Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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The PA's bid for full UN membership will not benefit Palestinians
The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to measure its purported success by international standards. After assuming the presidency of the Group of 77 (G77), new plans are underway to launch a bid for Palestine to become a full UN member, according to PA Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki. It is already...
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The PA will promote its false construction of Palestinian identity at the G77
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will today assume the presidency of the Group of 77 developing nations (G77) at a ceremony hosted by the UN General Assembly. According to PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the appointment, which he described as “an important historical event added to the political achievements...
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Representing Palestine. Media and Journalism in Australia since World War I
Review Rating: 4/5 The elimination of the Palestinian narrative from mainstream media is not a new phenomenon. Peter Manning’s study, Representing Palestine. Media and Journalism in Australia since World War I (IB Tauris, 2018) explores this tactic through an in-depth analysis of Australia’s oldest newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald....
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The international community upholds deprivation by supporting Israel and the PA
What happens when the UN is unequivocally supporting the claims of the Palestinian Authority leadership to the detriment of the Palestinian people? There is nothing unusual about the international community’s stance; it did, after all, legitimise a colonial presence in Palestine in the first place, while Palestinians’ rights have...
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Erekat’s tweets about Bolton’s visit to Jerusalem totally miss the point
US National Security Adviser John Bolton has visited Occupied East Jerusalem during a visit to Israel, which prompted PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat to tweet, “Bolton’s support for occupation, apartheid, illegal settlements, annexation of territory occupied by force is unwavering.” There is nothing new about Erekat’s observation; Bolton is a...
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Israel’s plan to ‘worsen conditions’ for Palestinian prisoners is an opportunity for unity
Depriving Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails of their basic rights is a “moral duty”, according to Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. News reports have confirmed that the Israeli cabinet has approved plans to “worsen conditions”, after Erdan set up a committee specifically tasked with devising “harsher” conditions...
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The Palestinian children killed by Israel in 2018 have been forgotten by the world
Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP) paints a bleak prospect for Palestinian children in revealing that in 2018, at least 56 were killed by Israel. Individuals who witnessed some of the murders have insisted that the targeted children were unarmed and posed no threat to the state or its...
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Life Lived in Relief — Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics
Refugee narratives beyond those which reach the mainstream media are fraught with complexities, while humanitarian aid remains insufficient. Ilana Feldman’s treatise “Life Lived in Relief — Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics” (University of California Press, 2018) focuses on the discrepancies between the political and purportedly apolitical dynamics of...
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Who is being held to account for Palestinians’ food insecurity?
Palestinians’ food insecurity made brief headlines with the announcement that the World Food Programme (WFP) will be cutting food aid due to insufficient funds. An estimated 190,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank will be affected; 27,000 through the suspension of food aid and 165,000 who will...
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The UN’s vision of ‘peace’ for Palestine excludes ordinary Palestinians
The UN is now adamant that the Palestinian Authority should return to govern the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge, this hypothesis was raised by the US and has seldom been questioned, ostensibly due to other pressing factors such as delivering the necessary humanitarian...
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Rest in My Shade
Review Rating: 5/5 There is always a time between the concepts of the present and forever which is inscribed in our remembrance. It is the beauty of memory which enables us to transcend and live within this truth. “Rest in My Shade” (Interlink Books, 2018) explores this reality through...
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Palestine and its people will pay the price for the PA’s disloyalty
We still don’t know what US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century looks like. At the UN Security Council meeting last Tuesday, US Ambassador to the international organisation, Nikki Haley, only hinted at “thoughtful detail” and recognition “that realities on the ground in the Middle East have...
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Humanitarian aid is overtly politicised, just not in favour of the Palestinians
The 2019 humanitarian plan for Palestinians in the occupied territories will allocate $350 million for aid intervention, according to Ramallah’s Minister of Social Development Ibrahim Al-Shaer and UN envoy Jamie McGoldrick. The people of Palestine remain divested of their legitimate human and civil rights in order to retain the...
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Italy’s Salvini said what the international community knows it can’t say: ‘Support Israel’
It is no secret that the right wing has appropriated and manipulated the definition of “peace” in today’s poisonous political climate. Peace is now synonymous with power, and little is being done to challenge this notion on a political level, to the point that one can speak of collusion...
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Seeking protection for the Palestinians at the UN empowers the criminals
The debate on whether Palestinians should be granted international protection continues. Adalah’s November 2018 Report to the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territories says that, since Israel “failed to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for the violation of such...
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The PA has found its ‘waiting’ counterpart
During another routine meeting, this time the 17th session of the Assembly of State Parties of the International Criminal Court, the Palestinian Authority’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Riad Al-Maliki, complained of the ICC’s procrastination in investigating Israel for war crimes. Al-Maliki is reported to have expressed his “disappointment” during...
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The PA is authoritarian yet lacks authority
It is easy to lose count of the number of futile challenges made by the Palestinian Authority to Israel since the collapse of the last negotiations led by Former US Secretary of State John Kerry between 2013 and 2014. The repeated challenge given prominence by the Times of Israel...
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Reject UN ‘solidarity’ and stand with the Palestinians
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s statement marking International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People could not debase itself much further. Guterres calls for “all actors… to take bold steps and restore faith in the promise of UN General Assembly Resolution 181,” also known as the UN Partition Plan...
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The international community has no right to determine Palestinian narratives
There is a lot of unfortunate truth in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment of international diplomacy. Without having to make any concessions on settlement expansion or Jerusalem, Israel is enjoying a “diplomatic flourishing”. This renders all the previous hyperbole on Israel’s isolation, from Israeli officials and purported Palestinian...
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Does the international community even care about Khan Al-Ahmar?
This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar will be demolished “very soon”. Needless to say, the purported international community’s preoccupation with the issue and mainstream media furore are nowhere to be seen. Khan Al-Ahmar is old news; it is repetitive. It...
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Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance and Survival
Israel’s prolonged colonisation and military occupation of Palestine has given rise to a consistent form of resistance that is implemented in everyday life, yet rarely recognised. This form of subaltern politics is practiced daily by women who have to contend with impositions and restrictions ranging from stereotyped misrepresentation in...
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Leaving Palestinian children behind on World Children’s Day
World Children’s Day is, sadly, a day like any other; its symbolism is nothing other than an international gimmick to proclaim rights while simultaneously taking them away. For Palestinian children, the commemoration reeks of hypocrisy and opportunism. On this day, despite Israel’s colonial violence and military occupation being common...
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Israel and the international community are normalising the forced displacement of Palestinians
A Washington Post editorial sums up the mainstream aftermath of Israeli aggression against Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is credited with purportedly “choosing peace” in the enclave: “The ceasefire and humanitarian respite that Mr Netanyahu has accepted are far better than another war.” The Post is wrong. Netanyahu...
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Sustaining cycles of Israeli aggression in Gaza
It is time, once again, for the hyphenated “Israel-Gaza” paradigm – an invention that suits mainstream narratives. As the media mulls the possibilities of another Israeli military aggression against Palestinians in Gaza, it is pertinent to take a step back to remember how, since “Operation Protective Edge”, Israel regularly...