Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Normalising deprivation through humanitarian aid
Last November, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that it ran out of funds, with Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini calling for $70 million in aid to ensure the continuation of basic needs and services for Palestinian refugees. The mismanagement of funds and corruption at the…
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Abbas facilitates Israel’s ‘no preconditions’ condition for negotiations
Thanks in part to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to restore relations with Israel, pressure is increasing on the leadership to resume negotiations with the occupation state “without preconditions”. During a virtual regional security meeting hosted by Bahrain, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi described the normalisation agreements between the…
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The UN is not objecting to a ‘Plan B’ to annexation
The UN’s hypocritical manner of dealing with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People finds a contender in the way of the Palestinian Authority. On behalf of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN Riyad Mansour addressed a virtual UN meeting with a statement that…
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Peace will come through decolonisation, not rhetoric on annual Palestine Solidarity Day
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres never misses an opportunity to illustrate how the international community has failed Palestine and its people. On 29 November, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People — or to be more accurate, the anniversary of the UN conspiracy to allow Israel to be established…
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The EU reaction to settlements and security coordination reflects the PA betrayal of Palestine
Two statements from the EU within a few days of each other portray the duplicity of its policy towards Palestine. With the two-state compromise always looming in the background as a reminder of how the international community never intended Palestinians to have their own state, let alone liberate themselves from…
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The PA excels in theatre of the absurd
If there is one thing in which the Palestinian Authority excels, it is theatre of the absurd. Following its announcement that, based on international reassurances, there will be a resumption of security coordination with Israel, the PA’s official news outlet Wafa published a news brief detailing the Palestinian leadership’s welcome…
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A return to collaboration over Israel’s security narrative
US President-elect Joe Biden has not yet taken office, but Israel’s false security narrative is already taking precedence over everything else. Meanwhile, within the ranks of the Palestinian Authority which gambled with Palestinian lives during outgoing President Donald Trump’s tenure, the next step has been to uphold that narrative by…
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The EU has played a waiting game to Israel’s advantage
There are a couple of meaningful things that the EU should do, without delay: it should drop the pretence that it supports the Palestinian people’s right to their own land, and it should clarify the purpose of its diplomacy, which is to safeguard the two-state rhetoric. On Monday, EU representatives…
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The PA needs to clarify its concept of ‘negotiations’ in abandoned Palestine
The US “deal of the century” may be scrapped when President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January, but its ramifications will not necessarily be anathema to the incoming administration. Just as outgoing President Donald Trump utilised decades of international and US foreign policy to make a series of concessions to…
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A return to two-state politics is as harmful as the ‘deal of the century’ for Palestinians
The US elections were characterised by the drive to oust Donald Trump from the White House. The Palestinian Authority, crippled as it is with the Trump administration’s policies obliterating almost all of its political presence, joined the chorus supporting Joe Biden. For the PA, a Biden presidency represents an opportunity…
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Israeli settlement expansion sees the UN shy away from its duty, as usual
UN intransigence over Israel contrasts with Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk’s observations regarding Israel’s ongoing settlement expansion, not least because the latter boosts his arguments by providing some colonial context instead of remaining tethered to the two-state compromise. Following the recent announcement that plans for approximately 5,000 new settlement dwellings have…
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Amazingly, the PA condemns Balfour while sticking to the two-state compromise
The Palestinian Authority’s annual outbursts against the Balfour Declaration do not match its politics. The document which normalised the colonisation of Palestine was published on 2 November, 1917. Palestinians quite rightly view it as one of the main causes of their current status. The PA, however, doesn’t seem to be…
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Hunger strikes highlight Israel’s unjust detention of political prisoners
Calling for the freedom of one Palestinian political prisoner is what Israel expects from the international community. The latest detainee to go on hunger strike protesting against the administrative detention order that keeps him in prison indefinitely with neither formal charges nor trial is Maher Al-Akhras. His protest has now…
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Palestinians don’t need a ‘victim status’ they have a right to an anti-colonial struggle
The US-Israeli narrative on Palestine goes a step further than the designated humanitarian label which the international community imposed upon the Palestinian people. As US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman predicted that up to ten Arab countries would normalise relations with the settler-colonial state, Palestinians, he said “must stop clinging to their…
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An Army Like No Other: How The Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation
Haim Bresheeth Žabner’s detailed study of the origins and role of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are based on one main observation: Israel is defined by its military. An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces Made a Nation (Verso Books, 2020) delves into Zionist settler-colonialism and its…
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The world is endorsing Palestine’s disappearance in the name of ‘peace’
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has left no doubt about the rationale behind the recent normalisation agreements with Arab states, praised by the international community as an opportunity to kick-start negotiations about the two-state compromise. In the background, the UAE’s lauded diplomacy, which postponed the annexation process and was…
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The root problem of poverty in Palestine is not Covid-19, but Israel’s colonialism
The UN’s non-binding and generalised Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have provided a diversion in current EU and Palestinian politics. On the brink of experiencing additional dispossession and forced displacement as the normalisation agreements between Israel and Gulf states open the door to more anti-Palestine diplomacy in the region, Palestinians have…
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Trump or Biden doesn’t really matter; Palestine and its people will be betrayed
The major political concessions to Israel made by US President Donald Trump have influenced both the occupation state and the Palestinian Authority in terms of who each would prefer to see winning next month’s presidential election. A recent poll revealed the Israeli public’s preference for Trump, while the PA has…
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The PA’s political contradictions are dangerous
Why does the Palestinian leadership never discuss the relationship between those responsible for the colonisation of Palestine and those who are complicit in its continuation? The PA remains locked in a cycle that ignores its own complicity with the international community and the Israeli occupation. Is the Palestinian Authority even…
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Israel turns its diplomatic aggression against the international community
For decades since Israel established itself in Palestine, there has been no gradual relinquishing of slogans such as its “right to exist”. The Zionist colonial narrative, which is not only built upon the foundations of power imbalance, but also its preservation, maintains multiple possibilities to threaten and warn others, even…
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The PA favours one form of normalisation over another
For all the rhetoric in which the Palestinian Authority tries to assimilate with the Palestinian people’s resilience, there is no reason to think that the Palestinian leadership is attempting a different political strategy. On the contrary, not even the compromise required of the PA by the international community has served…
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The UN dismisses Palestinian activism to protect Israel
Since the normalisation agreements of the UAE and Bahrain with Israel were announced, the UN’s only response has been to communicate its approval for a new phase which, in international rhetoric, paves the way to reignite diplomatic negotiations for “peace”. The approach was beneficial for everyone except the people of…
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The best hope for Palestine lies with its people
On the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had the opportunity to deliver a powerful speech and back it up with a change in Palestinian politics. He did neither. On the contrary, Abbas’s mild criticism of the international organisation was mellowed by…
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Abandoned regionally and internationally, will the PA analyse its shortcomings?
The Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Minister, Riyad Al-Maliki, has said that it will forego its six-month presidency of the Arab League due to the organisation’s attitude towards the normalisation of relations with Israel at the expense of the Palestinian cause. “The State of Palestine has decided to relinquish and forsake its…