By Daoud Kuttab

The following appeared in the Jordan Times

The Palestinian cause continues to attract supporters from around the world. Volunteers wishing to give some of their time and expertise in solidarity with Palestinians have become a regular feature in Palestinian society.

Many young people wanting to spend a year or so in a conflict area choose Palestine for many reasons.

By volunteering in Palestine a person is clearly and publicly siding with the oppressed in their just struggle for freedom and independence. Some of the volunteers involve themselves in Palestinian nation building while others take on a more direct role in the resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Even those who are involved in overt acts of solidarity with Palestinians and resistance to occupation can be divided into a number of groups. Some express their solidarity by joining Palestinian demonstrators protesting various symbols of occupation.

Perhaps the most repeated act of international solidarity in recent years has been the participation of internationals in the weekly Friday demonstrations against the Israeli security wall built deep in Palestinian territories.

Internationals expressing solidarity are seen weekly in protests at Bilin, Nabi Saleh and other Palestinian locations. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

AMMAN – Throughout the post-colonial period, Arab countries have consistently failed to produce an efficient – let alone democratic – system of government. Now, after a half-century of competition between military or royal dictatorships and militant Islamist regimes, many Arabs are again seeking a “third way” – a path toward a credible form of representative democracy. But will their efforts prove as futile now as they have in the past?

The Middle East – named for its geographic position between Europe and East Asia – was under Ottoman rule for 400 years before the Allied powers, after defeating the Ottomans in World War I, partitioned the region into distinct political units that, under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, fell within spheres of influence carved out by the United Kingdom and France. But, in response to these new divisions, an Arab awakening – shaped by pan-Arabism and support for Palestine – was occurring.

Charismatic young military rulers-turned-dictators like Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Syria’s Hafez al-Assad used these popular causes to win public support. But their failure to deliver better lives to their citizens, together with the discrediting of left-wing ideologies following the Soviet Union’s collapse, fueled the rise of a rival movement: political Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood – established in the Egyptian town of Ismailia in 1928 and political Islam’s oldest, best organized, and most widespread proponent – was (and is) despised by both secular Arabs and Arab monarchies. Indeed, secular dictators have worked to suppress the Brothers at every turn – often violently, as when Assad ruthlessly crushed a Brotherhood-led uprising in Hama in 1982. Continue Reading »

by Daoud Kuttab

Proponents of the two-state solution have for years faced a grim outlook. Every new Jewish settlement that pops up on the lands slated for a Palestinian state has added to the despair and disillusionment with any peace process.

After 46 years of military occupation and colonial policies highlighted by an aggressive attempt to build exclusive Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas, it is no surprise that many are losing faith in a peace based on the two-state solution. The latest intellectual to join the ranks of the disenchanted is American political scientist Ian Steven Lustick.

In a powerful essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Lustick, a University of Pennsylvania professor, lays out the problems that the continuation of defending and promoting the two-state solution has created. Using examples from Ireland, the Soviet Union and other places, Lustick simply argues that the two-state solution currently makes no sense and that clinging to it is an illusion. He criticizes the US diplomatic machinery, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel — as well as pundits, journalists and nongovernmental organizations — all of which have built careers on defending the indefensible. Continue Reading »