By Daoud Kuttab

The social and economic life in Jerusalem and the West Bank appears to be on a positive upwards trend. Salam Fayyad’s government has been successful (with the help of donors) in providing economic growth; people are working, shops are stocked restaurants and cafés are full of paying customers.

An improved security situation has meant that towns like Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem and Ramallah are enjoying busy days and, a rare occurrence, crowded nightlife. But underneath this pleasant surface, a nasty and dangerous current is building up, reflected in anger and frustration. It is not clear when this undercurrent will reach boiling point, but signs and evidence are increasing of its near eruption.
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The angry political and public reaction to the decision by the Palestinian leadership to postpone discussions of the Goldstone war crimes report requires a sober look at the reasons and lessons that need to be learned to avoid repetition.

Anger came from Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike, including many supporters of Palestine. Arab media, especially Al Jazeera dedicated hours and hours of prime time TV to give space to bombastic attacks against Mahmoud Abbas and his leadership. Public accusations calling Abbas a traitor who sells out the blood of Palestinians in Gaza have become so common that it is worrisome. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

AMMAN – Anthropologists define themselves as scientists who observe the behaviour of people. I doubt that there were any anthropologists at the screenings this Monday and Tuesday at the Royal Film Commission. But the unique documentaries made by Arab filmmakers that hundreds of people saw would certainly qualify as visual anthropology.

These films made by mostly unknown filmmakers gave a rarely seen view of the Arab world and the lives of young Arabs searching for answers to philosophical questions of who they are and what they want.
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The following appeared in the New York Times Magazine
October 4, 2009
Can the Muppets Make Friends in Ramallah?

By SAMANTHA M. SHAPIRO
This season’s episodes of “Shara’a Simsim,” the Palestinian version of the global “Sesame Street” franchise, were filmed in a satellite campus of Al-Quds University, a ramshackle four-story concrete structure that houses the school’s media department and a small local television station. The building sits in an upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah, not far from the edge of the Israeli settlement Psagot. Like many structures on the West Bank, the Al-Quds building seems to be simultaneously under construction and decaying into a ruin. Some walls are pocked with bullet holes, from when the Israeli Army occupied the building for 19 days in 2001, during the second intifada. In another life, the building was a hotel, and the balconies out front where TV crews and students take smoking breaks overlook the crumbling shell of its swimming pool.
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By Daoud Kuttab

One of the most frustrating things about the American policy towards the Middle East is how Israel seems to always be able to get away with it or at least treated symmetrically with the Palestinians, whether there is cause for such symmetry or not.

This false symmetry was crystal clear last week when US President Barack Obama unjustly chided Israeli and Palestinian leaders equally. The US, who along with the EU, Russia and the UN make up the Quartet, is entrusted to evaluate the performance of the two parties committed to the “ roadmap to a permanent two-state solution to the Palestinian Israeli conflict”.
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The summit meeting between President Obama with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in New York yesterday might have been necessary. But for serious negotiations to resolve the decades long Middle East conflict a much more robust US involvment is needed. Washington can’t be neutral anymore and must announce which party is holding up progress.
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In the service of the community

By Daoud Kuttab

Jordan, like many other Arab countries, seems to be having a hard time understanding and dealing with the idea of public service broadcasting.

After decades of government-owned and controlled radio and television stations, under King Abdullah, Jordan began a new era of opening up the airwaves to the private sector. The Audio Visual Law enacted in 2002, which grants licence for radio and television stations to the private sector, succeeded in creating a wide range of commercial stations, but despite the licence to privatise, Jordan has failed to create a legal environment or introduce traditions that encourage and improve public service broadcasting.
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by Daoud Kuttab

This cycle has become so bizarre and confusing that Palestinians are not sure whether they should hope for continued tensions with Israel (which usually means no new settlements) or for continued negotiations (which usually provide cover for building settlements)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to approve new Jewish settlements on the eve of a possible settlement freeze is the latest round in a cycle that has been repeated so many times over the past 40 years that it would seem mundane if it were not so dangerous.

The cycle goes something like this: American or international pressure mounts on Israel to stop settlement activities in the occupied territories. Israeli settlers and their supporters then gather even more energy to expand onto more Palestinian land, build more exclusively Jewish settlements, and destroy more Arab homes before the so-called “freeze” comes into effect.
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OPINION (LA Times)

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is moving the process forward.

By Daoud Kuttab

September 10, 2009

Writing From Ramallah, West Bank – Something different is happening among the Palestinians. Their political leaders and civil servants are spending more time planning for a Palestinian state than criticizing the Israelis for their intransigence.

During the first congress of the leading Palestinian movement, Fatah, in 20 years, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to be dragged into belligerent rhetoric. He insisted that although Palestinians have the right to use all forms of resistance, he chooses diplomacy. The 2,000-strong congress of Fatah activists from around the world agreed last month to a platform that does not refer to armed resistance. Nonviolent direct action, however, is a different matter.
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by Daoud Kuttab

Palestinian nationalism has been a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, one cannot underestimate the important role it played in pulling together the Arab people of Palestine under a unified and clear national goal. But at a time when major countries in the world downplay nationalism in favour of regionalism, it appears chauvinistic and narrow-minded and has caused entire generations to sacrifice themselves in its name.

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