Following appeared in the Jordan Times

By Daoud Kuttab

Jordan succeeded this week to force the Israeli Knesset to cancel a discussion planned for Tuesday regarding Al Aqsa Mosque.

The public debate was initiated by the deputy speaker of the Israeli legislature, Moshe Feiglen, and was intended to focus on the issue of sovereignty over the third holiest place in Islam.

Rightwing Israelis want to remove any non-Israeli control over the mosque area.

Al Haram Al Sharif, built in the seventh century, is a walled area that spans 144 dunums and includes two mosques (the silver-domed Al Aqsa Mosque and the gold-covered Dome of the Rock), as well as court areas, an Islamic museum, a Sharia Islamic court and other facilities.

The cancellation of the Israeli Knesset session followed what appeared to be a well-orchestrated public, private and governmental approach.

Jordan’s Parliament got the ball rolling initially, with a strong statement by its Palestine committee threatening to cancel the Israeli-Jordan treaty if the status of the revered Islamic site is changed.

Jordan’s treaty with Israel clearly specifies the Hashemite Kingdom’s unique role in protecting the status of holy shrines in Jerusalem. Furthermore, a Palestinian-Jordanian agreement that recognises Palestinian sovereignty over occupied Jerusalem accepts the role of the Hashemites as guardians of Islamic and Christian holy places in Jerusalem. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The seriousness of the U.S.-initiated framework for a possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem appears to have shaken dormant relations in the region, including in Jordan.

The Palestinian-Jordanian relationship, which is experiencing its highest degree of cooperation and mutual trust, is being put to the test.

The challenges facing this important relationship stem from identity issues that have plagued Jordan for decades but which have been pushed under the rug.

Jordanian politicians, pundits, journalists and even government officials are expressing different degrees of concern and worry regarding the aftermath of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry plan, even though information about the plan is very sketchy.

The potential of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has resurrected badly needed discussion about political reform, which was delayed until the resolution of the Palestinian cause.

The refugee issue is perhaps the most important part of this discussion. Two million registered refugees in Jordan are the biggest single group of Palestinian refugees in the world. Their case is even more complicated by the fact that they are also full Jordanian citizens, though not equitably represented in Parliament as a result of large-scale gerrymandering. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Heated discussions today in Jordan are not about political reform or media policy, but about an issue that is even more relevant to every citizen: the nuclear energy programme.
A debate held last Saturday at the Parliament by Radio Al Balad revealed some of the deep-seated emotions on both sides of the argument.
A saner roadmap to reaching agreement on what is best for Jordan is needed. Perhaps one place to go to for such advice is Sweden, a country of nine million which has a nuclear programme.
I asked for advise to the Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation Hillevi Engström on a visit to Jordan.
Her answer could be a good basis for what the discussions in Jordan should focus on. Engström noted that the issue of nuclear energy is very complicated and that in order to take the right decisions, it is important to have a comprehensive discussion on it.
She also noted that her government vowed not to add any new reactors but to work hard on improving existing reactors to ensure safety and security.
The Swedish minister also expressed the need to follow a parallel policy of encouraging clean alternative energy solutions.
If one takes this advice to the Jordanian scene, one finds some huge holes in how Jordan, especially its Nuclear Atomic Energy Commission, and its director Khaled Toukan are conducting themselves. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

By Daoud Kuttab

Jordan, which shares the longest border with the Palestinian occupied territories and hosts the largest number of Palestinian refugees, is feeling the pressure of a possible US-led breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The Jordanian government has been sending mixed signals lately in regard to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace mission. On the one hand, Jordan is keen to be involved in the bilateral peace talks if for no other reason than to directly plead its own national interests. On the other hand, as Jordanian Palestinian columnist Orrayb Rantawi has made clear, there is no way that the framework agreement will meet the minimum expectations of the Jordanian people.

In a column published in the daily ad-Dustour, Rantawi concluded with the following: “No one can claim that Kerry’s ideas and plan meet Jordanian interests and positions, and it will be impossible to bridge this gap or to expect Kerry to extract from the Israelis any further concessions.” Rantawi assesses that Jordan is facing a moment of choice of either accepting the plan with reservations under the guise of “this is the best we can do” or rejecting it and taking responsibility for the consequences. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Up until the convening of the Arab League summit in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, in October 1974, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was the official representative of Palestinians. After all, Jordan was home to most Palestinians before 1967, and the West Bank (including east Jerusalem) was part of the kingdom from 1952-1967. Palestinians living on both sides of the Jordan River were — and many still are — Jordanian citizens.

During the summit in Rabat, the Arab League recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization as the “sole and legitimate” representative of the Palestinian people everywhere. For the most part that has been accepted. But Jordan continues to host the single-largest group of Palestinian refugees: 42% of all registered Palestinian refugees live in Jordan and have full Jordanian citizenship.

It is this fact that has caused Jordan to try to wiggle its way back to some sort of representation. Jordanian governmental and parliamentary officials have recently stepped up their rhetoric about the need for Jordan to play some kind of role in representing those refugees, who are also their citizens. The potential of the success of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s mission has heightened interest by Jordan. Continue Reading »

Daoud Kuttab

The comment was off the cuff, but the result was angry and violent. The commentator was Jordanian oud player Tareq Jundi; the remark was about the coldness at the Al Hussein Cultural Centre.

“It seems that the diesel hasn’t arrived at the theatre from the government,” he said complaining about the fact that the theatre hall was extremely cold.

The concert was a charity show for the rising Jordanian artist Ghiya Rushidat. Some staff at the centre came screaming at Jundi for “cursing” the government and chairs were thrown at the artists who were saved by some of their loyal fans.

Ghai and the musicians decided to file a complaint at the police station, only to discover that the centre had filed a complaint accusing the musicians of having insulted the government and defamed the national flag. In the end both sides dropped their charges.

What happened on the last days of 2013 at the Al Hussein Cultural Centre was not new. In many cases artists and public figures complained that the centre, which belongs to the Greater Amman Municipality, has become a place for bullying and political partisanship.

The centre’s director denied permission to a local organisation to hold a debate on the nuclear programme because the centre “doesn’t do politics”.

In the past, and under a different management, the centre used to be the venue fornumerous debates by that same organisation. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

A $400 million agreement to create a desalination plant in Aqaba and to pump brine water to the Dead Sea is a far cry from what is being hyped by Israel as an “historic agreement.

The memorandum of understanding signed at the World Bank on Dec. 9 by Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian officials calls for the creation of a desalination plant in Aqaba that would supply clean water to Aqaba and Eilat and pump sea water into the shrinking Dead Sea. In return, Israel would give Jordan 50 million cubic meters of water from the Sea of Galilee free of charge and sell to the Palestinians 20 million to 30 million cubic meters of water. Jordan would supply Eilat with 30 million cubic meters of water and make the same amount available to its own southern population.

Israeli Minister of Energy and Water Silvan Shalom, hailing the agreement as “historic,” said it reflected what he called unprecedented regional cooperation. His Palestinian counterpart, Shaddad Attili, said that the Palestinian government supports the Jordanian project, which would for the first time free up a decent quantity of water for supply to Palestine outside the framework of the Oslo Accords. This largely Jordanian endeavor is a far cry from the multibillion dollar Red Sea-Dead Sea channel that has been part of the discussions steered by the World Bank. Continue Reading »

Following appeared in today’s Jordan Times

By Daoud Kuttab

The never-ending search for an appropriate democratic model in Jordan continues without any result.

Popular protests sped up the debate while the current retraction of protests appears to have delayed this process.

Nothing appears to have stunted participatory democracy more than the current status of Jordanian municipalities.

The topic of decentralisation has been talked about for some time, but has been almost forgotten.

A conference on participatory democracy organised by the French Cultural Centre in cooperation with Al Rai Studies Centre opened in Amman on Wednesday.

The audience consisted of mayors of major Jordanian cities; strangely, governmental officials were absent despite the fact that they were invited, as the badges were showing.

Had officials from the interior or municipal affairs ministries come, they would have received an earful of harsh complaints about the unhealthy status of Jordan’s municipalities.

One after the other, mayors complained that they are unable to carry out their jobs independently and serve the population that elected them because of the ever-present “big brother”, in the form of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

News websites in Jordan have been shaken up ever since the Abdullah Ensour government decided to enforce a controversial law that forces websites that deal with Jordanian news and commentary to obtain a licence, like the newspapers.

Unlike the audiovisual law, by equating news websites to newspapers, the legislature has created an unusual and hard-to-manage system that forces the Press and Publications Department to interfere daily in the workings on the Internet, which, the world insists, should be free and unfettered.

In implementing the law, the department has chosen not to include many sites that “deal with news and commentary about Jordan” sighting obscure reasoning. Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo and social media sites and individual blogs have been allowed to continue operations based on the subjective whims of the department.

A further problem is the condition that every news website has to appoint an editor in chief who has been a member of the Jordan Press Association for at least four years. The problem with this is that the JPA has been a closed shop, allowing as its members only journalists working for the written press. Continue Reading »