Palestine, media, Jordan, community radio, online journalism
By Daoud Kuttab As Palestinian and Israeli negotiators begin their second round of peace talks with a special focus on borders and security, an entirely Israeli set of judges will decide the fate of one Palestinian community south of Hebron. The area, known to Palestinians as Masafer Yatta, spans over 12,200 cultivated dunums and contains 12…
Daoud Kuttab Whenever peace negotiators agree to hold secret peace talks, rumors tend to fill the information gap. The absence of regular, updated news and comments on the day’s events and statements plays into the hands of radical groups whose aim is to thwart and derail any potential progress in the negotiations. When the…
By Daoud Kuttab Military occupation is not normal. Holding a population against its will using military power is considered by the civilized world in the 21st century an abnormal act that must be rectified. The issue, however, becomes complicated with 46 years of one people ruling over another. It is further complicated and can be…
By Daoud Kuttab Whenever peace talks are considered there are two elements that need to be attended to: the actual negotiations and the public at large. The negotiations themselves require agreement on the parties to the talks, the framework on which the talks are based, the duration of the talks and the various procedures that…
By Daoud Kuttab During the difficult reconciliation efforts between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas, a resolution was found to deal with the issue of talks with Israel, which the latter refuses to recognize. The Hamas leadership conceded that the PLO could negotiate with Israel provided that any agreement reached is put to a public…
By Daoud Kuttab Peace talks generally require a parallel strategy aimed at communicating and convincing a reluctant public of its importance, value and ultimate benefits to the warring parties. One might think that nine months of publicly stated “secret” talks would require little communication. But the contrary is the case. The United States, which…
By Daoud Kuttab Students of political negotiations might remember the long and difficult discussions in Paris about the shape of the negotiating table for the talks to end the Vietnam War. In the Palestinian-Israeli context, the discussion is not so much on the shape of the table as it is about the participants at the table. One of…
By Daoud Kuttab The body language evident in two recent pictures of American, Israeli and Palestinian officials speaks volumes. The first was of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas along with US Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli President Shimon Peres. The picture was taken during the World Economic Forum held on the Jordanian side of…
By Daoud Kuttab The dinner with US Secretary of State John Kerry on July 29 will be the first face-to-face meetings between Israeli and Palestinian officials in more than three years. It is unclear what the agenda of the two days of meetings at the State Department will be, but it is clear that instead of the incremental process…
By Daoud Kuttab The case before the US Court of Appeals in Washington involved whether an American couple could register their son as being born in “Jerusalem, Israel.†Challenging the US State Department in the suit were, in addition to the child’s parents, were a number of major prominent US Jewish organizations — including…