Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Annexation, the two-state illusion and forgetting the Palestinians
If elected again, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, and the international community is scrambling to issue statements pointing out that such a move would have no legal effect. For Israel, of course, such warnings are not disconcerting. Neither are the…
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Israel killed Palestinian civilians deliberately, so why is the UNHRC speculating about it?
When the Great March of Return protests started in March last year, the Palestinian people’s call was clear, with a collective, entirely legitimate, demand to return to historic Palestine. Israel’s response was to position snipers at the border, shooting to kill or maim Palestinians exercising the fundamental right of free…
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Netanyahu’s Hebron visit speaks of impunity for state and settler violence
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Hebron yesterday follows the plans to increase the settler presence in the city. Prior to the upcoming Israeli elections, Netanyahu continues to seek validation from the right-wing by pledging Israel’s permanence and expansion over Palestinian territory. “We are not coming to dispossess anyone,…
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Palestinian refugee students must not be incidental to humanitarian endeavours
Despite financial setbacks caused by political agendas and misconduct allegations, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) ensured that its schools opened on time for the new academic year. Commissioner General Pierre Krähenbühl described education as central to UNRWA’s mandate, yet the agency is not past attaching importance to symbolism…
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Netanyahu and Bolsonaro find common ground in oppressing indigenous populations
While the Amazon forest burns and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro continues to trade insults and blame, indigenous communities face displacement and annihilation. These communities pose the biggest obstacle to Bolsonaro’s intent to allow access to local and international exploitation of the country’s natural resources. In a message to counter the…
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The PLO endorses the humanitarian paradigm
At the G7 summit in Paris, US President Donald Trump speculated publically about the purported “deal of the century”, which infuriated the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). If one had to rely on the PLO’s statements, though, it would seem as if there were no precedents that permitted Trump to support…
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Palestinian narratives must be protected from PA exploitation
Official Palestinian media are playing a major role in disseminating Palestinian narratives, according to Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, that is. Departing from the fact that the Palestinian Authority and its media still portray Israel’s colonisation as a mere “conflict”, there is a discrepancy between the people’s concept of Palestinian narratives…
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Calls to depoliticise humanitarian aid threaten Palestinians’ political struggle
With the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) facing a financial deficit of $150 million, PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat is calling upon the UN Secretary General to hasten the investigations into the allegations of corruption and misconduct at the agency. Now that the Netherlands, Belgium and…
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The PA’s ‘rights’ rhetoric normalises US-Israel violence against Palestinians
The Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic meetings with the US are a form of normalisation. In the last two years, the US has enabled Israel to fast-track its colonisation process, while Palestinians have been coerced into living the deterioration of their prospects and political rights. On Tuesday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh…
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Will the UN act if the US recognises Israel’s sovereignty over West Bank?
The UN has advanced no further than acknowledging that Israel is seeking to “advance a claim of sovereignty” over settlements in the occupied West Bank. As the Israeli elections approach, the main contenders – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli army Chief of Staff Benny Gantz from the…
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The PA’s support for international agendas shuns the Palestinian right of return
The Palestinian Authority has not ceased to display where its compromised loyalties lie. With each public statement or declaration, it is evident that the PA is working for diplomatic conjectures and, as a result, against Palestinian freedom. In a meeting in Ramallah with the Dutch representative to the occupied Palestinian…
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The Palestinian Idea. Film, Media and the Radical Imagination
The colonisation of Palestinian landscape and minds, author Greg Burris argues, is imbued with spaces in what he terms “the radical imagination” that breaks through Israeli impositions. Film and media are perceived as the medium with the “capacity to break the Israeli stranglehold on reality and open a window into…
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Washington is facilitating further collective betrayal of Palestinian political rights
Palestinians want their land and rights restored; it’s a simple demand which the international community has succeeded in mangling in order to promote colonial agendas. US President Donald Trump has contributed to the external scheming by adding speculation over what concept of a “state” is envisaged for the Palestinians, to…
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1967 must not be the only reference point for Israel’s colonial presence
Various Israeli politicians over the years have justified settlement expansion as being necessary for peace. The Oslo Accords facilitated this propaganda with an interminable “interim” period during which settlement construction has continued unhindered. The definition of “peace”, meanwhile, has largely been left to Israel and the US, with the UN…
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The UN is playing a role, not fulfilling its mandate
Action by the US and Israeli against Palestine is nothing new. The Palestinian Authority, however, has been pointing out this alliance lately as if it has just discovered it. In keeping with its penchant for dissociation, the PA is isolating decades of history from the present circumstances. The net result…
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Reclaiming Palestinian rights from Palestinian narratives
US Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt has made a series of remarks at the UN Security Council regarding the “fictions of international consensus” when it comes to a solution for Palestine. What he does not acknowledge is the fact that the UN’s collusion in enabling Israel’s colonial project is one…
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The road to EU diplomacy in Palestine
Yesterday, the EU issued two press releases. One feigned belated concern at Israel’s demolition of Palestinian dwellings in Sur Baher and how the settlement expansion policy “undermines the viability of the two-state solution”. The second was a timely announcement of the inauguration of “European Road” in Barta’a Al-Sharqia in Area…
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The Folktales of Palestine
Palestinian memory has become synonymous with the 1948 Nakba and Palestinian resistance. Yet there are other strands of memory which are overlooked. Farah Aboubakr’s treatise “The Folktales of Palestine” argues that Palestinian memory should not be framed solely through resistance and offers a detailed analysis of Palestinian folktales and their…
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Palestinian prisoners need our attention before they die
Since 1967, 220 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli prisons. The latest victim is Nasser Taqatqa, detained in June from his home in Beit Fajjar, accused of purportedly having ties to Hamas. Taqatqa, age 31, was interrogated by Shin Bet, tortured and placed in solitary confinement. On Tuesday he was…
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The UN’s 2030 agenda will fail Palestinians -the organisation always has
The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which “seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom” is an ideal dissociated from the realities perpetuated by the international community. Far from promoting sustainable development, the political actors in this charade are deciding the trajectory of human rights violations. Indeed the international…
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A Map of Absence. An Anthology of Palestinian Writing on the Nakba
Nakba-themed anthologies dispel the concept of linear time and chronology. The brutal and abrupt halting of pre-1948 Palestinian life remains a reference point in Palestinian history, memory and literature, as this collection of writings in Saqi Books’ recent publication, “A Map of Absence…”, shows. What has been disseminated is never…
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Cuba should be careful not to normalise Israel’s colonisation of Palestine
In 1947, Cuba was one of the few countries opposing the UN Partition Plan, which laid the groundwork for Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. At the time, the Cuban envoy to the UN Dr Ernesto Dihigo spoke out against Zionist settler colonialism and, with clarity, pointed out the UN’s incompetence and…
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Cutting ties with Israel might be impossible due to international complicity
UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk has suggested that the international community should consider cutting ties with Israel if it goes ahead with further colonial settlement expansion and annexation, according to a report by Al Jazeera. Non-binding requests or suggestions from the UN, however, are unlikely to go beyond rhetoric, given…
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America is anything but an honest broker in Palestine-Israel
At Israel Hayom’s Forum on US-Israeli relations, US envoy Jason Greenblatt made sure that references to the Palestinian people and their history were as obscure as possible. Palestinian history and memory are not about resentment and repetitive stories, as Greenblatt implied. On the contrary, both are imbued with war crimes…