By Daoud Kuttab

This week I became a grandfather.

My eldest daughter, Tamara, gave birth to a baby girl in Jerusalem; baby and mother are healthy and fine.

This piece of good news did not come so easily emotionally or politically, however.

For weeks, we have been hearing, seeing and talking to people about children in Gaza losing their lives not because of natural causes, to accidents or earthquakes, but because of a man made gigantic disaster that in the end was probably aimed at little more than improving some politicians’ standings in upcoming elections.

Sure, there is plenty of talk and pontification about the reasons for the war on Gaza, about some “moral army” that supposedly takes “precautions” to prevent civilian deaths. But the reality is that the occupying Israelis appear to consider every Palestinian in Gaza a member of the Islamic Hamas movement.

While our thoughts and prayers were with the children of Gaza, the weeks leading to the birth of my first grandchild also had discriminatory bureaucratic problems that no expecting couple should have to go through.

My daughter has an Israeli residency in Jerusalem. When Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian territory, it unilaterally passed Israeli law on East Jerusalem, giving its residents (including my family) permanent residency, but not automatic citizenship. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

As the sounds of gunfire in the Gaza Strip begin to cease, international human rights organizations, legal experts and political activists are speaking up about the need for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate whether war crimes were committed during the Gaza conflict this summer.

At present, neither Israel nor the state of Palestine are members of the ICC. A total of 122 countries have signed up for the Rome Statute, and Jordan is the only Arab country to have done so.

Fayez Abu Eita, a spokesman for the Palestinian Fatah movement, said the Palestinians need an international party to investigate the war crimes committed by Israel in its offensive on Gaza. In a phone interview with Al-Monitor, Abu Eita said that a Palestinian committee has been formed and the issue has been reviewed from all angles with the conclusion that the ICC should be joined. “There is a huge desire among the Palestinian people to hold the Israeli occupiers responsible for the war crimes they committed against Palestinian children, women and senior citizens,” he said. Continue Reading »