I was invited to participate and give a workshop in a conference on nonviolence held in Bethlehem. The conference entitled Celebrating Non violence was organized by the Washington based Nonviolence international and the Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust. The two organizations are run by people that I respect a lot. The first is run by Dr. Mubarak Awad, (who is also my favorite cousin) and the second was run until recently by another relative (Sami Awad) who has recently resigned because he is running for the Bethlehem Christian seat of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Continue Reading »

My trip from Amman to Ramallah this week was quite unusual. I succeeded in making the door to door trip in less than three hours. The taxi, driven by the veteran Haj Abdel Salam (who has been on the Amman-Bridge route for 38 years) picked me up from my Rabiah home shortly after seven am. I managed to get through the Jordanian passport control rather quickly, got was one of the last people to get on the first bus and was one of the first people to get off. Got through the Israeli passport control rather quickly (since I was the first there). Continue Reading »

Thursday November 17

It only occurred to me while waiting for the fog to clear up in the plane on the Queen Alia Airport . Seated next to me in the Air France flight to Paris was Washington Post bureau chief in the French capital John Anderson. When he asked me why I was going through Paris to get to Tunis , I realized that this was yet another example of the plague that has been infecting the Arab world. Jordan has a daily flight to Paris and other European capitals but once a week flight to neighboring Arab state Tunis . And this was not a problem with Jordan, my travel agent failed to find anything in nearby Arab countries for a connecting flight to Tunisia . If Arabs are one day expected to raise the level of inter Arab business from the current single digit levels, the very least will require daily flight from and to the major capitals of the countries that make the Arab world.

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By Daoud Kuttab

The problem in our household after the triple bombing in Amman was how to tell our six year old daughter, Dina. The urgency of the problem was because the Jordanian government had called for a day of mourning the following day and schools were expected to be closed. Because she is so inquisitive we knew that once we tell Dina there was no school in the morning she will want to know why.
 
My wife Salam was also worried about Dina’s reaction because every night as she puts her to sleep they pray, among other things, for the security of the city and the country. The night before I had been made responsible for putting her to sleep and the security of the city was part of her nightly prayer routine. Continue Reading »

I was a bit hesitant about traveling by the Allenby bridge but at the last minute I decide to go. A few friends from abroad were in town for the first time and it made sense that I would go with them back to Amman .

It was the perfect kind of car, small enough to accommodate my bachelor life style in Palestine, new enough not to give me trouble and old enough so that I wouldn’t worry too much about it when I drive through the rough terrain of  the check post dotted West Bank towns.

July 22-27, 2005
It was 1.30 at night, we had just returned exhausted from the center of town after we had a fabulous fish dinner. Bishara carried Dina who had gone to sleep shortly after we arrived, and along with two other family members took a taxi from the Neema Bay taxi stand.

Today was a special day for me. For the first time since I began my media work, one of the main donors to my various projects was coming to visit. Aryeh Neir the president of the Open Society Institute. Anthony Richter, OSI’s man in the region, and a good friend, wanted me to set up a round table discussion for Aryeh with local Palestinian journalists. A day before the meeting, I was in touch with Anthony and waited for him at the American Colony. They were held up at the Qalandia checkpoint for about an hour and by the time they got in, they were so exhausted that we decided to wait till to following day. Knowing the OSI had been active for some time in Uzbakistan, I asked Anthony if he knew more of what was happening. He did but was waiting to make it official in a strategic way in a couple of days. He confided with me that his information was that the number of those killed in the country following the demonstrations was closer to 750. He also thought that American weapons were most likely used in the shootings at demonstrators.

I was intended on not repeating my experience yesterday when I spent nearly 2 hours making the short trip from my office in Ramallah to my apartment in Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina office. The problem is that I could have made it in a lot less time by going the bypass road which I would be allowed to by the Israelis because I have a press card, but I had wanted to be like every other Palestinian and as a result I found my self stuck in the long line at the Qalandia checkpoint. Continue Reading »