By Daoud Kuttab

The next few days will reveal whether Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Salam Fayyad will stay in his position or be replaced. The Palestinian cabinet is due to vote during its weekly meeting Tuesday, March 26 on the annual budget of the state of Palestine. If the budget is approved and then signed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Fayyad will be safe.

Palestine has been full of rumors that Fayyad, a former International Monetary Fund official and prime minister since 2009, might be on his way out following a falling out between him and the Palestinian president.

What exacerbated the case was the resignation of the finance minister, Nabil Kassis. Kassis submitted his resignation to the prime minister in part because he felt that Fayyad had bypassed him to negotiate with some unions who were opposed to the budget. Fayyad accepted Kassis’ resignation immediately without consulting the president. Abbas, who was away at the time, was livid and issued an immediate press statement rejecting the resignation. He asked Tayeb Abdel Rahim — the director-general of his office — to ensure that the problems between Kassis and Fayyad were resolved. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The mayor of Bethlehem, Vera Baboun, was sure that the khamsin sand storm that hit the area on Friday was divine.

Speaking to Al-Monitor from her Bethlehem home, the mayor said that the sudden weather change was a divine act, forcing the US president to travel by car into Bethlehem rather than by helicopter. Why is this important, she asked rhetorically? By driving, Obama would have no choice but to see the wall surrounding the city. It was as if, she said, “God willed that Mr. Obama enter from the gate of reality, rather than from the sky of no reality.”

Baboun, who was encouraged by the president to stay longer than protocol handlers had wished, said that she explained to the US president that the city where Jesus was born is only 7.3 square kilometers [2.8 square miles] that is totally walled. She explained to the American president that half of this area is declared Area C, which the Palestinian city council is not allowed to develop. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The hashtag that was trending on Thursday afternoon said it all. ObamainIsrael was one of the top hashtags on Twitter most of the afternoon of March 21, especially during and after the speech made by President Barack Obama to a group of young Israelis.

There was no doubt about the goal of the visit: to smooth relations with Israel and to attempt to reconnect with the Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the president fondly called by his nickname, Bibi. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

He is probably not very well known outside the territories of the state of Palestine, but if you ask almost any Palestinian, they would most likely know who Bassam Zakarneh is.

Technically, he is a member of the Revolutionary Council in Fatah. But ask any Fatah activist and they will say that he is much more powerful than most members of the central committee — the highest body in this liberation movement.

Zakarneh’s strength, of course, is not directly from Fatah, although he is also well-liked by Fatah, especially at the grassroots level.

The head of the public workers union in Palestine wields amazing powers to stop the workings of any and all public institutions run by the Palestinian government. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Less than a week before the important visit that the US president will make to Israel, Palestine and Jordan, there are some mysteries as to the Palestinian leg of his visit. While the most repeated itinerary lists Ramallah as a city where the US president will be spending a few hours, some sources are giving a different story. More than one Palestinian news site has claimed that President Barack Obama will visit Bethlehem rather than the temporary Palestinian capital of Ramallah.

One of the reasons given for why the American president might want to skip Ramallah is the fact that if he visits the secured and natural offices of the Palestinian president he will have a political difficulty. Pundits (mostly western) are claiming that if Obama passes by the grave of Yasser Arafat which is centrally located within the Muqata’a presidential compound that the American leader will have a difficult choice. Not laying a wreath will be seen as an insult to Palestinians while doing so would be seen in negative terms by some Israelis. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Electing the leader of the world’s Catholic faithful is always an unpredictable affair. The choice of Argentina’s cardinal, now Pope Francis, has lived up to the mystery.

What concerns people the most is the political direction that the leader of the world’s more than 1 billion Catholics will take on issues such as women’s rights, relations with other faiths and foreign policy.

Palestinians and peoples of the Middle East have been searching hard in the new pontiff’s history to try and figure out where he will stand on the issues that are of concern to them.

Two issues were prominently talked about in this regard. The Jesuit background of the new pope was quickly picked up as a sign that the new leader of the Catholic Church will pay attention to socio-economic issues and not just theological ones.

In the Middle East, Jesuits are known to have established schools of higher education and other projects supporting the poor. His coming from a non-European country (apparently the first time in a millennium) also ensures, many believe, a more internationalization of the Vatican. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

One thing is clear before, during and after the visit of President Barack Obama to the region: When it comes to the issue of Jewish settlements in Palestine, it is all a game.

A few weeks before the visit of the US president, Israelis were rushing to build as many housing units as possible because they were worried that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will agree to some kind of freeze. Israeli media was full of statements alluding to the ‘demand’ that Netanyahu has made not to be embarrassed during the Obama visit. The articles spoke about what happened a few years earlier when Vice President Joe Biden was welcomed with an announcement about new Jewish settlements in Jerusalem.

The media was also welcomed to film the dismantling of six outposts in the Ramallah area. Why the Ramallah area? Is it because the President is planning to visit the Palestinian town? For readers unfamiliar with these “outposts”, it is important to note that these outposts are housing units built on Palestinian lands not only in violation of international law — as all settlements are — but in violation of Israeli law. It is unclear how many outposts exist, but some reports note that there are as many as 100. Some of those have been destroyed, some have been legalized, and others were destroyed, but rebuilt again a few meters away from where the old ones existed. Continue Reading »

By Rana F. Sweis

Published March 6, 2013

By Daoud Kuttab

Khalil Abu Arafeh’s cartoon, which ran in the Sunday, March 3 edition of the leading Palestinian newspaper Al Quds, left no doubt as to the reason behind the resignation of Nabil Qassis, the Palestinian minister of finance. Abu Arafeh showed an empty safe, with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s hands folded next to the empty cash box.

But while the absence of cash is probably the main cause for Qassis’ resignation, the only report about it in the Palestinian media — on the Ma’an news agency’s website — drew a more complicated picture. According to the Bethlehem-based online news agency, Fayyad accepted the resignation and commended Qassis for his efforts, but President Mahmoud Abbas refused to accept the resignation and asked his chief of staff to convince the minister to withdraw it. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The Feb. 20 event held at the PLO offices in Ramallah was supposed to produce a warming of relations between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the various PLO groups led by Fatah.

At the podium was Dr. Abdel Aziz Dweik, the former head of the Palestine Legislative Council, who was elected after the decisive 2006 victory of the Islamists. Next to him was Dr. Hanan Ashrawi member of the PLO’s executive Committee responsible for culture and communications. And next to her was Azzam Al Ahmad member of Fatah’s central committee and its point man in the reconciliation talks. Continue Reading »