By Daoud Kuttab

A quick roundup of statements by Palestinian leaders to the press and details of discussions with Western officials reveal an increase in the level of frustration in the peace talks with Israel. Regardless, it is clear that the Palestinians have no interest in scuttling the nine-month time frame of the negotiations, possibly due to the staggered dates for releasing long-term Palestinian prisoners.

Of interest, none of the statements credited to Palestinian leaders include President Mahmoud Abbas or the chief negotiators, Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh. Palestinian and Israeli leaders have made a commitment to US Secretary of State John Kerry to keep the talks secret, with only the United States being authorized to make statements regarding the peace process.

The volley of statements began with a scathing comment by Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, who warned in August that the talks could end in “disaster.”

The New York Times ran a Sept. 9 story that quoted unnamed Palestinian sources complaining about the absence of an agreed upon reference point for the talks. The report was written largely by veteran journalist Mohammad Daraghmeh, who has strong and reliable connections among the Palestinian leadership. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

A strange phenomenon exists in Palestine these days. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is constantly attacked and criticized, continues to do very well in local and international polls, and his policies are generally well-regarded among ordinary Palestinians. What makes the Palestinian president such a Teflon leader, where accusations against him never stick and his popularity remains relatively high?

A simple search of social media will reveal a lot of negative adjectives associated with the Palestinian leader. He is called a traitor, Israeli puppet, sell-out, corrupt, unpatriotic, fraud and an unelected autocrat, among many other terms. Some of these accusations are at times publicly stated, as in the recent demonstrations staged in Ramallah against the peace talks. In speaking to his own Fatah leadership, Abbas even commented on the vile language that is being used in some of these public protests.

But for all this negative language leveled against the Palestinian leader, very little of it seems to stick. Public opinion polls consistently give Abbas high-performance ratings, and whenever he is polled against potential competitors, he and his Fatah movement have done very well. The latest pollconducted in August shows Abbas continuing to outpoll Hamas’ Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

In the early years of the Palestinian Authority (PA), one of its biggest goals was to establish sovereignty over Palestinian land. This included what is below the ground as well as the skies above. While the fight over land has been the biggest challenge, Palestinians have been successful in capturing the skies by launching tens of local radio and TV stations, which reserved available frequencies and prevented the Israelis from occupying them as well. This week, six new online radio stations were launched by the Bethlehem-based Palestine News Network.

The first annex of the Oslo Accords references the “possibility of licensing” radio and TV stations in the context of Palestinian elections. Initial licenses for Palestine TV and Voice of Palestine radio were in fact agreed upon, but a joint technical committee that was supposed to look into requests for private radio and TV licenses has rarely met and has not agreed on any private licenses.

This led the PA to encourage private organizations and individuals to apply for and get “special temporary permits” from the Ministry of Information. Tens of radio and TV stations hit the airwaves. The farsightedness of Palestinian leaders, among them Yasser Abed Rabbo, to provide for the proliferation of these stations proved to be prescient, especially in 2002, when the Israeli air force bombed and destroyed the studios and towers of the PA’s state-run radio and TV. Private stations complied with emergency requests for use of their frequencies to continue the work of the official Palestinian media until their towers could be repaired. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Information leaked to Al-Monitor from the hush-hush Palestinian-Israeli peace talks reveal that negotiators are stuck on where they should begin. Palestinians want the talks to begin where they left off the last time substantive talks took place, during Ehud Olmert’s premiership. At those talks, Palestinian and Israeli leaders apparentlymade headway on some of the most difficult issues, including borders and Jerusalem. The Benjamin Netanyahu government, however, appears to reject such an idea and wants instead to start from scratch. In the eyes of the Israelis, since all issues are open for discussion, the current government is not bound by any previous commitments or understandings.

Israel’s attempts to negate all previous understandings place the entire peace talks in jeopardy and bring back to the fore the Palestinians’ insistence that the talks be based on an agreed framework. The Palestinians want the talks to be based on the framework presented by US President Barack Obama in his 2012 speech to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. Obama’s framework is that the negotiations be based on a two-state solution along the June 1967 borders with some land swaps. The Israelis rejected this request, so the talks began without a framework, which has resulted in the negotiations being stuck at ground zero. Continue Reading »

Following appeared in Jordan Times and Huffington Post

By Daoud Kuttab

As the world is riveted to the Syrian crisis, it may surprise many to know that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations are still going on.

The talks, held in secret, do not appear to have achieved any discernible results yet. The absence of information, however, should not be used to indicate that the negotiators are doing nothing important.

Still, the issue of negotiations and time must be addressed clearly and frankly.

Most observers of negotiations would argue that parties to any set of talks rarely reveal their bottom line until the very end.

The hundreds of hours committed to the peace process have probably produced answers to all possible scenarios. What is needed is not negotiations but political decisions. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

It was reported on Aug. 30 that five Israeli-administered Palestinian schools operating in east Jerusalem have added the Israeli curriculum to their programs, causing a political firestorm. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the move, noting that it is part of a campaign dating back to 1967 to rewrite Palestinian history and undermine Palestinians’ identity. He also asserted that the imposition of the curriculum was a violation of international law and indicated that Israel had no intention of ending its occupation.

Within weeks of the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel extended its law and administration to east Jerusalem. Law and Ordinance Order no. 11, passed by the Knesset on June 27, 1967, declared the Palestinians of Jerusalem permanent residents, giving them and their institutions the same legal status as that of Israeli institutions in Tel Aviv. The Palestinians, however, were not granted automatic citizenship, but were eligible to apply for passports. Continue Reading »