The following appeared in Jordan Times

More illegal acts

by Daoud Kuttab | Jan 26,2012 | 22:34

Twenty-seven Palestinian parliamentarians who won in democratically organised elections are held behind Israeli bars without charge or trial. Their sin is that they dared believe in an electoral process that was hailed by democratic countries as the proper channel of political expression.

Palestinian cartoonists are describing Israeli jails as the headquarters of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

A few months ago, a group of six Palestinian residents of Ramallah decided to take a bus ride to Jerusalem. This was no ordinary ride. The Israeli government-funded bus they boarded links West Bank Jewish settlements to Jerusalem and Israel. The trip on this settler-only bus that travels on Palestinian roads did not last long. At the entrance of Jerusalem near the Palestinian village of Hizma, the Palestinian riders were forcibly taken off the bus and detained. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The Palestinian Israeli meetings that took place in Amman Tuesday and are to be repeated next week took many by surprise. After all, the Palestinian leadership has been resisting for months responding to tremendous pressures to go back to negotiations without conditions. Furthermore it has become conventional wisdom that as the U.S. and possibly Israel move into an election year there is nothing of substance that can be accomplished in talks that have not before. Continue Reading »

by Daoud Kuttab

Three years ago the Israeli army initiated a major military offensive against the people of the Gaza strip with the aim of stopping the shelling from Gaza and the release of one of their soldiers that was held in the strip. Over 1,400 Palestinians, many of them women and children, were killed, thousands were injured, and public, private and internationally owned properties were damaged as a result of the attack that came from land, sea and air. Continue Reading »