By Daoud Kuttab

Throughout history, liberation struggles have been waged inside prisons as much as outside them. When a national struggle stagnates, it is often the prisoners who remind the rest of the nation of the purpose and goals of their fight. February 2015 has proven to be an especially difficult month for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, in Ramon Prison in particular. Unlike other detention facilities, which have long descriptions and photos on the official Israel Prison Service website, Ramon Prison, located in the Negev Desert, only has a short description on its web page: “This prison is located on Ramon Mountain, right next to Nafha Prison. It was established in 2006 to keep security prisoners in custody.” The security prisoners, that is, the 920 Palestinians being held there, are on the verge of initiating a major protest likely to spread throughout the prison system.

In response, prisoners belonging to Islamic Jihad clashed Feb. 21 with guards attempting to enter Wing 4, where prisoners from the movement are held. Ramon is divided into seven wings with prisoners belonging to Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad clustered in one or more wings, depending on their numbers. Prisoners belonging to Hamas and Fatah have multiple wings, while unaffiliated prisoners are held in the remaining wings.

This led prison officials to place four Islamic Jihad prisoners in isolation cells. The following day, according to a Prisoners Club Report, Islamic Jihad inmates returned their food trays untouched and refused to participate in the prisoner count, conducted twice a day to ensure that no one has escaped. On Feb. 23, tensions further escalated when a prisoner from Gaza, Hamzeh Abu Sawwen, attacked a prison guard. In response, guards beat Abu Sawwen badly enough that he was taken to the prison hospital for treatment. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The Feb. 24 shooting death of 19-year-old Palestinian Jihad al-Jaafari by Israeli troops may have killed the last remaining working feature of the Oslo Accord — the 21-year-old agreement for security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In the early morning hours of Feb. 24, Israeli military units entered the Dheisheh refugee camp, situated in Area A, under Palestinian security control. The camp is two kilometers (1.2 miles) south of the main headquarters of the Palestinian National Guard in Bethlehem. According to the Oslo Accord, Israelis army units are forbidden in the areas under Palestinian security control, but years of Israeli violations have produced a simple unwritten understanding that when Israeli troops arrive, Palestinian security forces withdraw from the scene, and the local population normally engages them, throwing stones at the well-armed soldiers. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

When council woman Maria D. Quinones Sanchez from the city of Philadelphia walked into the Mas Islamic Center January 30th to meet with members of her constituency, she had no idea that she will find herself embroiled with the same kind of political controversy that is shaking up US-Israeli relations.

At the center which also contains the Hidayya Mosque, Sanchez met and honored an official of the Palestinian government. The Councilwoman from the seventh district of Philadelphia presented the symbolic Philadelphia Liberty Bell and a citation honoring the governor of Ramallah and El Bireh D. Laila Ghannam. The occasion was emotional as the Palestinian governor said that she hopes Palestine will be able to ring the bell of liberty and then removed her personal embroidered scarf and offered it to the Latino councilwoman as a gesture of friendship. Both Palestinians and American officials took pictures with the local Arab American community and proudly posted them on their respective Facebook pages. But that is when the troubles began.

Pro-Israeli US organizations and activists began research of the Palestinian governor and discovered a video in which Governor Ghannam participated on behalf of President Mahmoud Abbas in an event marking those Palestinians who sacrifices their lives in the Palestinian struggle. In a video uploaded on YouTube February 12th the governor is seen praising the leaders of the Palestinian revolution who died in the anti-occupation struggle. Ghannam calls these leaders “great” and the anti-Palestinian Israeli group Palestinian Media Watch accuses Ghannam of honoring arch terrorists. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Yasmine was born in July 2014 at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center. Six months later, she has yet to get a birth certificate from the Israeli authorities. While her mother Tamara was born and has lived all her life in East Jerusalem, young Yasmine’s sin is that her father hails from the nearby West Bank city of Beit Jala.

After reviewing her papers, the Israeli clerk asked for yet another document, an affidavit signed in the presence of a lawyer vouching that Tamara actually lives in the home for which she provided a valid rental agreement. Months earlier, Israeli social security officials had visited her at the very same home to see she lived at that address before approving what every Israeli citizen and resident is entitled to: free medical care including hospital coverage for delivering a baby. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

As the Palestinian-Israeli conflict awaits Israeli elections, a number of important local and international developments are taking place that could have a long-reach effect on it.

Israeli elections, set for March 17, have all but frozen all efforts to move the stalled peace process. U.S. officials, as well as their European counterparts, have made clear that they will not allow any endeavour at the UN or at any other international forum until the Israeli public makes up its mind about whether it wants Benjamin Netanyahu to continue as its leader.

Netanyahu is embroiled in an unprecedented public conflict with the White House in regard to the Iranian negotiations, which are also due to reach their climax by the end of March.

In the absence of political developments, a number of important processes are taking place with which whoever is elected in Israel will need to deal. Two major changes being cooked behind the scenes have to do with the boycott movement and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The efforts to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel received a number of big prizes recently. More than 700 UK-based artists have signed a petition announcing that they will boycott Israel and Israeli cultural events. In the U.S., students at the prestigious Stanford University voted 10-1-4 to initiate BDS against Israel. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The Arab-Jewish party Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) has been a small but permanent fixture in the Israeli parliament for years. It usually won four or five of the 120 Knesset seats in elections, providing a fig leaf to Israeli democratic claims without being able to influence either internal or external policies. In 2013, Hadash won four seats. This “problem” is set to change in the coming elections, ironically, as a result of the Israeli right’s attempts to keep Palestinian Arabs out of the Knesset.

Although he is not sure that the unification of democratic and peace forces in Israel will succeed in removing the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Odeh says, “This new experiment is still in its early stage.” However, the Haifa lawyer hopes that “this experience succeeds and continues because of the possibility of defeating the right wing.”

While focusing on the goal of removing the ruling right-wing government in Israel, the head of the Arab list is not very excited about the existing alternatives to Netanyahu. He tells Al-Monitor, “Our fight against the occupation, racism and discrimination constitutes a democratic alternative against the nationalist camp led by Netanyahu and the Zionist Camp led by [Isaac] Herzog and [Tzipi] Livni.”

Odeh is hoping that at the very least, their efforts, along with other democratic forces in Israel, can slow or stop what he calls a “deterioration toward fascism,” which he concludes is the result of the occupation. “Ending the occupation and establishing an atmosphere of peace are the first step in ending the racial discrimination against Arab citizens as a national minority,” he says.

Odeh is aware of the challenges ahead but has focused his attention on the need to encourage Arabs to participate in the elections that will not include any competition between Arab parties. He is hoping to increase the participation of Palestinian citizens in Israel from 56% in 2013 to 70% or more in this round.

The text of the full interview follows: Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

When Avraham Burg, former Knesset speaker and head of the Jewish Agency, attended a meeting of the socialist-inclined Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), he caught many people off guard. But the former Labor Party leader feels that anyone following his work should not be surprised.

The kippah-wearing son of Yossi Burg, the founder of the National Religious Party (the forerunner of today’s extreme Jewish Home headed by Naftali Bennett) told Al-Monitor that “Zionism expired” when the State of Israel was established. “In 1948, Israel was secular and socialist; today, in 2015, it is nationalist and capitalist,” he explained.

Burg, one of the founders of Peace Now, said that a total transformation of society is needed. He is very worried about the nationalism that pervades Israeli society and would like to see a change from “tribalism to a citizenship-based society.”

Burg is a strong advocate of equality, which he believes is the key to change and is needed on both the ethnic and the gender levels. For that reason, Burg told Al-Monitor that he is not very happy with the joint Arab list that Hadash will compete for in the Israeli elections. The only Jewish person on the list, expected to yield 12-15 mandates, is Dov Khenin, considered by the Israeli Democracy Institute the best parliamentarian in 2012. Khenin is No. 8, and only two women join him in safe spots on the list. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The U.S. response to the efforts by Palestinian president to join international organizations, including the International Criminal Court (ICC), is puzzling.

The spokeswoman of the U.S. State Department made an unusual attack in trying to express Washington’s opposition. “The United States does not believe Palestine is a sovereign state and, therefore, does not qualify to be part of the International Criminal Court,” said Jan Psaki after the UN secretary general confirmed that Palestine’s application to the ICC has been officially accepted.

That Palestine is not a sovereign state is not disputed; that is exactly the problem which has been around for 47 years and which the latest UN Security Council resolution would have rectified, had it not been for the U.S. negative vote and unfair pressures on African countries.

The Palestinian president has stated clearly for some time that if the UN Security Council does not address this problem, the UN’s latest non-member state will join the Rome Statute which regulates the issue of the criminal court.

Before the beginning of the Madrid Peace process that led to the Oslo Accords, Americans were careful not to use the term Palestine. James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state, instructed his staff to use the term Palestinians rather than refer to Palestine. But all this changed after Oslo. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was haunted last week by the Arabic saying “cutting livelihood is worse than cutting necks.” Abbas had stopped payment on the salaries of more than 200 security officers suspected of being loyal to renegade Fatah leaderMohammed Dahlan.

The officers received a short-term payout from a financial security net fund established by pro-Dahlan supporters to offset the “no-salaries decision,” according to Samir Mashrawi, a staunch Dahlan confidant. The denial of salaries to people who are essentially civil servants was harshly rebuked by many in Gaza and the West Bank, including by some of the most senior officials in Abbas’s own Fatah movement.

Tawfiq Tirawi, a senior Fatah Central Committee member and former head of intelligence, described the decision as a “mistake” and called for its reversal. Tirawi echoed many others when he told the Gaza-based Donia al-Watan website that members of Palestinian security have their “loyalty to the nation and legitimacy and not to any individual.” A petition signed by Fatah members of the elected Palestinian Legislative Council called for a reversal of the decision and for holding those responsible for it accountable. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The victory of the Greek Syriza Party, which won 149 out of 300 parliamentary seats, has brought major concerns for Israel but was welcomed by the Palestinians. The radical left-wing party scored a decisive victory in the snap elections held Jan. 25 in Greece.

The Greek elections were mostly about economic issues. The anti-austerity party has promised to stop the painful policies that have been imposed on Greece by Europe and world leaders. This rebellious spirit will be a major challenge to some of the leaders of the European Union. Germany and the United Kingdom are unhappy with the results of the elections, while French President Francois Hollande was among the first to congratulate the Greek leader citing the friendship that unites France and Greece.

It’s easy to understand why Palestinians welcomed the left-wing Greek party’s victory, given the party’s actions and statements of its leaders that clearly oppose the Israeli occupation. Clause 38 of the political program of the Syriza party opposes cooperation with Israel and supports Palestinian rights. It states: “Abolition of military cooperation with Israel. Support for creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.” Continue Reading »