Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
-
B’Tselem report details isolation policies detrimental to detained Palestinian children
Thanks to social media, we have become accustomed to seeing footage of Israeli soldiers terrorising Palestinian families in the middle of the night as they break into their homes to arrest their children. What happens after the children are blindfolded and taken to interrogation centres, although documented, receives less...
-
Israel and Chile are partners in the oppression of their indigenous populations
Israel is continuing its decades-long strategy of exporting its military violence to Latin America. Last month, the Chilean Armed Forces website revealed that the governments of Chile and Israel signed an agreement for cooperation in military education, training and doctrine during an official visit to the country by Israeli...
-
The UN disregard for Palestinians’ right of return colludes with Israeli violence
The Palestinian “Great March of Return” has exposed the frailty of Israel’s fabricated narratives, yet once again the international community prefers to speak about “sides” in the conflict. As the planned march draws nearer, the Jerusalem Post reported that UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay...
-
Irresponsible rhetoric allows violence against Palestinians
In diplomatic circles, language hardly changes from one scenario to the next. It is only the accusations levelled against different political actors that convey part of the context, which always disregards allegations of violence in order to maintain the level of impunity for all aggressors. The latest UN Human...
-
It couldn’t be clearer how out of touch with his people Abbas is
Polls by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) are exposing the dissociation between the Palestinian Authority and the people. As Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas scrambles for a semblance of political coherence which he seeks to achieve by blaming Hamas, the Palestinian people are largely...
-
Israel’s bone of contention is Palestinian resilience, not the Gaza tunnel network
In February, Israel asked the international community to contribute $1 billion towards a plan for the Gaza Strip’s shattered infrastructure. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the international community is obliged to make such a financial commitment due to Hamas supposedly ignoring the basic needs of Palestinian civilians...
-
Those who exploit Palestinian rights make a noise about exploitation
The Palestinian Authority has exerted its best efforts to appear to be taking defiant steps in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s announcements regarding Jerusalem. Yet it cannot conceal the fact that masquerading as the representative of the Palestinian people has resulted in political deficiencies. On Tuesday, the...
-
The Last Earth. A Palestinian Story
To impart narratives of displacement, it is important to listen to the echoes of such trajectories. Ramzy Baroud’s latest book, The Last Earth: a Palestinian story, propels this dimension immediately to the fore. The reader takes a step back to listen, imagine and realise the immense contradictions, where life...
-
Drones and desensitisation in the Palestinian cause
Footage has emerged across Israeli media of drones dropping tear gas canisters on Palestinian protestors close to the border in the South of Gaza last Friday. The Times of Israel and Haaretz have both reported the targeting of the protest with slightly differing narratives. The former reported that an...
-
How institutions are concealing Palestinian rights
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories (OCHA) has published a report detailing the ramifications of Israel’s military occupation in the West Bank city of Hebron. The statistics provided, as well as details of the violations by the Israeli military and...
-
Palestine in Black and White
Beyond the accessible narratives in the form of reports and news briefs which run the risk of normalising decades of colonial violence against Palestinians, art manages to impart the dimensions that can easily be lost or given less importance within mainstream media. Mohammad Sabaaneh’s book, “Palestine in Black and...
-
Guatemala’s appropriation of the concept of return
As expected, the international community has largely gone silent about the announcements by the US and Guatemala to relocate their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. While an aberration in terms of protecting human rights, the initial furore and subsequent dismissal from international institutions’ priorities follows the same political...
-
PA accusations of ‘capitulation’ should prompt some introspection
The Palestine Football Association (PFA) has been campaigning since 2015 for the relocation of six Israeli football clubs based in the illegal Jewish settlements spread across the occupied West Bank. The approaches to FIFA, football’s world governing body, were a major step down from the original intention to have...
-
Recognition of Palestine is tethered to an absence of vision
One statement from Mahmoud Abbas’s speech to the UN Security Council last week focused upon the recognition of Palestine by UN member states; this has been overlooked. The context given by Abbas is, though, contradictory. Recognition, he said, has “further strengthened the status of the State of Palestine.” However,...
-
Haley and Abbas have exposed the fallacy of PA representation at the UN
The outcome of the UN Security Council meeting does not bode well for the people of Palestine. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas gave a lengthy speech during which opportunities for hammering out the truth of the matter were reduced to statements showing that little has changed in terms of...
-
Between urgency and vague comments, Palestinians’ rights are being depleted
More rhetoric and the absence of any constructive action have created a spectrum of expectations for Gaza. The past few days have seen an escalation of alarm juxtaposed against fake optimism. The latter is a veneer for a widespread complacency that is not bothered by the decline in financial...
-
This B’Tselem report exposes Israel’s pollution of the occupied West Bank
Israel remains the only UN member state which has never declared where its borders are. In fact, it has refused to demarcate any borders due to the Zionist intention to colonise the whole of historic Palestine. For less desirable requirements, however, it does not hesitate to apply a temporary...
-
The least the PA can do is to create the space for Palestinian narratives
The White House has dismissed statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding discussions with the US about Israel’s annexation ambitions. Within the larger framework, this latest diplomatic dispute does not carry much weight. In his usual vague commentary, US President Donald Trump has said he is “not necessarily...
-
A sliver of truth amidst UN manipulation of Palestinian rights
As always, UN officials take pride in pontificating about Palestine. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proved to be no exception, faithfully pursuing the same agenda which resulted in Palestinians becoming a marginalised subject of discussion. Israel may complain of rhetorical visibility allocated to Palestine at the UN, however, it...
-
Projects take precedence over the protection of Palestinian rights
If references to international law were effective in reducing or reversing Israeli violence, Palestinians would have tasted freedom many decades ago. The recent demolition by Israel of two EU-funded classrooms in Abu Nuwar was nothing unusual in this regard, and produced the usual, by now meaningless, responses. The Israelis...
-
‘Gaza – an inquest into its martyrdom’
It is a rare occurrence that an analytical treatise can navigate the humanitarian spectrum without falling prey to dissociation. Yet it is precisely this achievement which makes “Gaza: an inquest into its martyrdom” stand out in terms of valuable research, scrutiny and forthright denunciation of the political violence levelled...
-
A $1 billion proposal will exploit Gaza for the benefit of Israel’s security narrative
When considering Gaza’s dire humanitarian conditions, it is impossible not to remember what Israeli government adviser Dov Weisglass said in 2006 when the Israeli siege started: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” How much of that callous,...
-
‘Construction terror’ is Israel’s latest metaphor for Palestinian displacement
Israel’s construction of its politics on contrasting levels which echo its colonial agenda knows no limits. Now that the international community is largely reluctant to do more than refer to previous statements of colonial expansion as illegal, Israel is more explicit in promoting its state and settler narratives in...
-
Play for time, Kerry tells Abbas, but why?
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has continued to heap humiliation upon himself by keeping up his now usual trick of announcing decisions and then backtracking on them almost immediately. What’s more, there is now an additional twist in the political rigmarole over Jerusalem and the remnants of Palestine, with...