Category: Palestinian politics

By: Daoud Kuttab* The biggest question in the upcoming elections for the Palestinian legislature is not how many seats Hamas will win. Nor are people questioning how the mixed elections (district and national) will play out. The real question on most Palestinian’s lips these days is who will represent the leading Palestinian party (movement).

By Daoud Kuttab The mood is becoming upbeat in Palestine these days. Election fever is building up as December and January are expecting important polls. Major Palestinian cities, like Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron,Gaza , Jenin, Rafah, are due to elect mayors and city councils in December. The following month, the entire Palestinian public is due to…

by Daoud Kuttab Some of the speakers and participants said a conference called for by the Palestinian Authority to discuss how to have an effective public relations campaign was tens of years overdue. Titled “Talking to the world”, the invitation was issued by Information Minister Nabil Shaath and attended by the top public and private…

By Daoud Kuttab As was predicted, the Israeli government is moving quickly to absolve itself of any and all responsibility for the people of the Gaza Strip. The latest sign of this has been the order signed by the Minister of Interior Ophir Pines declaring Gaza foreign territories and, as a consequence, the four Israeli…

By Daoud Kuttab For 37 years, Israel has consistently rejected Palestinians’ and the world view that the status of the areas its military took in 1967 was occupied. When Israel was not using the biblical terms of Judea and Samaria (to refer to the West Bank) they used the terms “administered territories” or “disputed territories”. That…

By Daoud Kuttab Ramallah – In the mid-80s Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli researcher on the West Bank and Gaza, came up with the term irreversibility when referring to the difficulty that will be met to reverse the trend of Jewish settlement activities in the Palestinian territories. His concept, which was well intended and has a…

In the mid-80s Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli researcher on the West Bank and Gaza, came up with the term irreversibility when referring to the difficulty that will be met to reverse the trend of Jewish settlement activities in the Palestinian territories. His concept, which was well intended and has a lot of merit, has been…

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The unilateral Israeli decision to withdraw troops and evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip has thrown a monkey wrench in the works for all parties. Palestinians and other international players have been especially confused as to how to proceed. The answer is: through negotiations — not one-sided actions.

The withdrawal of Israeli troops and the evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza, after 38 years of occupation, is the most recent proof of the limits of military power, even when that power is overwhelming. Now is the time to take stock of the lessons learned from the years of occupation and resistance in order…

Thirty-eight years after Israeli troops rumbled into the Gaza Strip, Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, real change on the ground is taking place. Israel is adding the Gaza Strip to Sinai (as well as south Lebanon) on the list of occupied areas that it has decided to abandon. But unlike the Sinai…