By Daoud Kuttab

Mahmoud Abbas holds many titles.

He is the head of the Fateh movement, chairman of the PLO’s executive committee and president of the state of Palestine. Technically and legally, the Palestine Liberation Organization is superior.

The state of Palestine, declared a non-member state in the UN in 2003, is subservient to the PLO. In mere numbers, the state of Palestine, under occupation and lacking sovereignty except in large West Bank cities, is not as important as the PLO, which represents some 12 million Palestinians inside and outside Palestine.

But the PLO is an empty shell. It was originally made up of guerrilla movements that have since been silenced, and its offices around the world have been replaced by embassies of the state of Palestine. Hanan Ashrawi was one of 10 members of the PLO’s executive committee who resigned two weeks ago. She said that PLO agencies (except the negotiating department) get no or very little budgets.

The resignation, orchestrated by Abbas and his aides, was aimed at triggering an extraordinary session of the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO’s parliament in exile. The idea was to trigger clause 15 B of the PLO by-laws that calls for an emergency meeting without the need for a quorum. Abbas wanted to have the meeting in Ramallah and wanted to get the entire 18-member committee, which includes his latest rival, Yasser Abed Rabbo, replaced by some of his loyalists. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Unless one is a news junky and follows all local news religiously, one probably missed three important issues related to the media freedoms in Jordan.

They include the three main media stakeholders, the government, media owners and the public. I will leave the juiciest story last.

The prime minister issued a memo Tuesday to all relevant government ministries and departments, urging all to adhere to the Access to Information Law and providing the ministries with a template form that the public can fill out in order to seek information.

The memo, based on the 2007 law (Jordan was the first Arab country to introduce such a law) orders officials to comply with requests within the legal 30-day period and in case a document is not released, give the reason for the rejection.

On the same day, UNESCO launched the Jordan Media Index, a lengthy, well-researched report that assesses Jordan’s media status in five key categories.

Guy Burger, the head of UNESCO’s freedom of expression department, praised the report, calling it one of the best, “if not the best”, of its kind.

Burger said that free media are necessary for democracy, and urged Jordan to improve its legislative framework to give more freedom to the press in order to encourage democratic discourse. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The picture posted by Deacon Fadi Abu Sa’ada on his Facebook page Aug. 30 spoke volumes, and the image of medics helping a nun injured by Israeli tear gas raised anger among Palestinians.

The protest rally in the Beit Jala neighborhood of Beir Ona began peacefully but soon turned into clashes between Palestinian civilians and church leaders on one side and Israeli soldiers on the other.

The protest was led by a revered church leader, Patriarch Michel Sabbah. Sabbah, the former head of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, made an impassioned public plea for an end to Palestinian land confiscation by Israel: “This is our land, and will always remain ours. They claim it’s their land, but they use their soldiers, their tanks, their military occupation to force their will — and it is not their land. It is our land, and one day their forces will withdraw and the land will return back to its indigenous Palestinian owners.” The patriarch concluded by saying that his message to the Christian world, the international community and the Arab world is that “This Holy Land is burning.” Continue Reading »