Apr
03
2014
Following appeared in the Jordan Times
By Daoud Kuttab
Modern technological development has brought with it the term multitasking, a term that replaced the popular “Can you chew and walk at the same timeâ€.
Palestinian negotiators are now facing the tough challenge of applying to join various UN agencies while, at the same time, agreeing, in theory, to continue peace talks until the end of April.
The action was publicly demonstrated by President Mahmoud Abbas who signed, on Tuesday, a document allowing the state of Palestine to join 15 different UN agencies.
Until recently, it was believed that Palestinians had to choose between joining international agencies and participating in the negotiations.
US Secretary of State John Kerry had extracted a commitment from Palestinians to refrain from such actions in return for Israel’s release of 104 Palestinian prisoners who have spent more than 20 years in Israeli jails.
The release of those prisoners, held since before the start of the Oslo peace process, was agreed to during the Sharm El Sheikh agreement signed in September 1999. Continue Reading »
Apr
03
2014
By Daoud Kuttab
It is not clear whether it was by design or by accident that there is a one-month period between the scheduled date of the fourth Palestinian prisoner release by Israel and the end of the nine-month Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Regardless, Palestinians recognized that the month of April provided them with a unique opportunity to be unshackled from the commitments they made not to join UN agencies before the end of the peace talk timetable.
As Al-Monitor reported as a possibility, Palestinians on April 1 carried out their threat to join UN agencies if Israel failed to release the final 26 prisoners from the 104 that it had agreed to free in return for the Palestinian’s withholding their applications. This is the second time that Israel has reneged on the release of these long-term prisoners, whose incarceration predates the Oslo Accord. Article 3 of the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, signed in September 1999, clearly states that these prisoners are to be released.
After the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signaled its approval in a unanimous vote, PLO Chairman and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed documents to join UN agencies in a public ceremony at the Muqata in Ramallah. When completed, the process will prepare the groundwork for a possible Palestinian international lawsuit against the ongoing Israeli occupation and colonization of the lands of the state of Palestine. Continue Reading »
