By Daoud Kuttab

In order to predict who will replace the outgoing Palestinian prime minister, one needs to figure out the real reason for Mahmoud Abbas’ acceptance of his resignation. Did Abbas accept Salam Fayyad’s resignation because of his failure to fundraise, or was it because of internal pressure from Abbas’ Fatah movement? Three possible candidates’ profile can answer this question.

If Salam Fayyad’s departure had to do with over-dependency on Western aid and a desire to seek Arab funding, the next Palestinian prime minister could be someone like Rami Hamdallah, the president of the largest Palestinian university, in Nablus, who has been successful in raising funds for this institution of higher education from Arab sources. His appointment could indicate a shift from Western funding to Arab as the main pillar of keeping the Palestinian government and economy afloat. Hamdallah has good relations with Hamas and was a member of the Central Elections Commission, which just completed a successful registration drive in Gaza. He could be a reconciliation candidate that both Fatah and Hamas would be able to live with. Appointing Hamdallah would be a clear shift by the Palestinian leadership and a distancing from near-total dependency on Western aid. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Something strange happened during the last Arab League summit meeting, held in March in the Qatari capital, Doha. The final announcement, which typically presents the points of agreement reached to by the participating heads of state, was possibly the longest communiqué drafted by an Arab summit. It went on and on, detailing the position of the leaders on almost every issue affecting Arab League members.

Squeezed in among the tens of thousands of words was a reiteration of support for the Arab Peace Initiative approved at the 2002 summit in Beirut. The plan has also been approved by the Organization of Islamic Countries. Thus, all in all, 57 Arab and Islamic states have been on the record for more than ten years in support of a peace plan that guarantees normalization with Israel in return for its withdrawal to the 1967 borders and an agreement to a just resolution to the Palestinian refugee problem. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

It is not clear why US Secretary of State John Kerry chose to visit Ramallah and meet with Palestinian leaders before meeting with the Israelis. Is it a gesture to the Palestinians, or does he think he needs to get more out of them this round than from the Israelis? Is it just a scheduling issue related to Jewish holidays?

Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: There is a lot more happening behind the scenes than in public. Observers of previous talks have always said that secrecy is one of the most important conditions for any successful progress in the Middle East.

What is known from the Abbas-Kerry meeting, however, is very important. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Haifa University student Rabae Eid’s interruption of US President Barack Obama’s speech in Jerusalem was more than just an act of a radical heckler. The 24-year-old’s rejection of Obama’s demand that Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state echoed the feelings of more than 20% of the population of today’s Israel who are not Jewish.

The story of Palestinians who are citizens of the state of Israel is one of the untold stories of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Palestinians who stayed put in their homes and lands as the state of Israel was being established have been either forgotten or, worse yet, wrongly accused by fellow Arabs of being traitors and a sort of fifth column.

No one tells the story of the Arabs of Israel better than the people who have lived through the decades since the establishment of Israel. And among those, no one better tells their story than Nazareth-based Atallah Mansour, perhaps the most prominent of his generation.

Mansour, who grew up in the Galilee, relates the story of his people in a comprehensive first person narrative in his book Still Waiting for the Dawn. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

When President Barack Obama visited Bethlehem, the loudest group of protesters were families of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom have husbands and sons locked up in Israeli jails. Some of the families were demanding that the Israelis honor promises made to release those held from before the Oslo agreements, other families complained that they have not been allowed to meet their loved ones for years. Yet, a third group said sick prisoners were not receiving appropriate medical care. According to the son of Maysara Abu Hamdia, who died Tuesday [April 2] after his cancer went untreated, that is exactly what happened.

Maysara Abu Hamdia, 64, was a colonel with the Palestinian Preventive Security Service in 2002 when he was arrested and charged with multiple offenses, mostly assisting Hamas operatives. According to Tariq Abu Hamdia, the prisoner’s oldest son, the Israelis had nothing on his father. They couldn’t extract a confession and had no serious evidence,” he said in a phone interview from Virginia Tech where he is finishing his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The death of Maysara Abu Hamdieh is not the first time a Palestinian prisoner has passed away while behind bars. Less than two months earlier, 30-year-old Arafat Jaradat died while being held in the Megiddo prison. However, the circumstances of the death of Abu Hamdieh, 64, touched a nerve. The fact that he was suffering from an advanced stage of throat cancer and left to die without any serious treatment reflected the sort of mercilessness that incites the anger of an entire nation.

This Palestinian anger is not limited to the lack of medical care in prisons. It comes at a time when a number of prisoners have been on hunger strike for a long period without any response from the Israelis. The lack of response to the strike by prisoners like Samer Issawi, who is being held without trial or charge, has captured the imagination of many inside and outside of Palestine.

Despite attempts by US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, who is due in the region Saturday, April 6, Palestinian faith in the peace process is at an all-time low. One reason for the scarcity of optimism is the very political environment that exists in Israeli-Palestinian relations. A peace process is not simply what political leaders do or say in multilateral meetings, but what is happening on the ground.  And on the ground in Palestine today, there isn’t even an attempt to prepare the environment for any future peace talks. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The agreement signed between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah regarding Jerusalem came at a highly sensitive time.

Jerusalem’s holy places, and especially Al Aqsa Mosque, have been under an escalating threat from radical forces, some of whom are nowsenior members of the Knesset and government ministers in Israel.

Ever since the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, the large compound comprising Al Aqsa Mosque was the target of radical Jewish zealots who wish to rebuild the Jewish temple on what they consider to be its site. Jews claim that the ancient temple was built on Mount Moriah, where Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son.

For years, this messianic Jewish passion was neutralized by a Jewish religious edict. Because Jews believe that the area of Al Aqsa Mosque most probably lies on top of the ruins of the Jewish temple, devout Jews were forbidden to set foot in the mosque so as not to “defile” it.

A sign to this effect was placed at the entrance of Bab Al Magharbeh, the only one that Al Aqsa guards are not protecting and which Jews often use to enter. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The case of the hunger-striking Palestinian political prisoner Samer Issawi has returned to the spotlight one of the most notorious human rights violations by an occupying power: deportation. Israel has offered Issawi deportation rather than outright release, despite not being able to charge him or try him for a specific crime or infraction.

The idea of deporting a person from his or her country runs contrary to the very essence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stipulates the right of humans to leave their country and return without restrictions. For decades, Israel, which controls all the borders of Palestine, has been able to literally throw people across the hermetically sealed borders and prevent them from returning.

These deportations are based on the 112th clause of the mandate-era British Emergency Regulations (1945). The Israeli Knesset rescinded applying the regulations to Israel in 1979, but they remain intact for occupied Palestine, which is under Israeli military control. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Before the Arab League summit ended its one-day deliberations Tuesday, Palestinians were already publicly skeptical about the effectiveness of Arabs in as far as their ability to do anything about Jerusalem.

Khalil Assali, a Jerusalemite, and one of the most consistent writers on Jerusalem, blasted Arab leaders for their repeated promises, but failures when it comes to the delivery of these promises. Assali’s latest column, which appeared on the Palestine News Network, Akhbar el-Balad radio and Ammannet online, recalled the many previous Arab summit promises on both the political and financial levels.

Assali says that of the $500 million pledged to Jerusalem in the Arab summit held in the Libyan town of Sirte in 2010, only $34 million made it to the Holy City. For Assali and his regular columns dedicated to Jerusalem, the problem is not about whether money reaches specific individuals as much as it is about institutions in Jerusalem that are deteriorating due to a lack of support. Continue Reading »

In memory of the late Anthony Lewis of the New York Times. I reprint a column he wrote about me

Lese Arafat’s Majeste

By ANTHONY LEWIS

Published: May 26, 1997

Imagine an American President having the head of C-Span thrown in jail because he broadcast sessions of Congress in which the President was criticized. That is a rough translation of what has just happened in Yasir Arafat’s Palestine.

The victim of Mr. Arafat’s displeasure is Daoud Kuttab, a leading Palestinian journalist. He is being held incommunicado in a prison in Ramallah, in the West Bank.

I have known Mr. Kuttab for years, and like other foreign reporters and diplomats I respect him for his courage and honesty. The first concern has to be for his safety. Others imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority have been brutalized, and killed.

But the broader issue is the nature of the Palestinian polity. As President of the Authority, Mr. Arafat is intolerant of criticism and intemperate in his disregard for basic standards of freedom. His performance is blighting Palestinian hopes, and the Kuttab case is a telling example.

Mr. Kuttab has written unflinchingly about abuses of power by Israeli occupation authorities and by the new Palestinian regime. He was a columnist for Al Quds, an Arabic paper in Jerusalem, until the publisher gave in to an Arafat demand in 1994 and fired him. Last year the Committee to Protect Journalists gave him its International Press Freedom Award for his bravery.

He has been running a project very much like C-Span at an independent broadcasting station, Al Quds Educational Television. It carries live, uncut broadcasts of the Palestinian Legislative Council. The U.S. Agency for International Development provided a $25,000 pilot grant, and it has European support.

The Legislative Council, in its short life, has been remarkably independent of Mr. Arafat. Its members frequently criticize corruption in the Authority and abuses of human rights.

The Palestinian on the street could not read about that criticism because Palestinian newspapers were afraid to anger Mr. Arafat by printing it. When the verbatim broadcasts started, they attracted a wide audience. People watched through four hours of often prolix sessions.

Soon a curious thing happened. When Al Quds television broadcast a council session where Mr. Arafat was criticized, another signal covered the screen with a black rectangle.

The jamming came from the Authority’s official Palestinian Broadcasting Company. So Mr. Kuttab found when he was invited to check in the PBC control room. He was warned not to say anything.

Last Tuesday, May 21, The Washington Post carried a story about the jamming. That night Mr. Kuttab was telephoned by the Ramallah police chief, Col. Firas Ameleh, and asked to come in. He lives in Jerusalem, outside the control of the Authority, but he went anyway — and was arrested.

The next day Mr. Kuttab’s family tried to find out where he was. So did U.S. consular officers, who inquired because Mr. Kuttab is an American citizen. Colonel Ameleh and other Palestinian officials denied for hours that he was under arrest. Finally they admitted he was.

Mr. Kuttab’s lawyer and the U.S. Consul General, Edward Abington, were able to visit him on Wednesday. But the next day his wife and three children were turned away. Colonel Ameleh said he had orders from President Arafat’s office to let no one visit him. Mr. Kuttab started a hunger strike in protest.

On what charge was he held? After two days of silence, officials said he would be charged with violating the ”journalism law.” No one is sure what that means.

The whole affair, with its arbitrariness and mendacity, reeks of the view that it is lese majeste to challenge Yasir Arafat. Palestinians deserve better than that. They want democracy. The Legislative Council’s spirited criticism of corruption shows that, and so does the public response to Mr. Kuttab’s legislative broadcasts.

But more is at stake. Such action costs Mr. Arafat dearly in the respect he needs to negotiate a viable Palestinian homeland — respect in the world, and in Israel. It is essential for him, as for Palestinian hopes, to release Daoud Kuttab.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/26/opinion/lese-arafat-s-majeste.html