Palestine, media, Jordan, community radio, online journalism
By Daoud Kuttab AMMAN, Jordan — Hugh Robertson, Britain’s minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, has opposed calls to arm the Syrian rebels, instead insisting that all sides need to return to the negotiating table. “Generally speaking if you want to end a war, arming both sides is not the way to do it,†he…
By Daoud Kuttab When Palestinian leaders agreed to suspend their efforts to join various United Nations agencies last summer, the United States assured them that all 104 long-term Palestinian prisoners held by Israel would be released. This was not the first time that the United States had made such a promise. At the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh summit, attended…
By Daoud Kuttab A leading Palestinian official has said that the end of March, rather than the end of April, could be the date that the Palestinian leadership moves to join United Nations agencies. “Our agreement was clear,†Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, told Al-Monitor in an exclusive interview. “In return for Israel releasing all…
By Daoud Kuttab A search is on among Christian evangelists to find a new theology that can take the place of the discredited dispensational theology, which many are unable to defend in light of the realities on the ground. The most critiqued part of dispensationalist theology is blindly assigning support for the state of Israel in the…
By Daoud Kuttab Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received a hero’s welcome in Ramallah after returning from what was billed as a tough summit in Washington with US President Barack Obama. Abbas was hailed as having stood his ground in the Oval Office meeting, resisting strong pressure from the United States to budge on at least two publicly…
By Daoud Kuttab The loss of the Nazareth mayoralty in the March 11 recall elections marked the beginning of the end of the Israeli Communist Party in Israel. Ramez Jaraisi, the mayor for nearly four decades, lost to Ali Salam, who won more than 61% of the city’s votes. Israeli Communist leaders in Nazareth accepted defeat and issued a statement six…
By Daoud Kuttab A Palestinian college in Bethlehem will host a weeklong conference aimed at weakening the traditional evangelical support to Israel, despite strong Israeli pressures. The third Christ at the Checkpoint Conference at the Bethlehem Bible College is expected to host the “widest and most diverse†group of evangelical Christians, according to conference organizers. The…
By Daoud Kuttab For 46 years the bridge connecting the West Bank with Jordan has been a source of hardships, humiliations and extremely long and unnecessary delays, not to mention cumbersome and exaggerated body and baggage searches. This nightmare has to end. What happened on Monday morning March 10th is a symptom of the occupation versus occupied paradigm…
By Daoud Kuttab The possibility that Palestine will soon have an access-to-information law is looking promising. Concrete steps by the Palestinian government and a public advocacy campaign are being taken to prepare for such a decision. Despite the Palestinian Legislative Council being dormant for seven years due to the internal Palestinian split, Ramallah is poised to pass a…
By Daoud Kuttab The stage appears set, if the Palestinian leadership chooses, to reconcile the Gaza Strip with the West Bank and end the unjust siege that has fallen on Gaza for the past seven years. Palestinian-Israeli peace talks scheduled over a period of nine months are due to end in April. Palestinians had agreed in late…