Palestine, media, Jordan, community radio, online journalism
By Daoud Kuttab The results of the snap elections in Greece, which propelled the leftist Syriza Party to power this week, sent shockwaves to many world capitals. Alexis Tsipras, the new prime minister, has vowed to fulfill his electoral promises, including reversing the harsh austerity plans that Europe has imposed on his country. French President…
By Daoud Kuttab Good cartoonists can summarize major issues with a simple image. The Palestinian cartoonist Khalil Abu Arafe summed up the Palestinians’ warm welcome for the joint list of Palestinian citizens of Israel to compete in the Israeli parliamentary elections scheduled for March 17. In a Jan. 24 cartoon, Abu Arafe depicts Ayman Odeh,…
By Daoud Kuttab The United States, which has progressively moved toward recognizing the State of Palestine, has suddenly backed away from even using the word Palestine. Were the previous positions merely lip service and are we now witnessing the true US position, or did the United States backtrack to please Israel? A look at the…
By Daoud Kuttab The statement was made Jan. 15 by US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power in New York. The setting was the UN Security Council’s monthly debate on the Middle East, the scene of a failed attempt to set an end date to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The justification, as expressed by Power,…
By Daoud Kuttab The Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo Jan. 15 approved a Palestinian request to return to the UN Security Council to seek an end to the Israeli occupation. The ministers did not set a date for the next UN campaign, leaving the decision to a committee made up of Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania,…
By Daoud Kuttab The participation of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in France’s mega unity demonstration in Paris on Jan. 11 was apparently not of his own making. A day earlier, the Secretariat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had announced plans to hold a rally in support of France in Manara Square in Ramallah at…
By Daoud Kuttab Very few people know that in Islam there are two kinds of jihad. The smaller Jihad is the more known one namely the one which reflects the military a struggle. But the greater Jihad which is less known is the internal Jihad- or Struggle. Few people also know that the Arabic word…
By Daoud Kuttab Both the content and the body language reflected a profound Israeli irritation. “We will not allow IDF soldiers and commanders to be hauled before the International Criminal Court [ICC] in The Hague,” said an angry Benjamin Netanyahu at the opening of the weekly Cabinet meeting on Jan. 4. The response of the…
By Daoud Kuttab There is an Arab saying about depriving people of options. It says: “Don’t break a full loaf of bread and don’t eat from a broken loaf but feel free to eat as much as you want.” This is the international community’s response to Palestinian efforts to end the unjust 47-year-old Israeli occupation….
By Daoud Kuttab One of the most exasperating problems facing Palestinian efforts to end the Israeli occupation has been conveying to the world the daily suffering that they endure under it. The difficulty of the effort continues, as the Palestinians struggle to find an effective strategy internally or through the world’s leading forum, the UN Security Council, to lift the occupation. The interest…