Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Separating land from the people supports Israel’s colonial expansion
This year marked the 50th anniversary of Land Day in colonised Palestine. On 30th March 1976, Israeli forces killed 6 Palestinians protesting against colonial land grab in the Galilee. Fifty years later, the international community shows no recognition of land day and remains passively, purportedly opposed, to Israel’s colonial expansion…
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The envisaged five stages of Israel’s next colonial phase
Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, now the Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza, is misrepresenting Gaza to the full capability of Western complicity with colonialism. Over the span of eight months, the Board of Peace is supposed to implement the five…
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Torture, genocide and erasure
“This is not incidental violence. It is the architecture of settler-colonialism, built on a foundation of dehumanisation and maintained by a policy of cruelty and collective terror.” The concluding sentence to the summary of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report to the UN Human Rights Council on torture and genocide…
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The UN leaves UNRWA isolated, and Palestinians prone to genocide
The most exalted UN creation – the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees – is being isolated by the UN. While Israel destroyed UNRWA’s infrastructure several times and more severely during the genocide that started on 7 October 2023, the UN has failed its own humanitarian paradigm not…
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The Spectral Palestinian: Presence Before Politics
Language in Western discourse abandoned the Palestinian people. In a global framework that renders Palestinians invisible unless visibility is required to satisfy the mainstream narrative, the West has talked about Palestinians in terms of projections that are far removed from the reality of a colonised indigenous population. “One way to…
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Global attention must not lose sight of Palestine
For all Palestine, particularly Gaza, is reduced to visibility or invisibility depending on how it best serves the Israeli and Western narratives, the spotlight should remain on Palestine until it is decolonised from Israel’s settler colonial enterprise. In recent comments, Colombian President Gustavo Petro described Israel’s genocide in Gaza as…
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Making humanitarian aid work for everyone but the recipients
The EU yesterday confirmed €458 million in humanitarian aid for Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Palestine will receive €124 million to cover the needs of 3.3 million people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. In a war-torn Middle East, the European Union is stepping up while others step…
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Creating impunity through diplomatic statements
Settler violence in the occupied West Bank is unacceptable, the EU and the UK stated yesterday. “Impunity for such acts risks provoking further violence,” an EU spokesperson stated, while referencing the killings of six Palestinians since 28th February by “extremist Israeli settlers.” Germany’s spokesman for Berlin’s Foreign Office called the…
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A colonial choice: The Board of Peace, or the UN?
A report presented to the UN Human Rights Council last month noted that Israel destroyed 92 per cent of Gaza’s housing units and displaced over 90 per cent of Palestinians, while 86 percent of the territory was under orders for displacement or incorporated into military zones. Based on the evidence…
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Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Struggle for Land Justice in Palestine
Rural Palestine stands between idealised and romanticised images of abundant land, and the reality of settler violence and the effects on agricultural territory. Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Struggle for Land Justice in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2026) asks, “What might we learn from rural Palestine if we…
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Care packages, brought to Palestinians by colonialism
Nickolay Mladenov, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and now High Representative for the Board of Peace, is no stranger to diplomatic jargon. “Essential supplies, including Ramadan care packages, are once again reaching families in urgent need,” Mladenov stated, as various aid organisations warned of another…
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When humanitarian aid and death are intertwined in Gaza
Humanitarian aid for Palestinians has always been a macabre game which the international community has played so well, to the point that aid and death have become intertwined. Not only did the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) face Israel’s political violence while forced to remain steeped…
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Obliterating Palestinian identity
Earlier this month, Palestinian footballers, clubs and rights groups submitted a 120-page file to the International Criminal Court accusing FIFA President Gianni Infantino and UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin of “aiding and abetting war crimes … and crimes against humanity.” The complaint cites both organisation’s inclusion of Israeli clubs based in…
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Reconstructing the details of Israel’s obliteration of Palestinians
A joint report released recently by Forensic Architecture and Earshot reconstructs Israel’s massacre of aid workers in March 2025. Commencing with Israel’s first violation of the ceasefire on 18 March 2025, in which 414 Palestinians were killed, the report focuses on 23 March, when two Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances…
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Where is the international community’s accountability for Israel’s latest annexation phase?
The international community does not want to be held accountable to history or its role in Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. With each violation, the UN and world leaders issue statements as if Israel is for the first time acting in violation of international law. “The moves could lead to settlement…
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Continuing genocide, with full international approval
The international community has truly illustrated its fragmented approach to both international law, order and human rights. Not only did the UN Security Council members vote the international community out of its usual process in favour of the US 20-point plan which places Gaza in the hands of President Donald…
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France’s censorship of voices calling out international complicity with genocide
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has once again been targeted, this time by French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot, for her speech at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Saturday, in which she denounced the entire complicit system that supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The term…
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Australia should not provide a platform for Israel’s security narrative
Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia was largely tied to the Bondi memorial. However, in a Q&A session with Jewish students attending Moriah College in Sydney, the tone shifted to Israel’s security narrative. “I know that the demonstrators and protesters who are cursing us, saying the biggest lies and…
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No international reaction to Israel’s admission of killing over 70,000 in Gaza
The international community ought to be acknowledged for its role in blotting out the meaning of genocide since October 2023. Without global complicity, the Geneva Convention’s definition of genocide would have retained its relevance. Instead, as Israel killed Palestinians, world leaders dismissed Palestinian voices calling out the genocide. What veneer…
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Supporting Israel’s security narrative puts aid workers at risk
Doctors Without Borders has decided it will not share details of its staff with the Israeli authorities. In a statement published last Friday, the humanitarian organisation announced that Israel gave no assurances of security. As the statement partly reads, “it became evident in recent days that we were unable to…
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Strengthening the UN? For what purpose?
France and Brazil had different reactions to US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, although ostensibly pointing towards the same outcome. France rejected the invitation, stating that it would undermine the UN framework. Brazil asked the US to limit the Board of Peace to Gaza and to include Palestine. Recently…
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Neutrality imperils aid organisations
Earlier this week, Doctors Without Borders issued a statement saying it will comply with Israel’s requirements to share details of its Palestinian and international staff, “subject to clear parameters with staff safety at its core”. In its statement, the humanitarian organisation noted that it was doing so, knowing that such…
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Stating there is no Plan B allows colonial violence to create one
Rebuilding Gaza has always been the UN’s favourite part of Israel’s colonial, violent aftermath. The genocide Israel unleashed on Gaza after 7th October 2023 was no different at first in terms of responses. Paving the way for Israel’s impunity, the UN stood by as the world witnessed firsthand what genocide…
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Neutrality contributes to UNRWA’s precarious standing
“It is UNRWA’s neutrality that allows it to operate on all sides and among various parties, to ensure the safe, sustained and unimpeded delivery of assistance and protection in an effective and efficient manner.” Hypothetically, one should add. Despite UNRWA’s insistence on neutrality, and despite neutrality becoming a condition for…