Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Protection for Palestinians and international complicity with Israel
Calls for the international community to step in and protect the Palestinian people from Israeli violence are always juxtaposed against a complex web of complicity with Zionist colonisation of their land. This week the Arab League called upon the UN Security Council to assume such responsibilities, after the Israeli military…
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Palestinian refugees are more politically isolated than ever
Financial support for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is dwindling, despite the renewed mandates and financial contribution pledges by world leaders. “The almost unanimous political support expressed by the UN General Assembly to the Agency is not translated into matching financial resources,” UNRWA’s Commissioner-General, Philippe…
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Israel’s selective humanitarian façade
Once again, Israel feels entitled to play the humanitarian card, with only Palestinians pointing out its selectivity when it comes to opening its doors to refugees. In February, The Jerusalem Post reported that 10,000 Jewish Ukrainian refugees would be entering Israel. The move was confirmed by Israel’s Ministry of Immigration,…
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The PA mirrors international hypocrisy over Palestine
The Palestinian Authority has caught up belatedly with the international community’s double standards when it comes to professing support for Palestine while upholding the impunity with which Israel is allowed to act. However, the PA is still a long way from acknowledging these tactics in its own politics, which in…
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The Other End of The Sea
“Palestine revealed itself to me in layers,” reflects Becky Klein, the Jewish American protagonist and narrator in Alison Glick’s novel, The Other End of the Sea (Interlink Books, 2021), near the beginning of the novel. She discovers that a voyage to gain insight into her Jewish heritage leads her to…
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UNRWA’s existence points to the UN’s failure to implement the Palestinian right of return
As important as the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is in terms of providing essential services for Palestinians, its existence is also a stark reminder of the international community’s failure to implement the legitimate Palestinian right of return. On Tuesday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas met…
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The two-state paradigm is not a ‘legitimate political process’
“There is no substitute for a legitimate political process that will resolve the core issues driving the conflict,” the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, warned recently during a briefing with the UN Security Council. Sadly, though, Wennesland’s statement is built around the preservation of…
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The international community’s opportunity to emphasise Israel’s colonial violence
Israel’s human rights violations have become more prominent since human rights organisations have taken it upon themselves to speak of the settler-colonial state’s apartheid practices. Needless to say, Israel is unleashing its usual non-compliance with international organisations, the latest being its refusal to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Commission’s…
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Denying apartheid does not invalidate the designation
At the slightest criticism of Israel, disarray ensues. Built upon the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, Israel’s colonial narratives are entrenched in violence and yet so fragile, because what sustains the colonial enterprise is the Israeli government’s expertise in disseminating and enticing the world to adopt its security rhetoric.…
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The EU’s report evades Israel’s settler-colonial origins
Yet another report has been published, portraying how Israel is increasing its destruction of Palestinian property and, as a result, continuing the cycle of dispossessing Palestinians. The EU’s recent “One Year Report on Demolitions and Seizures in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem” for the entire year of 2021 showed…
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America’s return to UNESCO will work in Israel’s favour
In 2017, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), citing “mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO.” A few hours later, Israel followed suit, with then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…
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UN’s Guterres ensures Palestinian independence remains elusive
“There is no Plan B.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ favourite catchphrase wormed its way into his address at the opening session of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. His speech was a reminder that, despite all talk of independence and rights, Palestinians…
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The PA shouldn’t need an Amnesty report to prove Israeli apartheid
Palestine is always defined by an indefinite present dissociated from its past, a bludgeoning lie against which Palestinians are always struggling. Ever since the UN recognised Israel’s colonial project as a state and projected the humanitarian paradigm onto the Palestinians driven out of their homes and land, it has become…
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PA reform can be termed as PA acquiescence to the US and Israel
US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken’s recent call to Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has been largely described in mainstream and Israeli media as based upon the need for reforms within the PA. The US Department of State’s official statement mentioned the need for reform without expanding on detail, but…
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Palestinian prisoners are synonymous with resistance, not PA collaboration
According to his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Palestinian prisoners are important for Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. As reports circulate in Israeli media about Abbas’s request for the colonial-occupation state to release 25 Palestinian prisoners from its jails, the PA’s official news agency Wafa deemed it pertinent to clarify how…
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Publicising the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar is not political support against displacement
Israel has announced new plans for the village of Khan Al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank, which has been demolished and rebuilt several times, and which attracted international attention in 2018 after the Israeli Supreme Court approved its destruction. For a brief period in 2019, Khan Al-Ahmar’s impending destruction was…
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The PA views Palestine through the lens of collaboration and Israel’s security
The Palestinian Authority continues to attract negative publicity and erode its own standing with the Palestinian people. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s recent meetings with Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz reaped nothing but a trickle of symbolic concessions for the Palestinian people. As always, this was against a backdrop of increasing…
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Fatah’s ‘unanimous’ confidence in Abbas to destroy what remains of Palestine
This week, the Fatah movement confirmed its ongoing dissociation from the people of Palestine and their occupied land when it “unanimously reasserted its confidence in President Mahmoud Abbas” in all his roles. Abbas is the head of Fatah, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the so-called President of the…
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A diplomat without an ideology? The US ambassador’s words suggest otherwise
The administration of US President Joe Biden is employing diplomatic tact which says nothing about its foreign policy in terms of Palestine, other than that it is doing its utmost to align itself with the international consensus on the two-state compromise while doing nothing to reverse the poisonous legacy of…
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Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century
Pluto Press has published the fourth, and rewritten edition of Paul Roger’s “Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century”. The first edition was published a little while after September 11, 2001, which gave way to the US War on Terror and its aftermath. The book delves into the elite’s…
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Diplomatic protests mean nothing without action against Israel’s settlement expansion
A diplomatic protest by European ambassadors against Israel’s settlement expansion was perceived as an attack on the state itself by the Deputy Director-General of its Foreign Ministry, Aliza Bin Noun, in December, local media have reported. According to Bin Noun, the complaints were uncalled for because Israel is “making gestures…
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Israel’s apartheid should have consequences for the colonial state
While Palestinians have been calling out Israeli apartheid for years, it was the non-governmental organisation B’Tselem that made the headlines a year ago with its designation of Israel as an apartheid state. Twelve months later, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has expressed concerns that the label will stick, for no…
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Abbas and his ‘optimism’ spell danger for Palestinians
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is arguably more partial to fairy tales than politics. His latest address to the Fatah Revolutionary Council sums up all that is wrong with his leadership: incompetence; collaborative complicity with Israel and any other political entity that offers the PA a shard of security; and,…
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Mahmoud Abbas and his loyalty to US-Israeli interests
To prevent Hamas from politically gaining the upper hand over the Palestinian Authority, Israel heeded the US call to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s rule by providing concessions for Palestinians. The concept, which Israeli Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, has been vocal about, is that improving the Palestinian economy will lessen resentment against…