‘Peace if Palestine solved’
‘Land takeover continues’
“THE Arabs since 1948 and until now have failed to transform into reality their slogan of liberating Palestine. This failure has forced many Palestinians to live in many Arab countries as refugees and face a bitter life,” columnist Fahd Dawood Al-Sabah wrote for Annahar daily.
“This happens at a time when some Arab countries are seeking to make relations with Israel based on peace in some or the other way. Moreover, there are some Arab parties which are currently working to waive the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland by opening the doors of immigration before them to get rid of the burden that is caused by their existence in their countries.
“This situation was realized by some Palestinian leaders from the very beginning of their cause and had given their consent to the realistic solutions to deal with this issue and this had resulted in the formation of the current Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the West Bank of Palestine.
“However, this authority is currently facing another attempt to liquidate the Palestinian cause as the Israelis continue to build settlements in the West Bank to make it difficult or rather impossible for the Palestinians to found their independent state and impose this reality on the PNA to force it accept the Israeli viewpoint.
“For the time being, there are some parties which are calling for the establishment of a Confederation between the PNA and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This proposal is likely to lead to a permanent solution for the Palestinian cause. However, the latter shall remain alive. Moreover, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will not be transformed into an alternative homeland for the Palestinians.
“However, the proposed confederation shall help keep alive the Arab joint work on a specific framework to be governed by a unified point of view and eventually get rid of a state of division which currently governs the relations among the Arab countries over the Palestinian cause whereby this shall result in Israel exploiting this scenario among the Arab countries and attempt to conclude peace accords with some Arab countries separately based on the Israeli method.
“However, it is apparent the Jordanian/Palestinian Confederation seemingly runs contrary to the interests of both Jordan and Palestine, but in its essence this confederation shall help serve the two parties.
“In this context, we elucidate that Jordan at the moment has limited resources with big youth energies, while the Palestinians are in need of a base so that they can be in a position to practice their life naturally and build their economic base that shall help them exit from the impasse of refuge and seek the foundation of their own State even on a small ‘piece’ of land.
“However, this goes without saying that this State will be in a position to use a lot of national capitalists that will attract the necessary manpower in the framework of its economic projects that shall help both Jordan and the West Bank economically.
“In this context, we have to confess that both the Jordanians and the Palestinians can be seen as highly qualified among the Arabs and the peoples boast of significant scientific and economic might capable of producing a huge productive network in various fields.
“This means in case of such a might being created by Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, this shall definitely constitute a significant rival for Israel.
“Moreover, this prospective development will help ease the burden currently facing the PNA and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, particularly in terms of dealing with the issue of refugees.
“However, we have to keep in mind that the proposed confederation will not nullify the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, rather this development shall pave the way for placing this right in the plenum of implementation.
“Moreover, this shall give an opportunity for the reunion of the Palestinian components and call on the international community to work seriously to bring the Palestinian refugees to their homeland and force Israel to relinquish its schemes of Judaizing the remaining part of Palestine.
“In the meantime, the international community must keep in mind that solving of the Palestinian issue shall end the state of extremist animosity between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
“Likewise, we must confess that making peace represents the most complicated task to be undertaken by the concerned leaders, since we know the previous experiments have proved that the Jordanian monarch King Abdullah II is one of the most skilful peacemakers in the region, given his ability to deal with the West efficiently more than any other leader.”
Also:
Al-Sabah
“In the realm of politics everything is subjected to change so much so things can change overnight based on international interests on one hand and the regional interests on the other,” columnist and former MP Abdulmohsen Yusuf Jamal wrote for Al-Qabas daily.
“In this context, we have observed how the events in the Arab region are changeable through unprecedented manner and this means the things which we consider unchangeable, can easily change any moment to meet the satisfaction of the struggling international powers since the latter calls on the regional powers to accept the solutions whose salient features will be drawn by the UN Security Council in the latter’s capacity as supervisor of international peacekeeping as its founders had planned.
“Given the above, all countries will have no choice but to accept the proposed solutions without being involved in a long dialogue whatsoever. In this regard, we have to keep in mind that the interests of the Middle East region will not be subjected to our desire in this part of the world rather they will be imposed on us by the international powers.
“In this context, following the end of the Arab/Arab struggles which currently take place in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya we expect some kind of détente in several areas in a prelude to draw a new Middle East project the first phase of which will end the existence of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization or the so-called ‘DAESH’ in addition to the disappearance of other terrorist organizations in various countries.
“Such being the case, the future shall witness the appearance of new allies among some parties which are currently at loggerheads to keep abreast with the new interests of the great powers.
“However, if this happened, every country in the region will have its own calculations and new attitudes, because everything in the political realm is changeable, but it is needless to say within this equation there will inevitably be some winners and some losers.”
“It is wrong to think that the ideology of Islamic jihadist groups was born within a moment, or had emerged recently. Anyone who delves into this matter and examines it thoroughly, impartially and objectively will discover that it is an old thought, which began with the emergence of states and colonization and had then flourished and blossomed as a result of the fertile environments that embraced it,” Nasser Al-Aidan wrote for Al-Rai daily.
“He who traces the roots of this thought to a particular region or a country known by name is wrong. Such a thought is trans-boundary since the time it originated.
“According a report published by Al-Arabiya TV channel following the suicide-bombing by a Pakistani national near a Saudi hospital in Jeddah, the ‘takfiri’ jihadist ideology is not Saudi. The report stressed that the source of this thought is Pakistani, formed by Syed Abul A’la Maududi. He had founded Jamaat-e-Islami in Lahore, also known as ‘the Heart of Pakistan’, which has long been dealing with political Islam and demanding the application of Sharia.
“We are not here to identify the soil of origin that embraced this thought or the state of origin or even the origin of the source of terrorism or jihadist thought. However, it is useful to know the blocs of this thought and its foundations so that its agenda can be understood and be able to confront it, bearing in mind that the basis of this thought may be intact but it might have been misinterpreted and applied intentionally or by mistake.”
“I was astonished on reading a report written by a researcher and a Jewish blogger of Iraqi origin and published in one of the major Israeli newspapers, which talked about the Iraqis and their interest in Israeli affairs,” columnist Hisham Al-Diwan wrote for Al-Shahed daily.
“The blogger claims receiving e-mails, social media accounts, letters of praise, and a desire to deal with, work with or migrate to Israel. I know that there is prominent Gulf Arabs who deals secretly or openly with Israel.
“I thought that only American pressure was behind this arrangement. But the fact that an Iranian journalist and blogger turned to Israel and what Linda Menachem wrote in the Maariv newspaper on Aug 17 prompted me to reflect on how much Israel is benefiting from current developments in the region.
“On the one hand, there is deliberate mismanagement in Iraq, with three sides behind it — America, Iran and Saudi Arabia. There is a terrorist organization which is born because of the contradictions between these three parties.
“If the words of Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence officer who is hiding somewhere in Russia, who said on Tuesday the same day the article of the Jewish blog in Maariv was published are correct, he exposed the American role politically and at intelligence level.
“In the scores of documents he leaked to the British Guardian and the Washington Post, he asserted beyond any doubt that the US and British intelligence collaborated with the Israeli Mossad in the manufacture of an ‘anti-human body’ for sick souls and extremists in the world to what he described as wasps’ nest.
“He said the leader of the terrorist organization, who is known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had received intensive training in Israel. In addition to his military training, the documents say Baghdadi has studied communications and received various tips to address the masses in order to attract militants around the world.
“One of the persons interested in following up on what happened in the area brought to me an Iraqi named Ghaith al-Tamimi, a former general who claimed to be a cleric and another Iraqi cleric named Farqq al-Qazwini.
“Both are eloquent in language and logic, but they contradict the Holy Qur’an and the Sharia. This interest led me to study the Iraqi situation between the jaws of America and Israel on the one hand and the IranianSaudi sectarian conflict that made Tehran the guardian of Iraq.
“It is true that Iraq is facing a fierce war against terrorism, and it is true that Iran is somehow appearing in the front lines with the Iraqis in the war against a terrorist organization. But Iraq is now experiencing one of its worst periods in history.
“During the rule of Saddam Husain, half of the Iraqi women and girls wore the hijab expressing their hatred to the regime. Under the rule of Iran and America, the Iraqis found no destiny but Israel to cozy up to. What a condemned excuse and what a wicked action.”
“The new electricity tariff on investment properties has created a new burden on the tenants, which will only help the landlords to increase the profit. It is a kind of government bias towards traders at the expense of the weakest,” columnist and former Director of the Culture Department at the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters Waleed Al-Rujaib wrote for AlRai daily Monday.
“As long as there are no controls or law to regulate or determine the payment of electricity, this additional cost will be borne by the tenant, who already suffers from the insane rise and greed of rents and the owner is entitled to change the terms of the contract and force the tenant to pay the cost of the electricity which has risen from two fils to five fils per unit and the gallon of water rose from 800 fils to a dinar, which is a big rise.
“Kuwait may be one of the countries where the cost of living is very high given the astronomical rise in rents of apartments and cost of food and other stuff including the increase of petrol last year.
“These artificial and unfair increases are not borne by the traders, the owner of the property, or owner of the agencies or the investors. The so-called consumers protection laws which they say are just are illogical, since they protect the merchants.
“All that the landlord tells the tenants when they voice their grievance is: ‘That is the law and it must be enforced’. But if the laws were against landlords, they would have raised hell, protested and shouted. A few years ago, the government allocated a billion-dollar fund to support real estate owners. This is a lack of justice in the distribution of income, as if the pockets of the popular groups are perforated.
“Those affected by rise in electricity and water tariffs are the least financially able, such as young married men and expatriates who earn less than their Kuwaiti counterparts, as well as other categories who have been forced to hire apartments such as divorcees and some needy families.
“We see that raising the electricity tariff on investment properties is more like the pulse of the public and the political forces. Therefore, this increase did not include citizens in residential areas. This is in view of the expectation of imposing VAT, which will transform Kuwait from a rich welfare state into a poor country.”
— Compiled by Zaki Taleb