By Daoud Kuttab

Mahmoud Abbas holds many titles.

He is the head of the Fateh movement, chairman of the PLO’s executive committee and president of the state of Palestine. Technically and legally, the Palestine Liberation Organization is superior.

The state of Palestine, declared a non-member state in the UN in 2003, is subservient to the PLO. In mere numbers, the state of Palestine, under occupation and lacking sovereignty except in large West Bank cities, is not as important as the PLO, which represents some 12 million Palestinians inside and outside Palestine.

But the PLO is an empty shell. It was originally made up of guerrilla movements that have since been silenced, and its offices around the world have been replaced by embassies of the state of Palestine. Hanan Ashrawi was one of 10 members of the PLO’s executive committee who resigned two weeks ago. She said that PLO agencies (except the negotiating department) get no or very little budgets.

The resignation, orchestrated by Abbas and his aides, was aimed at triggering an extraordinary session of the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO’s parliament in exile. The idea was to trigger clause 15 B of the PLO by-laws that calls for an emergency meeting without the need for a quorum. Abbas wanted to have the meeting in Ramallah and wanted to get the entire 18-member committee, which includes his latest rival, Yasser Abed Rabbo, replaced by some of his loyalists. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Unless one is a news junky and follows all local news religiously, one probably missed three important issues related to the media freedoms in Jordan.

They include the three main media stakeholders, the government, media owners and the public. I will leave the juiciest story last.

The prime minister issued a memo Tuesday to all relevant government ministries and departments, urging all to adhere to the Access to Information Law and providing the ministries with a template form that the public can fill out in order to seek information.

The memo, based on the 2007 law (Jordan was the first Arab country to introduce such a law) orders officials to comply with requests within the legal 30-day period and in case a document is not released, give the reason for the rejection.

On the same day, UNESCO launched the Jordan Media Index, a lengthy, well-researched report that assesses Jordan’s media status in five key categories.

Guy Burger, the head of UNESCO’s freedom of expression department, praised the report, calling it one of the best, “if not the best”, of its kind.

Burger said that free media are necessary for democracy, and urged Jordan to improve its legislative framework to give more freedom to the press in order to encourage democratic discourse. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The picture posted by Deacon Fadi Abu Sa’ada on his Facebook page Aug. 30 spoke volumes, and the image of medics helping a nun injured by Israeli tear gas raised anger among Palestinians.

The protest rally in the Beit Jala neighborhood of Beir Ona began peacefully but soon turned into clashes between Palestinian civilians and church leaders on one side and Israeli soldiers on the other.

The protest was led by a revered church leader, Patriarch Michel Sabbah. Sabbah, the former head of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, made an impassioned public plea for an end to Palestinian land confiscation by Israel: “This is our land, and will always remain ours. They claim it’s their land, but they use their soldiers, their tanks, their military occupation to force their will — and it is not their land. It is our land, and one day their forces will withdraw and the land will return back to its indigenous Palestinian owners.” The patriarch concluded by saying that his message to the Christian world, the international community and the Arab world is that “This Holy Land is burning.” Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

AMMAN — The man sitting outside the plush villa in west Amman looks like an old fighter. Security does not appear to be of much concern in Deir Ghbar, a stable Amman suburb and location of several embassies and diplomatic residences. The chain-smoking guard waves visitors through, into the house of Salim Zanoun, speaker of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the highest parliamentary body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and then directs them to Zanoun’s office on the second floor. There’s no metal detector, no body search.

Zanoun, a lawyer by training, had on Aug. 26 expressed his unhappiness with the tactics of his fellow founder of Fatah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is trying to push through an emergency meeting of the PLO’s highest body, the Executive Committee, to reshuffle it to his advantage. Zanoun made his position known to the newly selected secretary-general of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Saeb Erekat, and later to Abbas. Zanoun and Abbas met alone in Amman Aug. 26. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

A professional friend who teaches how to produce a highly entertaining TV talk show gives the following advice: begin with those who espouse the most extreme opinions and then conclude with the rational moderate centrist ones.

This advice of the talk show trainer is no longer relevant in the Middle East. The moderate rational centrist point of view has long disappeared from political discussion. All speakers are radical and the moderate political center has long collapsed.

Take for example the Palestinian Israeli conflict. The rational opinion is that the two state solution – Israel and Palestine – on roughly the 1967 borders is the most acceptable way out of the decades old conflict. But other than lip service of world leaders, this solution is nowhere close to reality. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The independence of the three branches of the state is the bedrock of democracy. In Jordan, this independence, while guaranteed by the Constitution, one can still witness the inference of the executive branch.

Simply following the Parliament deliberations, which are being broadcast by a local NGO live on YouTube and by Radio Al Balad (ironically not on any of the many publicly owned TV and radio stations) demonstrates this problem.

Subcommittees’ amendments to the government-issued laws are routinely denied, making the process of turning draft laws to a subcommittee a farce and a waste of time and effort by individuals elected from the Parliament plenary itself.

The ineffectiveness of Parliament is reflected in the way members deal with one of its members who was elected on a national party list.

Rula Hroub, from the “Jordan is strong” party, is perhaps one of the most active members of Parliament. She has something smart to say at every session of Parliament. Her interventions are logical and her recommendations for text changes are practical, yet almost every single idea she presents in the House is voted down without any idea why.

Few argue convincingly against her ideas, yet when the speaker of the House calls for a vote, her suggestions repeatedly fail to get the needed votes. The situation has become so predictable that she started to begin her deliberations by saying: “I know this will not pass, but I need to say this for the record.” Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Azmi Shuokhi has been on a mission for some time now. As the head of the local popular committees for Hebron, he has been trying to convince fellow Hebronites not to abandon the Ibrahimi Mosque. His idea is simple and peaceful: He wants all the Palestinians of the city to hold their social events — especially weddings — on the mosque’s grounds.

Shuokhi held his own son’s wedding at the Ibrahimi Mosque and invited the local boy scouts to participate in the celebration with their drums and bagpipes. The wedding celebrations were filmed and posted on YouTube May 2. Even the his grandson’s circumcision was celebrated at the mosque Aug. 14.

Shuokhi’s call for increased visits to the mosque aims to stem the tide of Jewish settlers trying to isolate Muslims from the mosque.

Hebron, with a population of over 250,000 people, is the largest Palestinian city and competes with Nablus as the commercial capital of the West Bank. Its population generates about 30% of the West Bank’s economy. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

AMMAN — Contrary to the claims of Israel and U.S. Republicans, the P5+1 agreement with Iran has eased, not exacerbated, the boiling conflicts in the Middle East. Within a short period of time, a silver lining is appearing in the bloody Syrian civil war.

The legitimate Yemeni powers are retaking large sections of south Yemen without any reaction from the Iranians, who many claimed would move to support the Houthis. In Iraq, the prime minister has passed the most wide-ranging anti-corruption law in parliament, without the Iranians meddling in the affairs of their neighbor, whose leaders happen to be fellow Shiites.

The Libyan conflict also appears to be moving towards a diplomatic resolution as all parties are now meeting in Geneva under UN auspices. The Islamic republic of Iran has not delayed these diplomatic solutions; on the contrary, it appears to have been encouraging them.

Iran and Russia are working together with the aim of finding a political solution to end the Syrian conflict. While various regional conflicts appear to be on their way to being resolved, it is very hard to make a direct connection between the P5+1 agreement with Iran and the easing of these crises. A 48-hour ceasefire was declared in many Syrian cities and was even extended. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Mohammad Shtayyeh, president of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction, said that the Palestinians’ current political strategy is focused on making Israel pay a price for the occupation of Palestinian lands, while at the same time finding ways to disengage from it economically and at the security level. In response to the Israeli government’s refusal to consider a political horizon, he said, “We will work with various international institutions, such as the United Nations Security Council, as well as world parliaments with the aim of reaching a time-based, end of occupation agreement.”

The senior Palestinian official expressed support for the Iran nuclear deal with the international community and called for a similar agreement to open Israeli nuclear facilities to inspection. He predicted that Iran will have a positive political role in the region, asserting, “The Iran deal is causing changes to Iranian policy; some of these changes are on the Palestinian front, and we want a healthy relationship with Iran.” According to Shtayyeh, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to visit Iran in the next few months to stress the need for Tehran to support the Palestinian cause, not just one faction.

Also a senior member of Fatah, Shtayyeh told Al-Monitor that the movement’s seventh congress will be held Nov. 29, 2015, in Ramallah. He further stated, “This congress will be unique, and we are working on the political platform to be presented to the members for approval.” Shtayyeh is considered a possible contender to assume the top spot in Palestinian politics, but he declined to speak in depth about the issue of succession to the 80-year-old Abbas. He said the subject is only being discussed in the media, asserting, “Rumors about his resignation are not true.”

The text of the interview follows: Continue Reading »

            

By Daoud Kuttab

The decades-old conflict with Israel and the aftereffects of the Israeli occupation of what was Jordanian land in the West Bank continue to be a source of hardships and problems for individuals and businesspeople on both sides of the Jordan River.

Attempts to resolve the many problems that continue to reverberate as a result of the 1967 occupation of the West Bank whether by individuals, organisations or foreign country representatives are met with huge difficulties.

Be it the bridge policy, trade issues, the special status of East Jerusalemites or Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian trade, all these issues are faced with immense bureaucracy.

Jordan, like the rest of the world which does not recognise the Israeli occupation, translates this lack of recognition into not treating the King Hussein Bridge as part of an international border.

What applies to movement of people and goods at any other border crossing does not apply on Jordan’s only crossing point into the West Bank. But this lack of legal and political recognition does not make the crossing point any different. Individuals, diplomats, businesspeople and representatives of international organisations cross the bridge in both directions and often have to go through legal and administrative hoops to make this trip easier. Continue Reading »