By Daoud Kuttab

Alaa from Beit Jala was surprised like many other Palestinian Christians this week when their local church leaders acquired three-month travel permits that will allow them to visit Jerusalem and Israel, and even stay overnight if they choose to. The permits, however, were not given to all Palestinian Christians.

“As part of the easings given to the Palestinian Christian population for Easter, approximately 21,000 permits were issued,” the Israeli army’s coordinator office told Al-Monitor.

There has been little information as to what led the Israelis to give hundreds of unsolicited permits to Palestinian Christians. Reverend William Shomali, the auxiliary bishop and patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine, told Al-Monitor that he was as surprised as everyone else.

“We didn’t ask for these permits, and I don’t like that they are given to a specific group of Palestinians and not to all.” Shomali believes that the entire permit system is a problem and that the right to movement should be made available to all Palestinians.  Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The US efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations continue to face obstacles, but this has not stopped a continuous trickle of information and leaks about some of the major details of the proposed talks.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saed Erekat told the Voice of Palestine Thursday, May 30 that US Secretary of State John Kerry’s plans have three parallel tracks. According to Erekat, the Kerry plan has a political track, a security track and an economic one. While the appointment of Gen. John Allenappears to shine some light on the security track and Kerry’s speech at the WEF conference hints the economic track, little information has come out in regard to the political track. Both Israelis and Palestinians seem stuck on the reference point of the peace talks. Palestinians want the talks to be based on the concept of a two-state solution, while Israel considers such a commitment before the talks to be a precondition it is not willing to accept.

So instead of banging his head against a brick wall, the top US diplomat is apparently looking for ways to go around the problem. One way to do that may be to encourage (codeword for pressure) the Israelis into loosening their grip on the occupied Palestinian territories. The practical translation of such talk often means that Israel must turn over to the Palestinian government lands that its security and administrative arms currently control, areas that are generally referred to — using the Oslo Accords terminology — as Area C. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The Israeli website that broke the story is not well known, but the content was so appealing that Palestinians jumped all over it. The site, Debkafile, claims that US Secretary of State John Kerry offered to help the Palestinians build their long-awaited airport and to get Israel to turn over a large section of land that includes part of the Dead Sea. The US offer, reportedly the first in a series, aims to encourage the Palestinian leader to go back to face-to-face talks with the Israelis without the latter stopping settlements or defining the eastern borders of Israel.

The reason that the report from a totally unknown site has received so much attention, including from Palestine’s Maan News Agency, is because it touches a nerve among the movement-restricted Palestinians, especially those living in the West Bank. The only exit and entry from this landlocked area is the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge, which is under the total control of the Israeli army. Even the partial control by Palestinian police that existed for a short period prior to 2000 has long been cancelled. All attempts to return the Palestinian police to the bridge, including the commitments in theRoad Map, have been rejected despite Palestinian security receiving high marks from the Israeli army for its ability to control the region. Continue Reading »

Daoud Kuttab the founder of AmmanNet condemned the decision of the Jordanian government to block 213 Jordanian news web sites among them one of the pioneer websites in the Arab world AmmanNet established in November 2000 with the blessing and support of UNESCO and the Amman Municipality.

Kuttab newly elected executive committee member of the International Press Institute in its 62th congress held in Amman said that the decision violates Jordan’s local, regional and international commitments. “This is a violation of Jordan’s constitution which guarantees freedom of expression, Jordan’s commitment to international conventions and a reneging on the promises made by the Jordanian Prime Minister to Jordanian media and in his address to the IPI congress.”

Jordan’s decision is a blow to the country’s standings and will further deteriorate its current ranking which Freedom House has considered it as “not free”.

By Daoud Kuttab

During the Israeli reoccupation of major Palestinian cities in 2002, the Israeli army took over the building that was housing Al Quds University’s Educational Television station, of which I was the director at the time. After 19 days, Israeli soldiers withdrew from Ramallah, leaving behind destroyed equipment. Some of the equipment destroyed had been donated by the US government.

A similar problem occurred in 2011 when Israeli special troops raided Wattan TV and Al Quds Educational TV, confiscating the transmitters and destroying computers and other equipment, again some of which had been purchased with a grant from the “American people”.

In both cases, when US officials in Jerusalem and Washington were informed of the destruction of the equipment, they chose to quietly purchase replacement equipment rather than chastise Israel for its unprovoked act of destruction. No statement was made and there was no public attempt to hold Israeli accountable.

I recall these rather minor cases this week because of the initiative by US Secretary of State John Kerry’s plan to invest about $4 billion in the Palestinian economy.

To be fair, Kerry said that this would not be a US-only investment but that other major world powers would chip in to cover this fund. The US secretary of state also stated that this economic investment will not replace the political process, but will be parallel to it. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

On the same day as the World Economic Forum was holding its dramatic closing session with back-to-back speeches from President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli President Shimon Peres and US Secretary of State John Kerry, I was mourning the passing of a dear friend’s mom.

Abbas reiterated the Palestinian government’s total commitment to peace and security, practically begging the Israelis to allow his local police to receive the small shipment of arms that has been rotting in Jordan for years. Peres, the president without much power, contradicted his own prime minister by embracing the Arab Peace Initiative and begging the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table, where they are bound to be surprised.

Finally, Kerry sounded even more desperate to see through some change in the Middle East’s most intractable conflict. One of his solutions is to throw money at the Palestinian-Israeli impasse. Kerry waved $4 billion to the Palestinians, money he said he has received in investment commitments from Japanese, European and others (not clear how much from the United States). Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

After Nixon’s ping-pong diplomacy and Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy, the Middle East seems to be getting to know John Kerry’s “shawarma diplomacy.” The US secretary of state stepped out of the usually scripted diplomatic itinerary and walked the streets of the Palestinian town of al-Bireh to enjoy a quick shawarma sandwich and some kenafeh sweets. The American diplomat took time to chat with Palestinian shopowners and has been quoted as stressing how badly the United States wants to have peace in the Middle East and how committed the Obama administration is to that cause.

Shawarma is a local street food. Large patties of meat are pressed together on a skewer and continually roasted as the person working the rotisserie cuts the freshly cooked meat, which is then wrapped in a pita stuffed with a variety of greens. Kerry, who seemed familiar with the oriental sandwich, ordered all the options except for hot sauce.

It is not difficult to understand Kerry’s gesture. He clearly wanted to encourage the reluctant Palestinians to take a leap of faith and agree to engage the Israelis.  Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

If physical access is an important requirement for good journalism, the ability of Palestinians and Israelis to cover their ongoing conflict is largely compromised. This is one of the issues raised by a delegation of the International Press Institute (IPI) that visited Palestine and Israel in February.

The mission sponsored by the Vienna-based nongovernmental organization produced “Patriotism, Pressure and Press Freedom: How Israeli and Palestinian Media Cover the Conflict from Inside,” a 37-page report based on interviews with more than 50 media practitioners in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. The report focuses initially on how local media covered the November 2012 Israeli war on Gaza, but a closer look at the report’s recommendations zooms in on restrictions on journalists’ freedom of movement as the biggest problem facing members of the Palestinian and Israeli press. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The political stalemate in Palestine and Israel over the two-state solution has finally provoked Palestinians from the occupied territories to declare a strategic change in direction of the one-state solution.

Palestinian activists from different political persuasions and careers paths have made a declaration for a democratic state for all its citizens on the 65th anniversary of the Nakba. One of the founders of the new Popular Movement for One Democratic State, a veteran leader of Fatah, said that it is much different than the PLO’s call for a secular democratic state which Israel has often attacked as an attempt to negate the existence of Israel and the Jewish people.

In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Radi Jarai said that this democratic movement has absolutely no limitations on its citizens between Jews and Palestinians. “We will respect the Israel law of return 1951 and will also defend the Palestinians’ right of return.” Jarai, who spent years in an Israel prison, said that the democratic state that he and his friends are calling for can be “a refuge for Jews and Palestinians.” Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

On the surface, the issue seems rather futile. The Israeli government, which has built hundreds of exclusively Jewish settlements in the occupied territories in violation of international law, is being criticized for “legalizing” four of these illegal settlements. What is it about “outposts” that makes them different from other settlements? A deeper look at the issue reveals decades of attempts to fool the international community about Israel’s commitment to peace.

To understand the difference, it is important to go back to the beginning of this century. The US and its allies were preparing to go to war against Iraq (after having already gone to war against Afghanistan in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001). To minimize potential anti-Americanism, the Bush administration leaned on its Israeli allies not to carry out any actions that would provoke the anger of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. The US attempts to simultaneously restart Palestinian-Israeli talks required that Israel refrain from any further official settlement activity.

As a result of this situation, the pro-settlement right-wing Israeli leader Ariel Sharon looked for ways to avoid carrying out any official settlement activity while wanting to disrupt any negotiations that could lead to Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. It was during this period in 2002 that then-prime minister Sharon called for Israeli settlers “… to capture the hilltops in the occupied West Bank before losing them to Palestinians in negotiations.” Within a short time, 221 illegal Israeli settlement outposts were established. Continue Reading »