Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
-
The farce of UNHRC Agenda Item 7
The UN and its affiliated institutions have come up with various futile initiatives purportedly aimed at holding Israel accountable for its human rights violations. Agenda Item 7 is no exception, despite being a standing agenda item for every UN Human Rights Council meeting. On Monday, the council voted in...
-
The implications of ‘defending’ the two-state framework
When the Palestinian Authority speaks about the “support” it receives from the international community it would do well to revisit the blatant hypocrisy at the UN Security Council briefing last March by France’s Permanent UN Representative, Nicolas de Riviere. Far from speaking of Palestinians’ rights, de Riviere insisted upon...
-
Transitional (in)Justice and Enforcing the Peace on Palestine
Brendan Ciaran Browne’s contribution to the literature on Palestine is not only welcomed, but sharply focused. Veering away from the mainstream discourse that protects the two-state compromise at the expense of Palestinians, Transitional (in)Justice and Enforcing the Peace on Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) discusses the convergence between transitional justice...
-
Colonialism allows no space for the colonised to speak
At the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, the Palestinian human rights organisations, Al Haq and Addameer drew attention to the systematic torture of Palestinians prisoners in Israeli jails “as part of its settler-colonial and apartheid regime against the Palestinian people”. While Al-Haq and Addameer are meticulous...
-
There is a pretence of opposition to only one form of Israel’s colonial violence
Last month, Israel’s National Security Minister, the far-right extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, sought to facilitate the process for Israeli civilians to obtain firearms, citing a rise in applications since 2022 and the recent rise in Palestinian anti-colonial resistance against state and settler terror. “We have the duty to speed up...
-
Israel’s new cycles of forcibly displacing Palestinians
US President Joe Biden placed much emphasis on rhetorically opposing Israel’s settlement expansion. Hence the reaction from Washington over the Israeli Knesset passing the second and third readings of the Disengagement Law that would allow resettlement of Jewish Israelis in four previously vacated illegal settlement areas in the occupied West Bank. Israel’s Ambassador to the US Mike Herzog...
-
The erasure of Palestinians is becoming part of Israel mainstream discourse
Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, did not take long to issue another treacherous statement after explicitly calling for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be wiped out. During a private memorial service in Paris, Smotrich stated that Palestinians are an invention. The Palestinians, according to Smotrich, invented “a fictitious...
-
The US feigns being ‘disturbed’ by Israeli settler violence
Last week, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged the current Israeli settler violence against the Palestinian people following a meeting with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant. “The United States firmly opposed to any acts that could trigger more insecurity, including settlement expansion and inflammatory rhetoric,” Austin told reporters....
-
The PA foreign minister’s contradictions support Israeli settler-colonialism
When the Palestinian Authority speaks about Israel’s settler-colonialism, it dilutes any possible impact immediately by mentioning the two-state compromise. During a joint press conference with his Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani in Ramallah, for example, PA Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki praised the Italian official for upholding the two-state paradigm. To...
-
The PA is wrong to suppress Palestinian mourning
While the emerging Palestinian resistance has declared its opposition to Israel, the Palestinian Authority has unleashed its security services on the Palestinian people. On Wednesday, the PA security services violently dispersed the funeral procession of 49-year-old Abdelfattah Kharousheh in Nablus, who was affiliated to Hamas and killed by the...
-
Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel
Azad Essa’s book, Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel (Pluto Press, 2023), offers detailed insights into the politics of Zionism and Hindutva. With an introduction by Linah Alsaafin, the reader is introduced to India as a purported supporter of Palestine “contingent on Israeli interests”. Zionism and...
-
The emerging Palestinian resistance is a warning for the PA
For decades, the international community has assumed that it could subjugate Palestinians in the occupied West Bank with financial aid and bogus state-building measures. The Palestinian Authority, which advocates for international impositions over the people of occupied Palestine, notably the two-state compromise, has lost its grip over them, despite...
-
Israel isn’t anti-pogrom, it just doesn’t want Israeli collateral damage
“What happened in Huwara was a pogrom carried out by law-breakers,” said Major General Yehuda Fuchs, who is in charge of the Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank. “We were not prepared for that many people, how they came, the scale, the force of the violence they used,...
-
The consequences of PA ‘happiness’ over diplomatic nothings
Last week, Palestinian Envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour said that he was “happy” about the international response to the UN Security Council Presidential Statement which replaced the draft resolution that would have explicitly targeted Israel’s settlement expansion. “The Security Council reiterates that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously...
-
Has the Guardian become a platform for Israel disinformation?
When 2022 was claimed to be the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2005, international human rights organisations as well as those in Israel, corroborated with statistical data. So did the UN Security Council, which called for “reversing the trends” in January this year. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem,...
-
The UN, Israel and the PA can no longer control the Palestinian narrative
“I am continuing my engagement with all concerned parties to deescalate the situation. I urge all sides to refrain from steps that could further enflame an already volatile situation,” the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland stated today, after the Israeli military killed 11 Palestinians and injured over 100...
-
The PA’s capitulation to security coordination and financial aid
UN resolutions on Palestine are futile. Yet, the Palestinian Authority’s backtracking on the draft resolution which was to be presented to the UN Security Council regarding a condemnation of Israel’s recent settlement expansion is of more pressing concern. As it is renowned for, the PA accepted meagre concessions and...
-
The compromised nature of humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees
The Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has described succinctly all that is wrong in politics with regard to Palestine and Palestinian refugees, in a complicit manner, of course. In an interview with Reuters in January, Philippe Lazzarini made an appeal for...
-
The two-state framework and the PA’s betrayal of Palestinians
If the two-state compromise provided Israel with the veneer necessary for gradually moving towards annexation through settlement expansion, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas might as well ask the UN to declare publicly its allegiance to the settler-colonial enterprise. At the Arab League Conference in Support of Jerusalem held in...
-
The EU uses the ‘two-state’ framework to evade acknowledgement of Israeli apartheid
In January 2021, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem declared that Israel imposes apartheid on the people of occupied Palestine, prompting other organisations to be more vocal about the colonial violence experienced by the Palestinians. Politically, the apartheid designation is failing to gain ground, as evidenced by the EU’s...
-
How long until Abbas reneges on his word about security coordination?
The Palestinian Authority continues to drown in its own political contradictions. Last month, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas stated that he was halting security coordination with Israel, purportedly to protect Palestinians after the Israeli army killed nine Palestinian civilians in Jenin. Abbas has been a source of ridicule over his...
-
Israel’s security narrative and the international community’s humanitarian paradigm
Israel is up against renewed collective action in terms of Palestinian anti-colonial resistance. The Palestinian Authority has once again halted security coordination, although Mahmoud Abbas has reneged several times and will possibly do so again. Meanwhile, the EU has called on “both parties to do everything possible to de-escalate...
-
Blinken’s visit sustains violence against the Palestinian people
If Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had any loyalty towards Palestine and its people, his remarks during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to Ramallah would have had less to do with preserving the fallacy of hypothetical negotiations and the two-state compromise. Abbas relied on the usual...
-
Ida in the Middle
Nora Lester Murad’s young adult novel, Ida in the Middle (Crocodile Books, 2022), explores Palestinian identity and makes it relatable to a non-Palestinian audience. Ida, a young teenager, is born in the US to Palestinian parents. She is bullied and ostracised at her school because of her Palestinian heritage,...
