State of Palestine NOW: Daoud Kuttab’s Anguished Cry
It’s a cry from the heart by Palestinian journalist/activist Daoud Kuttab who urgently calls for the establishment of a full-fledged state of Palestine to be recognized internationally by one and all.
The familiar refrain Jerusalem-born Kuttab has intoned over the decades comes in a self-published book “State of Palestine NOW: Practical and logical arguments for the best way to bring peace to the Middle East,” emphasis on NOW, as an easy-to-read primer on the benefits his homeland would contribute to regional and international peace and stability, were it to reach that coveted status.
“State of Palestine is not a theoretical book but a practical guide,” wrote Palestinian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Varsen Aghabekian Shahin in the foreword. “It provides a road map for countries and leaders worldwide that talk about the two-state solution but do little to translate their words into policy.”
Kuttab covers the history of Palestinians’ disenfranchisement, dispossession and subjugation by an apartheid regime for close to eight decades and brings the reader up to date on developments since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israelis at a rave festival with the relentless retaliatory war Israel launched on the Gaza Strip, and beyond, that “ended” in a ceasefire on January 19, 2025.
While Israel violated all rules to continue its indiscriminate attacks and siege and prevented foreign media from entering Gaza, still the war on Gaza, with the high human cost of Israeli carnage, has revived the Palestinian cause like no other event. The protests of American university students, including at the prestigious Ivy League colleges, showed that the justice of the Palestinian cause and the struggle against settler colonialism cannot be shut down or drowned out no matter what.
Despite countless setbacks to the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the apocalyptic devastation in the Gaza Strip (a/k/a the largest open air prison in the world), courtesy of the Israeli killing machine, the author still hopes Palestinians can live in peace side-by-side with those who took over historical Palestine and turned it into Israel in 1948.
The sticking point is what kind of Palestinian state should exist. An independent entity, in which case there would be a two-state solution, or become part of Israel in one state, which seems extremely elusive.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the creation of an independent Palestinian state in 2024 is the existence of illegal Jewish Israelis who have left the international recognized state of Israel within the boundaries of the pre-June 1967 war and decided to move into the occupied territories. The aim was clear in their belief in that they are the descendants of Jews returning to their land after thousands of years. It made little difference that Palestinian Arabs have been living on this land for centuries and that they had inhabited the land from time immemorial as documented in the Holy Bible, which refers to Arabs both in the Old and New Testaments. Perhaps the most important reference is that when the Apostle Peter was divinely empowered to speak to thousands on the Day of Pentecost, one of the languages he spoke was Arabic (a Semitic language), as mentioned in the Book of Acts 2:11. (“Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”)
Unlike purely academic studies, Kuttab weaves in personal anecdotes and vignettes from his own family’s experience into the larger conflict, thereby making the storytelling more relatable.
The Palestinian refugee issue is very personal for me and our family. My father, his mom and brother are refugees of the 1948 Nakba even though they never lived in tents in the many Palestinian refugee camps that dot the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. I grew up hearing stories from my dad about what happened in the years before they became refugees. There is no doubt in my mind that the pre-state armed Zionist groups were fully responsible for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. There are many formulas for addressing this highly challenging issue, but I believe all fail if they do not include something that is quite simple and has been demanded by Palestinians in negotiation talks: That Israel accepts its historic and moral responsibility for causing the Palestinian refugee problem.
Kuttab’s plea echoes what Firas Maksad, senior director for strategic outreach at Washington’s Middle East Institute, described as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamad Bin Salman’s (MBS) willingness to normalize relations with Israel, which incoming President Donald Trump views as “the deal of the century,” in return for establishment of a Palestinian state.
“But I do think that the price has gone up,” Maskad told CNN. “It’s very clear that they need a Palestinian state, as a minimum, some of us think, acknowledgment that a pathway, a credible, non-reversible time-bound pathway, towards a Palestinian state, just given how much Arab public opinion has hardened as a result of this devastating 15-month war now in Gaza.”
There’s another complicating factor, Masked added. Trump will need votes from Democrats in the Senate to see a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia through as part of that normalization package and it will be a heavy lift for the Trump administration.
A bone to pick with Kuttab is that he wrote the book combining his thoughts and wishes on the fly. He admits in the acknowledgements that by avoiding the traditional publishing route, he may have saved time but “probably sacrificed a few things in the content, direction and overall approach.”
Although Kuttab said the book had been edited, the text still needs extensive review to tidy the grammar, fix punctuation, clean up spelling, cut run-on sentences, eliminate redundancies and tighten the writing.
Daoud Kuttab is director general of the Community Media Network (CMN), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arab region. It’s registered in Jordan and Palestine and administers Radio al Balad in Amman, and www.ammannet.net, the Arab world’s first internet radio station.
Kuttab is also a former Ferris professor of journalism at Princeton University and was a founding board member of the Amman-based Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), the leading non-profit organization dedicated to investigative journalism across the Arab World. He established and presided over the Jerusalem Film Institute in the 1990s. In 1995 he helped establish the Arabic Media Internet Network www.amin.org, a censorship-free Arab website.
His articles and columns have appeared in The Jordan Times, The Jerusalem Post, Lebanon’s defunct The Daily Star, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angles Times, Britain’s The Daily Telegraph, HuffPost, Al Arabiya TV network’s website and Japan’s Shimbum Daily. He has co-produced a number of award winning documentaries and children’s television programs and received several international awards.