By Daoud Kuttab

A strange phenomenon exists in Palestine these days. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is constantly attacked and criticized, continues to do very well in local and international polls, and his policies are generally well-regarded among ordinary Palestinians. What makes the Palestinian president such a Teflon leader, where accusations against him never stick and his popularity remains relatively high?

A simple search of social media will reveal a lot of negative adjectives associated with the Palestinian leader. He is called a traitor, Israeli puppet, sell-out, corrupt, unpatriotic, fraud and an unelected autocrat, among many other terms. Some of these accusations are at times publicly stated, as in the recent demonstrations staged in Ramallah against the peace talks. In speaking to his own Fatah leadership, Abbas even commented on the vile language that is being used in some of these public protests.

But for all this negative language leveled against the Palestinian leader, very little of it seems to stick. Public opinion polls consistently give Abbas high-performance ratings, and whenever he is polled against potential competitors, he and his Fatah movement have done very well. The latest pollconducted in August shows Abbas continuing to outpoll Hamas’ Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

In the early years of the Palestinian Authority (PA), one of its biggest goals was to establish sovereignty over Palestinian land. This included what is below the ground as well as the skies above. While the fight over land has been the biggest challenge, Palestinians have been successful in capturing the skies by launching tens of local radio and TV stations, which reserved available frequencies and prevented the Israelis from occupying them as well. This week, six new online radio stations were launched by the Bethlehem-based Palestine News Network.

The first annex of the Oslo Accords references the “possibility of licensing” radio and TV stations in the context of Palestinian elections. Initial licenses for Palestine TV and Voice of Palestine radio were in fact agreed upon, but a joint technical committee that was supposed to look into requests for private radio and TV licenses has rarely met and has not agreed on any private licenses.

This led the PA to encourage private organizations and individuals to apply for and get “special temporary permits” from the Ministry of Information. Tens of radio and TV stations hit the airwaves. The farsightedness of Palestinian leaders, among them Yasser Abed Rabbo, to provide for the proliferation of these stations proved to be prescient, especially in 2002, when the Israeli air force bombed and destroyed the studios and towers of the PA’s state-run radio and TV. Private stations complied with emergency requests for use of their frequencies to continue the work of the official Palestinian media until their towers could be repaired. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Information leaked to Al-Monitor from the hush-hush Palestinian-Israeli peace talks reveal that negotiators are stuck on where they should begin. Palestinians want the talks to begin where they left off the last time substantive talks took place, during Ehud Olmert’s premiership. At those talks, Palestinian and Israeli leaders apparentlymade headway on some of the most difficult issues, including borders and Jerusalem. The Benjamin Netanyahu government, however, appears to reject such an idea and wants instead to start from scratch. In the eyes of the Israelis, since all issues are open for discussion, the current government is not bound by any previous commitments or understandings.

Israel’s attempts to negate all previous understandings place the entire peace talks in jeopardy and bring back to the fore the Palestinians’ insistence that the talks be based on an agreed framework. The Palestinians want the talks to be based on the framework presented by US President Barack Obama in his 2012 speech to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. Obama’s framework is that the negotiations be based on a two-state solution along the June 1967 borders with some land swaps. The Israelis rejected this request, so the talks began without a framework, which has resulted in the negotiations being stuck at ground zero. Continue Reading »

Following appeared in Jordan Times and Huffington Post

By Daoud Kuttab

As the world is riveted to the Syrian crisis, it may surprise many to know that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations are still going on.

The talks, held in secret, do not appear to have achieved any discernible results yet. The absence of information, however, should not be used to indicate that the negotiators are doing nothing important.

Still, the issue of negotiations and time must be addressed clearly and frankly.

Most observers of negotiations would argue that parties to any set of talks rarely reveal their bottom line until the very end.

The hundreds of hours committed to the peace process have probably produced answers to all possible scenarios. What is needed is not negotiations but political decisions. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

It was reported on Aug. 30 that five Israeli-administered Palestinian schools operating in east Jerusalem have added the Israeli curriculum to their programs, causing a political firestorm. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the move, noting that it is part of a campaign dating back to 1967 to rewrite Palestinian history and undermine Palestinians’ identity. He also asserted that the imposition of the curriculum was a violation of international law and indicated that Israel had no intention of ending its occupation.

Within weeks of the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel extended its law and administration to east Jerusalem. Law and Ordinance Order no. 11, passed by the Knesset on June 27, 1967, declared the Palestinians of Jerusalem permanent residents, giving them and their institutions the same legal status as that of Israeli institutions in Tel Aviv. The Palestinians, however, were not granted automatic citizenship, but were eligible to apply for passports. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

Predicting the next Intifada, or popular outbreak, is next to impossible.

The past years have seen many predictions of an imminent third Intifada, only to have these expectations proven wrong.

While prophesying a wave of mass protests is difficult, one can look back at the last two Intifadas and the many smaller Intifadas and point out the ingredients that can possibly cause the third uprising.

One major ingredient of a popular uprising is the sense of hopelessness.

In 1987, 20 years after the Israeli occupation and eight years after the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement, there was no sign of a political process that would lead to the end of the occupation.

In 2000, similar disenchantment occurred, this time not because of the absence of a peace process but because of the failure of one. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

For the first time in decades, a major confrontation is about to take place in the Middle East in which Palestinians are totally uninvolved. The expected attack against Syria and the potential for the widening of the theater of war to neighboring countries has so far totally excluded Palestine. One informal chart shows lines of support and hatred between the various countries and parties in the region, with no mention of Palestine and Palestinians.

Part of the reason for confidence that Palestinians will not be on the receiving end of any retaliatory attack is the simple fact that in all direct and indirect threats by the Syrian government against Israel, Turkey and Jordan, the Palestinians have never been mentioned. In fact, Syrians, and for that matter, many other Arab regional powers, are competing to support Palestinians the most. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

One of the most repeated questions that was asked by many following the Israeli attack on Palestinians in the Qalandia refugee camp on Aug. 26 — which left three killed — was why? Why does the powerful Israeli army need to carry out a raid inside a Palestinian refugee camp at a time of relative quiet? More perplexing is why this was done during ongoing peace talks aimed at bringing an end to the 46-year Israeli occupation?

By Daoud Kuttab

An already strong alliance between the Jordanian and Palestinian leadership was made even stronger over the weekend. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat made an unusual public pledge on Aug. 24 by declaring that every document the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) plans to submit to the Israelis in negotiations will be first shown to Jordan. Also pledged was that every document the Israelis present will also be passed onto Amman.

What makes this allies so strong?

Palestinians, who have so far failed to acquire any role for the Quartet in the current talks and have even failed to secure a US presence inside the negotiating room, are now seeking a role for Israel’s best existing Arab peace partner. Israel has signed two peace treaties with Arab states: Egypt in 1979 and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1994. Peace with Egypt has been described as cold, and has been further sidelined by the changes in Cairo since the Arab Spring. With Jordan, which has the longest border with Israeli-controlled areas, the peace treaty has been solid and relations have been stable. Continue Reading »

By Daoud Kuttab

One of the longest-standing arguments between Israelis and Palestinians concerns the most efficient mechanism for solving their decades-old argument. Palestinians believe that the conflict is the result of biased and conspiratorial international involvement with one of the parties to the conflict, and therefore, can only be resolved if the international community is actively engaged to fix the situation.

Palestinians note that Israel was legitimized through the combination of a United Nations resolution and their abandonment by a colonial power to a people, many of whom had suffered in Europe in World War II. Furthermore, Palestinians believe that Israel’s creation in 1948 — which resulted in the eviction of the Palestinians from their land, creating the refugee problem and the occupation of more Palestinian land in 1967 — has been rejected by the international community in numerous resolutions and treaties that Israel has ignored. Therefore, the same international community has an obligation to this part of the world. Continue Reading »