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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By Daoud Kuttab

Except for a short encounter on a plane years ago, I had never met in person Salam Fayyad. I certainly didn’t have any communications with him before I wrote the piece praising his two year planhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/daoud-kuttab/fayyads-brilliant-two-yea_b_270253.html for Palestinian statehood. No one from his office had sent me a copy of the plan or suggested that I write about it.

However, I did hear from the Palestinian prime minister after it was published. At around noon on Monday the 31st of august, my cell phone rang and the person on the other side identified himself and said that Prime Minister Fayyad wanted to talk to me. Mr. Fayyad got on the phone and he thanked me for the article and said that I understood him perfectly. He was especially keen to tell me that I was the only person who actually who understood the difference between a de facto state and a unilateral declaration of statehood. The latter being in direct contradiction to a 2002 US congressional resolution calling on the US president to monitor that the Palestinian authority doesn’t make a unilateral declaration. Prime Minister Fayyad also liked the fact that I stressed the pro active nature of the plan and that I differentiated between the role of the political role of the president and the civil service role of the prime minister. I noted to him that some of his own ministers have been bad mouthing the plan even though they had participated in it. Fayyad confirmed that a special retreat for all his cabinet had taken place weeks earlier in which this plan was thoroughly discussed and approved. He was clearly unhappy with the way some of his own government had not fully backed the plan. Fayyad thanked me again and invited me for a longer discussion at a time to be determined later.
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Palestinians have finally started to act in a different way. Instead of cursing the occupation, the new strategy is aimed at building up the desired Palestinian state. The idea is to force the Israeli to the negotiating table rather than beg them to come. The way to do that is to work for a state as if there were negotiations.

This idea has been brilliantly developed by the Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad who has called for the de facto creation of a Palestinian state within two years. It is hard to ignore or oppose this idea if he persists in working on it.

Fayyad’s blueprint includes plans to end the Palestinian economy’s dependence on Israel, unify the legal system and downsize the government. The idea, submitted by him after weeks of meetings with his ministers and staff, also involves building infrastructure, harnessing natural energy sources and water, and improving housing, education and agriculture.

An airport in the Jordan Valley, the reclaiming of the Qalandia airport and the creation of an oil refinery are some of the strategic ideas that are included in the Fayyad plan.

Talking to the press, the minister said that wanted the American president arriving in Palestine with Airforce One on an international airport, and not just on a small airstrip.

Fayyad told the Times of London that he made the plan public in order to “end the occupation, despite the occupation”. The former World Bank official kept his positive and determined attitude in his talk with the British paper.

“We have decided to be proactive, to expedite the end of the occupation by working very hard to build positive facts on the ground, consistent with having our state emerge as a fact that cannot be ignored. This is our agenda, and we want to pursue it doggedly,” he told the Times.
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By Daoud Kuttab

Fatah, the key Palestinian guerilla movement within the Palestine Liberation Organisation, moved one step closer to becoming a political party.

Having held its sixth congress for the first time in the occupied territories, it would be hard to continue pretending to be a liberation movement. Officially, however, the over 2,000 delegates, representing former Fatah fedayyin (guerillas) and Intifada activists, voted to continue the resistance and the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Resistance, however, was explained in a much wider perspective than the military struggle.
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It has taken 20 years, but the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Fateh) has finally held its sixth general conference allowing for a much-needed influx of new blood into the movement. The conference, which opened in Bethlehem on August 4, registers many historic firsts. It is the first conference of a liberation movement to be held within an area it is hoping to liberate from a foreign occupying force. It is also the first time that Fateh holds a conference on Palestinian territory. In addition, it is the first time that Fateh holds a conference in the absence of its founder and long-time leader Yasser Arafat.
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Following appeared in the Jordan Times today

Status of Jerusalem

By Daoud Kuttab

The standoff between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government remind many of a similar standoff between the US and Israel in the 90s when Bill Clinton was president. At the time Netanyahu insisted on Israel’s right to build Har Homa settlement on the Palestinian Jabal Abu Ghneim on the edge of Bethlehem. Today, Har Homa is a thriving settlement with thousands of Jewish Israelis residing in the complex built on expropriated Palestinian land. While the US president seems determined to stop the Israelis from their illegal activities, many are worried that the issue might be pushed aside or resolved as part of a larger agreement.

Jerusalem remains as the single biggest obstacle in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Palestinians consider the eastern sector as the future capital of an independent Palestinian state, while the Israelis insist that the entire city remains as their capital.
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By Daoud Kuttab

In private talks held in Oslo and other places, Palestinians were promised an independent state, but were told by the Israelis that they couldn’t actually use these words in the agreement. They were told that the five-year transitional period, which began in 1994, was meant to convince the Israeli public to accept this eventuality.

The person promising a sovereign state, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by his own people and Palestinians had to start all over again with a right-wing leader who had no interest in talking to them. Continue Reading »

Ever since his announcement that he was going to make a major address, the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was billed as a copy of the Obama speech in Cairo. In fact Netanyahu has been touting himself for some time as the Israeli Obama. His election campaigners tried to copy all of the American president’s style using the exact same website look and attempt to use the Internet to garner support. The speech was even given to a university audience and some Israeli media outlets were joking that Bibi was asking his wife if she remembered any Quranic verses that he can use in his speech. Continue Reading »

Daoud Kuttab

AMMAN – The main conclusion emerging from the Obama-Abbas meeting last week is that the United States continues to be dead serious about its demand that Israel immediately freeze all settlement activities. Considering all the hot button topics, some might argue that issues of withdrawal, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian right of return, ought to be much more important. So why has the demand to freeze settlement activity become the defining issue?
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