By Daoud Kuttab

Municipal elections in most countries are not a big deal. But the Jerusalem municipal elections are a big deal for Palestinians, who have boycotted every election held in the city since 1967. Ever since the Israelis occupied east Jerusalem and unilaterally declared that the city’s two sides are now a “united city,” Palestinians have refused to field candidates or vote for the city council and mayor. This has resulted in Jewish Israelis continuously gaining every seat on the council of a city with between 250,000 to 350,000, depending on whether Palestinian Jerusalemites on the other side of the wall are included in the count.

On Oct. 8, the Arab affairs department of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) issued a statement calling on east Jerusalem residents not to vote in the elections scheduled for Oct. 22. The PLO said the municipality supports settlements in east Jerusalem and is turning it into a Jewish city, “which is a national and political issue and not an issue of providing services.”

“Participating in these elections will be considered normalization with the Israeli occupation authority, which means legitimizing the annexation of Jerusalem,” read the statement.

The call on Palestinians not to participate will certainly be heeded. In no previous elections have Palestinians in Jerusalem participated with numbers more than single digits. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

For nearly two years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior leaders have hammered home a single point: “Why are Palestinians refusing to negotiate with us?” Netanyahu repeatedly said that he would go anywhere — including Ramallah — to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and initiate peace talks. At one time, he suggested setting up a tent somewhere between Jerusalem and Ramallah, so that the two parties could meet and theoretically solve the decadeslong conflict.

Today, a good two months into the US-sponsored nine-month secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the only voice calling for public meetings is that of the Palestinian leader. Netanyahu, who waited 27 minutes and 48 seconds into his UN General Assembly speech to mention the Palestinians, appears to have all but forgotten his public demands to meet face to face with Abbas.

This week, Abbas appears to have pleasantly surprised Israeli Knesset members, whom he hosted at the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian government. The New York Times reported that Abbas did not use the word “occupation” in his public address to the Israeli delegation and barely mentioned the hot topic of Jewish settlements. Knesset member Hilik Bar, head of a 40-member left-wing caucus in the 120-member legislature, praised Abbas and his description of where the talks are heading. “I didn’t think it was going in a good direction. To hear that from Abbas, it is meaningful.” Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

This week, a Jordanian band went on a tour that includes the Golan Heights, Nazareth, Haifa, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. But the popular music group which is rated as one of the top five in the region faced a concerted social media and online attack as having participated in a politically unacceptable act.

Because the band members received visas from the Israeli embassy in Amman the band was attacked as having contributed to normalising relations with the Israelis.

The band, Autostrad, identifies itself as “an Ammani world, reggae, funk band from Jordan. Fronted by lead singer Yazan Alrousan, Autostrad was formed in 2007 with guitarist Hamza Arnaout, keyboardist Wisam Qatawneh, bassist Avo Demerjian, saxophonist Bashar Abdelghani and drummer Burhan Ali.

The online and social media campaign was launched by a number of young Jordanians and Palestinians, including some who are citizens of Israel .In an article published on a number of progressive sites, the writer says the band is welcome to Palestine only after it is liberated.A hashtag “welcome after it is liberated” also went viral as attacks against the music group mushroomed.

Efforts to boycott Israel are generally focused on international academics wanting to visit Israeli towns, not Palestinian locals inside Israel. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel says that it has developed guidelines on this issue in consultation with Palestinian civil society organisations since 2007. “All Arab-passport holders entering any part of historic Palestine (67 or 48) on an Israeli visa are normalising with Israel. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

The content of the poster seems surreal. A well-known Jordanian music group lists the locations of its concerts for Oct. 5 through 12 — the Golan Heights, Nazareth, Haifa, Ramallah and Jerusalem’s Old City for its last show. The decision by the highly successful Autostrad, led by Yazan Rousan, to cross the Jordan River using a visa issued by the Israeli Embassy in Amman has resulted in a backlash among its young Arab fans.

The planned tour has been met with a barrage of online and social media attacks for the band “normalizing” relations with the State of Israel. Autostrad has no publicly stated plans to interact with non-Palestinian Israelis, and the band’s concerts are aimed at Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as Syrians and Palestinians living in the Golan Heights and other Arab areas occupied in 1967.

The most specific and repeated argument has been made by Budour Hassan, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who argued that obtaining a visa from the Israeli Embassy in Jordan is a slippery slope that will make it easier for Arabs to “normalize” relations with Israel, not only to sing in front of an Arab audience. To be fair, Hassan does recognize that the issue of traveling to Israel has many points of view and feels that her criticism does not apply to Palestinians and non-Arabs holding other passports.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx2WogalhQI&feature=youtu.be

Video of the group at a concert in Cyprus, September 2012 (Sonia Breda) Continue Reading »

Daoud  Kuttab

The world’s preoccupation with Syria and the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli peace talks have provided radical Israelis with the long-awaited opportunity to establish a regular Jewish presence on land around Islam’s third-holiest mosque, which they consider the holy Jewish Temple Mount. What was a once-in-a-season infiltration by radical Jews has now become a nearly daily affair often involving mainstream Israelis.

Israeli security forces are also carrying out unprecedented closures of the entire mosque area to accommodate the growing interest of mainstream Jews rather than a few radicals. As extreme political forces within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the Knesset have cemented their power, the Israeli police have raised the security flag less and less often. The chief of Israeli police has the right to judge whether he feels that the entry of Jews into the mosque compound would cause a security risk.

One of the most active opponents of the constant Israeli actions is an Israeli citizen. Sheikh Raed Salah, the former mayor of the Arab-Israeli city of Um al Fahm, has created an organization to defend the rights of Muslims and their properties in Jerusalem and Israel at large. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

It seems that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began attacking Iran and its newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, even before the microphone at the UN General Assembly was turned on in New York. Without a proper introduction, except for recalling millennia-old Persian-Jewish relations, the Israeli leader launched into a blistering, take-no-prisoners attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A content analysis of Netanyahu’s speech brings home his obsession with Iran and Rouhani. In his 3,124-word speech, Netanyahu mentioned “Iran” or “Iranian” 70 times. The word “Rouhani,” uttered 25 times, even topped the word “Israel,” mentioned 24 times.

The Likud prime minister used multiple arguments against Iran and Rouhani. He pulled out the card about Iran’s human rights record. He referred to a 2005 quote by Rouhani about nuclear weapons capability to illustrate what he hinted at was a worldwide trick to convince the international community that the current president of Iran is anything but a moderate. He called his “favorite” Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a “wolf in wolf’s clothing” while dubbing Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”   Continue Reading »

by Daoud Kuttab

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official Twitter account made clear the goal of his late September visit to the United States. Before embarking on a plane Saturday [Sept. 28] for New York, Netanyahu posted on the 140-character social media site the simple statement, “I will tell #truth in face of the sweet-talk and the onslaught of smiles. One must talk facts and one must tell the truth.”

It is no coincidence that the Israeli leader is focusing on the issue of truth after President Hassan Rouhani clearly sucked the venom from Israel’s continuous attacks on Iran. By stressing issues like telling “the truth” and complaining about “the sweet-talk,” the Israeli leader is reflecting on the effectiveness of the newly elected and moderate Iranian leader to settle issues that have caused his country so much trouble in recent years. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

I received the following email Thursday, Sept. 26:

Intifada Youth Coalition (IYC-PAL) invites the media to report on our protests across Palestine on Friday, Sept. 27, designated “Al-Aqsa Friday,” against Israel’s gross violations of human rights and continued brutal occupation of Palestine. –Third Intifada of Anger against the Occupation in all Palestine

This call for public demonstrations, which ended with a link to a Facebook account, is certainly not new in Palestine. Nor is the fact that it originates from the youth, the largest demographic among the Palestinian population, or its dependence on new media rather than traditional media.

What is new is that the call comes at a time when Palestinian negotiators are participating in talks that aim to find a permanent solution for all outstanding issues between Israelis and Palestinians. In fact, Mahmoud Abbas alluded to this in his first ever address to the United Nations as the president of Palestine, saying that the Palestinian objective is to achieve a permanent and comprehensive agreement and a peace treaty between the states of Palestine and Israel. Abbas insisted that such an agreement will “resolve all outstanding issues and answer all questions, which allows us to officially declare an end of conflict and claims.”

Abbas spoke of his age (78), implying that this is the last chance to make peace with him and others in his generation. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Declaring a problem to be dangerous always brings to mind the story of the man who repeatedly, but falsely, warned his fellow villagers about a wolf, only to find a lack of response when the wolf does in fact appear. This seems to be the situation unfolding in Jerusalem these days, specifically at the Haram al-Sharif compound, the site of Al-Aqsa mosque — the third-holiest mosque in Islam.

The Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, is a walled area comprising one-sixth of Jerusalem’s Old City. The 35-acre compound includes mosques, museums, gardens and religious schools. For 46 years, Israelis and Palestinians have been able to agree on how to manage this extremely sensitive religious area.

Since the Israeli occupation that began in June 1967, the understanding has allowed for the leadership of the Islamic waqf, or religious endowment, to run the affairs of the mosque and regulate visitors to it. This has been accomplished without Israel ceding what it considers to be its sovereignty over and right to east Jerusalem, which it annexed unilaterally within weeks of its occupation. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Analysts often sift through royal speeches, interviews and addresses to find trends in the Kingdom’s senior leadership direction. However, sometimes one must focus on the phrases and themes that are not mentioned in these texts.

Technological development has enabled in-depth, high-speed access to check how often specific words or phrases are used in certain texts.

In the last few months, King Abdullah II issued a fourth discussion paper, held a meeting with the Chinese News Agency’s editorial board, published an article in World Policy Journal and gave a speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations. Continue Reading »