By Daoud Kuttab

The date Nov. 15, 1988, is a special one for Palestinians. On that day, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the Palestinians’ parliament in exile, convened in the Algerian capital of Algiers and adopted the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. It was almost one year into the relatively nonviolent intifada that shook up Israel and the world.

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi told Al-Monitor how the declaration had been largely drafted by distinguished professor Edward Said and Palestinian poet laureate Mahmoud Darwish, both now deceased. “Said, who along with [prominent academic] Ibrahim Abu-Lughod was in contact with the Americans, contributed to it,” said Ashrawi. “He wanted the declaration to contain a number of principles that appear in the US Constitution, but it was Darwish who drafted the final text that was read in Arabic.”

The idea of the declaration reflected the aspirations of local leaders of the intifada, including Faisal Husseini of Jerusalem. Ashrawi believes the document should not have been called a declaration. “It should have been announced as a body of principles that would define the nature of our state and the basis of our future constitution,” she said. “It was a courageous and astute statement that succeeded in gaining the support of all Palestinians.”

Ashrawi, who served as spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference, said that the declaration represented major Palestinian concessions. She explained, “It included Palestinian acceptance of the UN partition plan of 1947, but unfortunately it was not reciprocated with similar seriousness by Israel and the world, which continued to move the goal posts and make further demands of Palestinians.” Continue Reading »

Prominent Palestinian politicians and economists in the Palestinian territories appear to be totally unfazed by threats that the Republicans in both houses of Congress and in the Donald Trump administration might cut off aid to the Palestinian government.

Mustafa Barghouti, an elected Palestinian legislator, told Al-Monitor that the United States has already reduced aid to the Palestinian government. “In the past two years, we have seen a steady decline in financial support coming from Washington to the Palestinian government. Some of the remaining aid coming from the United States is going directly to local governments, and the rest is distributed to civil society organizations by USAID [US Agency for International Development].”

A US official confirmed Barghouti’s statement, telling the Wall Street Journal Nov. 16 that US funding, which goes straight to the Palestinian government’s creditors, “has dropped from about $100 million in 2014 to roughly $75 million in 2015.”

Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, has a number of questions about the aims of USAID. “With USAID, a large chunk of the money is spent as overhead on US-based organizations, and it is not clear what their [the organization’s] goals are in Palestine.”

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal published Nov. 13 called on both the Barack Obama and Trump administrations to “stop aid to terrorists.” The conservative newspaper supported legislation in the US Congress that would “stop the flow of US tax dollars to terrorists.”

According to the British daily The Sun, the United Kingdom temporarily suspended in October some of the aid to Palestinians based on claims that “UK aid supposedly paying for civil servants in Gaza was being transferred to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation,” and is making its way to what the paper called “terrorists.” Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Few Israelis understood why their hard-line defense minister would even talk about a seaport and an airport in Gaza.

In an Oct. 24 interview with the widely circulated Palestinian daily Al-Quds, Avigdor Liberman offered the formula for a possible Gazan port and airport. “If they make the decision to stop digging tunnels, smuggling arms and firing rockets at us, we will be the first to invest in a port, an airport and industrial areas.”

The strange thing about this statement was that it didn’t include the usual Israeli call for completely disarming Gaza, and that Liberman volunteered to talk about the port and airport without being asked about them.

Ahmed Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American aviation visionary who has been advocating for a UN-administered airport for some time, was quick to note the opening provided by Liberman in the interview.

However, Alkhatib, the founder and director of Project Unified Assistance (PUA), a registered US nonprofit organization, was frustrated when UN special envoy Nickolay Mladenov dismissed Liberman’s statement Nov. 5 as a “distraction” that avoided addressing the real issues, such as large-scale unemployment in Gaza, which is almost at 50%.

Speaking to Al-Monitor by phone from San Francisco, Alkhatib said that an airport is a fundamental need for rebuilding Gaza, adding, “It will help stabilize the Strip and will contribute to implementing tangible improvements to the lives of Gazans.” Continue Reading »