By Daoud Kuttab

The 700-seat Ramallah Cultural Palace, on whose premises is the grave of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, was overcrowded on September 9. Over 850 people packed the cinema hall to watch Najwa Najjar’s premiere of her second long feature film,Eyes of a Thief.

The Palestinian filmmaker’s film follows her successful Pomegranates and Myrrh,which opened the Dubai Film Festival in 2008 and has racked up a huge number of awards.

The name of the film (in Arabic Eun al haramieh) refers to a rather desolate location on the valley between Nablus and Ramallah.

The location used to witness robberies, which made the British mandatory government build a police station to protect travellers.

The British barracks that still stand in the area have long been abandoned, but the Israelis used the location to set up a permanent checkpoint.

In 2002, at the height of the second Intifada, a lone Palestinian sniper gunned down 10 Israelis including seven soldiers.

Israeli experts at one time thought the sniper might be an older Palestinian who had participated in World War II, or a fighter from the Balkans who infiltrated the occupied territories or possibly an IRA connection to the PLO. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The common saying that one person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist well describes how the world is often divided over the Palestinian resistance.

Palestinians often respond, without much success, that armed resistance is an internationally guaranteed right, that reserve soldiers and armed civilian settlers who often vandalize Palestinian property are fair game in a population fighting to rid itself of an illegal occupation that has spanned decades. The argument goes on at regional and international venues, with audiences taking whatever side they are already predisposed to sympathize with.

But while the arguments go on on university campuses and among activists, popular culture has often painted Palestinians along stereotypical lines. To be fair, the stereotyping of Palestinians is not always negative. Palestinians are also often portrayed by their supporters in a heroic light. Watching Arab and pro-Palestinian portrayals of Palestinians, one gets the impression that Palestinians are supermen. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

When Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset, set foot in Al-Aqsa Mosque around 10 a.m. Sept. 14, he was on more than a tourist visit. His venture to the mosque and short prayer in the area was seen as an attempt to declare Jewish sovereignty over the Islamic holy place. It violated agreements not to change the status quo and cast doubt on an assertion by the Israeli prime minister’s office that the status quo at Al-Aqsa would not change.

That Feiglin would go to the Haram al-Sharif was known for days and required a large contingent of Israeli police. The visit proceeded after Palestinian men and women worshipers under the age of 40 were barred from the area and all except one of the gates to Islam’s third-holiest mosque were closed.

While insisting that all Jews have a right to visit what they call the Temple Mount, Israeli security officials have in the past refused such provocative visits, citing the potential for violent opposition and thus denying access for security reasons. In recent months, and under pressure from the right-wing Israeli government, including Feiglin himself, Israeli security has changed its position. Instead of banning such visits, it has undertaken unprecedented actions to bar Palestinian Muslims from their own mosque hours before them. Protests from Jordanian Islamic waqf officials, who are entrusted as guardians of the mosque, have fallen on deaf ears. Continue Reading »