Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. Presently he is a visiting professor at Princeton University in the United States. Mr. Kuttab is the former director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, Palestine and the founder of AmmanNet, the Arab world's first internet radio station. His personal web page is www.daoudkuttab.com
While the world press has widely reported the controversy surrounding South Africa's invitation to the Palestinian prime minister, it has failed to publish in full what the South African intelligence minister said defending the decision. I am reprinting it below. The idea that this is a reward to terrorism avoids dealing with the underlying issue.
Bashir Goth is a veteran journalist, freelance writer, the first Somali blogger and editor of a leading news website. He is also a regular contributor to major Middle Eastern and African newspapers and online journals.
For most Arabs, the Bush administration's boycott of the Palestinian government is the epitome of hypocracy. The U.S. pushed for democracy in the Middle East, and got it. The more the West shuns democratically elected Arab leaders, the more the Arab people believe it's because of Islam. These leaders should be engaged instead.
William M. Gumede is Associate Editor at Africa Confidential. He is Research Fellow at the School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He recently released the bestselling book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC.
It is perhaps now an opportune moment for the international community to lift the aid embargo it imposed on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas came to power in elections last year. The embargo only hurts and alienates the Palestinian people, not their leaders, and strengthens hard-line elements in Hamas.
Saul Singer is Editorial Page Editor and author of the weekly column “Interesting Times” for the
Jerusalem Post. He is the author of
Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and the World After 9/11. Before moving to Israel from the Washington area in 1994, Mr. Singer served for ten years as an advisor on the personal and committee staffs of the United States Congress, including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Banking Committee, and Senator Connie Mack.
The sad thing about the countries that are undermining the international diplomatic embargo against Hamas is that they are harming the cause they claim to be trying to advance -- the cause of peace. Hamas is not interested in ending the violence, they even steal Mickey Mouse to inculcate a culture of war in Palestinian children.
Lamis Andoni is a Middle East consultant for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news station. She has been covering the Middle East for 20 years. She has reported for the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times and the main newspapers in Jordan. She was a professor at the Graduate School in UC Berkeley.
Palestinians do not get to choose Israel's leaders, nor should Israel impose its choice of government upon the Palestinian people. Violence or not, Haniyeh is a representative of those people. Sanctioning the violence unleashed by established powers while condemning the acts taken by the oppressed will not resolve the root causes.
Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, he is also the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Dubai School of Government. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006.
He teaches annually at American University of Beirut, University of Chicago and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University and Stanford University, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum.
He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA.
A negotiated settlement ended South African apartheid, as did former enemies talking to each other finally end the decades of bloodshed in Northern Ireland with a unity government this week. It is not realistic to have one standard of conflict resolution for the whole world, and another just for Israel.