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
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- August 22, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- August 17, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- August 15, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- August 10, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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,...
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- August 8, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- August 3, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- August 1, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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,...
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- July 27, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- July 25, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- July 25, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- July 22, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- July 18, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- July 13, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- July 11, 2023 Ramona Wadi
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...
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- July 6, 2023 Ramona Wadi
Israel’s Jenin incursion may further unite Palestinian resistance
The Israeli military incursion in Jenin is by no means over, marking both a victory for Palestinian resistance as well as the further promise of colonial violence from Israel’s occupation forces against Palestinians. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant claimed victory, yet his words indicate otherwise, including an assertion that...
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- July 4, 2023 Ramona Wadi
Israel’s security narrative reigns supreme as it acts with impunity
“We support Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups,” said the White House National Security Council as it weighed in on the occupation state’s attacks on Jenin’s refugee camp. The densely-populated camp has been hit with drone strikes in...
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- June 29, 2023 Ramona Wadi
Israel officials promote impunity for all forms of settler-colonial violence
If Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, can find excuses for the hilltop youth’s colonial violence, how much more is the concept of settler-colonial presence as a form of violence normalised? During a meeting called by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir described the hilltop youth as “sweet boys” forced...
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- June 27, 2023 Ramona Wadi
The Palestinian resistance is making inroads
Israel needs the Palestinian Authority. That much has been established clearly by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a private meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. At a time when the PA is clearly losing its control over Palestinians, Netanyahu is speaking truths which Ramallah, in its...
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- June 22, 2023 Ramona Wadi
While pointing out international responsibility, the Fatah-dominated PA conceals its own
As if further proof was necessary that the Palestinians have been abandoned by Ramallah, Fatah called upon the people yesterday “to stay alert and confront the systematic settler attacks that are carried out with the connivance of the occupation army.” No security coordination to protect Palestinians from Israeli state...
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- June 20, 2023 Ramona Wadi
Twisted narratives promote the targeted assassinations of Palestinians
A recent poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research detailed how Palestinians are largely in favour of armed resistance against Israel’s settler-colonialism. More importantly, Palestinians have again asserted that they no longer need to take their cues from the main Palestinian political factions, indicating a sharp...
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- June 15, 2023 Ramona Wadi
Protecting an obsolete framework is not a legitimate political option
The lauding of diplomatic meetings between Palestinian Authority officials and other political entities needs to cease, especially when the item under discussion is the obsolete two-state compromise. “There is an urgent need to move immediately to protect the two-state solution at a time the Israeli government is pushing the Palestinian...
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- June 13, 2023 Ramona Wadi
The PA foreign minister promotes Israeli impunity
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki keeps generating contradictions in his diplomatic endeavours. The concept of “waiting” is one of Al-Maliki’s favourite terms to resort to, reminding diplomats of how Palestinians have been forced to wait by the international community but failing to address how the PA endorses waiting...
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- June 8, 2023 Ramona Wadi
The PA has abandoned Palestine in order to stick to the international narrative
If the UN excels at anything besides creating the conditions for human rights abuses, it is keeping track of human rights violations and disseminating the statistical data. There can thus be no doubt that diplomats have access to the details of what is happening in Palestine; spreading awareness without...
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- June 6, 2023 Ramona Wadi
Humanitarian aid for Palestinians favours the Israeli colonial enterprise
The Permanent Observer for the State of Palestine at the UN, Riyad Mansour, pointed out the unsustainability of donor funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at the Pledging Conference in New York last Saturday. Nevertheless, the silence on the politicisation of humanitarian aid...