Israel and the Gaza War

Published: September 24, 2009

To the Editor:

Re “The Gaza Report’s Wasted Opportunity,” by David Landau (Op-Ed, Sept. 20):

The only missed opportunity regarding the report by Richard Goldstone was Israel’s illogical refusal to meet with the United Nations commission headed by a respected South African jurist who also happens to be Jewish and a Zionist.
Irrespective of the intention and the Israeli motive, the report concludes that Israel committed “war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.”
International humanitarian law is the only law binding the world community to some type of law about war. Palestinians will welcome any change to that law so long as it takes into consideration protection of a population that has lived under more than 40 years of a foreign military occupation.
Daoud Kuttab
Ramallah, West Bank, Sept. 20, 2009
The writer is a Palestinian journalist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/opinion/l25gaza.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=kuttab&st=cse

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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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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