By Daoud Kuttab

While addressing mourners for the loss of his mother in Jordan, Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal highly praised Jordan and Jordanian officials, and then spoke of a four-step approach to change the balance of power that is currently crushing Palestinians.

Mishaal, who along with Jordanian leaders of Hamas was deported from the Kingdom in 1999, has been allowed to visit for humanitarian family circumstance, such as the death of his father seven years ago and this week the passing of his mother.

At the conclusion of the three-day wake, the Hamas leader said he was speaking as a “free Arab and an open-minded Muslim”.

He called on fellow Palestinians and supporters to make use of all the points of strength they have, spoke forcefully about the need for national unity and reconciliation, and highlighted the need for a national Palestinian strategy.

Mishaal said that such a strategy should not contradict principles, but neither should it handcuff politically those pursuing it, saying that politicians should be clever and shrewd in executing such a national strategy.

But the most interesting point of Mishaal’s speech in Amman came in his concluding point, in his fourth step approach. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Like many Israeli officials, whenever Nir Barkat, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, wants to make a political splash among Israeli voters, he turns to the Palestinian arena, which is the gift that keeps giving. In April 2013, when Barkat was running for a second mayoral term, he turned to the Palestinian sector of Jerusalem to announce an ambitious project to create a cable car route connecting the Mount of Olives to the Western Wall. The goal of the cable car route is to physically unify East and West Jerusalem.

In October 2013, Barkat was re-elected as mayor. The project, which was supposed to begin two years later, seemed to have failed in 2015, when French company Suez Environment that was to take part in the project pulled out in March 2015 under the pretext of “wanting to avoid any political interpretation.” Another French company, Safege, which was to participate in the planning of the cable car project, also pulled out in March 2015, once the French realized that this was a highly controversial political plan and not simply a business project.

With his second four-year term coming to an end, Barkat is aiming for a much higher goal: that of the Prime Ministry. Barkat has now resurrected the failed project and has succeeded in getting political approvals of the relevant Israeli ministries. Speaking to Likud activists, Barkat is seen on a video uploaded on his Facebook page Aug. 25 displaying the route of the cable car that will run from the Mount of Olives to the edge of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Haram al-Sharif with stops at the Church of Gethsemane and in the Abu Tor and Silwan neighborhoods.  Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Sharif Muhaisen is worried about losing his job. Muhaisen works for Sanad, a construction industries company in Ramallah owned by the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF). Muhaisen is responsible for importing cement from Jordan. “We import about 500,000 tons of cement from Jordan every year,” he told Al-Monitor by phone from his home in Ramallah.

As part of his job, Muhaisen must travel to Jordan to meet with various cement companies, attend workshops and for other work-related reasons. Since summer 2015, however, Jordan has denied Muhaisen entry.

“Although I was born in Gaza, I have lived all my life in the West Bank, but I still need a special entry permit from the Jordanian authorities,” he said. “Since last summer, [the Jordanian authorities] have consistently denied me an entry permit.” Muhaisen provided Al-Monitor with a screen shot of text messages informing him that his requests had been denied.

Muhaisen, whose wife and two children have Jordanian passports because they were born on the West Bank, have no problem crossing the King Hussein Bridge into the kingdom. Up until the summer of 2015, “It took a few days to get the Jordanian authorities to issue the needed permit, but since my last application in June [2015], I and many others have been regularly rejected,” Muhaisen said. Continue Reading »