington to amend its statement. State Department...
-
Israel is an apartheid state, so why did an EU diplomat refuse to say so?
Outgoing EU Envoy to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Sven Kuhn Von Burgsdorff attracted the wrong sort of attention when he paraglided off Gaza’s coast last month, purportedly promoting a promise of freedom even as the EU persists in the moribund two-state narrative. Israel described the stunt as...
-
The PA is an obstruction to Palestinian unity
The entire world recognises the Palestine Liberation Organisation as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, but this does not mean that the Palestinians are tethered to the same stagnant politics. The latest rhetoric from Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas about Palestinian unity was yet another exercise in authoritarianism,...
-
Just one example of a diplomat unworthy of the role
The EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process, Sven Koopmans, is just one blatant example of why Israel fears nothing — and has nothing to fear — from international diplomats. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Koopman’s rhetoric of hope, imagination and positivity stands in stark...
-
BRICS endorses the defunct two-state compromise
The BRICS Summit in South Africa has given further unwarranted validation to the two-state compromise for Palestine-Israel. The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa promoted the reaffirmation by international diplomacy as calling for “the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” While BRICS is seen...
-
A Stranger in Baghdad
An unexpected visit from former British diplomat and family acquaintance Duncan Claybourne to Iraqi-British psychiatrist Mona Haddad in 2003 sets the scene for Elizabeth Loudon’s novel, A Stranger in Baghdad (Hoopoe Fiction, 2023). The reader is plunged immediately into intrigue with the possibility of revelation, only to discover the...
-
An exercise in omitting Israel’s colonial foundations
Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to the US Congress on Wednesday was a mix of melodrama and colonial nostalgia. Attempting to conceal the politics of settler-colonialism and collaboration, Herzog made vague references to hope, unity and democracy, even as Israel’s military-industrial complex remains a major exporter of colonial surveillance...
-
The PA’s fear of Palestinian journalists
The Palestinian Authority’s abhorrence for journalists was, once again, highlighted with the security services’ arrest of Akil Awawdeh last week. Awawdeh had spoken out against the PA’s security services’ spokesman’s claim that no political arrests are made in the Occupied West Bank. “You should respect our minds more than...
-
Jenin’s marginalisation in international rhetoric
Reiterating the obvious is one prerequisite for being a diplomat. With the Jenin refugee camp becoming the latest attraction for the international community’s humanitarian agenda, the grotesque statements are paying more attention to Israel’s security narrative than the ongoing Nakba (Catastrophe) of the Palestinian people. An international delegation led by...
-
Privilege and power for the PA, to the detriment of Palestinians
More proof of the Palestinian Authority’s precarious position was made public earlier this week, when it was announced that Israeli ministers, with the exception of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, voted in favour of measures that would bolster the PA. “In the absence of...