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Tehran,
June 2009
Middle
East Report Online
June 28, 2009
By Kaveh Ehsani,
Arang Keshavarzian and Norma Claire Moruzzi
The morning
after Iran’s June 12 presidential election, Iranians booted up
their computers to find Fars News, the online mouthpiece
of the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus, heralding the dawn
of a “third revolution.” Many an ordinary Iranian, and many a
Western pundit, had already adopted such dramatic language to
describe the burgeoning street demonstrations against the declaration
by the Ministry of Interior that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sitting
president, had received 64 percent of the vote to 34 percent
for his main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi. But the editors
of Fars News were referring neither to the protests, as
were the people in the streets, nor to the prospect that the
unrest might topple the Islamic Republic, as were some of the
more wistful commentators. Rather, the editors were labeling
the radical realignment of Iranian politics that they wish for.
This realignment would complete the removal of the old guard,
as did the “first” revolution of 1978-1979, and consolidate the
rule of inflexible hardliners, as did the “second revolution”
symbolized by the US Embassy takeover of 1979. Full
Story>>
An Artist as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Middle East Report Online
June 11, 2009
By Shiva Balaghi
Something’s happening here. In one of the largest street demonstrations
in Tehran since the 1979 Revolution, thousands filled Vali Asr Street
(formerly known as Pahlavi Street) on Monday, forming a human chain
nearly 12 miles long and stopping traffic for nearly five hours.
They wore strips of green cloth around their wrists and heads in
support of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. They sang
“Ey Iran,” the unofficial national anthem composed in the Pahlavi
era by one of the leading figures of classical Persian music, the
late Ruhollah Khaleghi. Banned for a time by the Islamic Republic,
the song’s lyrical melody touches a deeply patriotic vein. Full
Story >>
Old Wine in Older Skins: Lebanon
Elects Another Parliament
Middle East Report Online
June 6, 2009
By Heiko Wimmen
On
June 8, when all votes are cast and counted between the glitzy
urban quarters of Beirut and the dusty hamlets of the Bekaa
valley, the Lebanese elections will have produced one certain
winner: the local advertising industry. Despite a newly imposed
cap on campaign spending, candidates have been falling over
each other to plaster the billboards along the roads and highways
of this miniscule country with their oversized likenesses and
airy slogans. Crowded out by the politicians, some peddlers
of more pedestrian seasonal merchandise have retaliated in kind,
with a brand of cheap fruit juice poking fun at notorious practices
of vote rigging by promising democracy
"extra," thus drawing attention to its product by the
same name, while the only locally produced beer brand declared
itself "victorious for lack of competition" already
three months ago -- true to the form of much of the electoral
contest. Full Story>>
The
Shi‘a of Saudi Arabia at a Crossroads
Middle East Report Online
May 6, 2009
By Toby Matthiesen
Deep in the morass of YouTube
lies a disturbing video clip recorded in late February at the
cemetery of al-Baqi‘ and on surrounding streets in Medina, Saudi
Arabia. An initial caption promises images of “desecration of
graves.” Al-Baqi‘, located next to the mosque of the prophet
Muhammad in the second holiest city of Islam, is believed to
be the final resting place of four men revered by Shi‘i Muslims
as imams or successors to the prophet: Hasan ibn ‘Ali, ‘Ali
ibn Husayn, Muhammad ibn ‘Ali and Ja‘afar ibn Muhammad. The
prophet’s wives, as well as many of his relatives and close
associates, are also said to be buried here, making the ground
hallowed for Sunni Muslims as well. Full Story>>
Pakistan’s
Troubled “Paradise on Earth”
Middle East Report Online
April 29, 2009
By Kamran Asdar
Ali
Tens
of thousands of people have fled their homes in areas of Pakistan’s
North West Frontier Province (NWFP) as the army has launched
ground operations and air raids to “eliminate and expel” the
Islamist militant groups commonly known as the Tehreek-e Taliban
or the Taliban in Pakistan (TIP). The targeted districts border
Swat, a well-watered mountain vale described as “paradise on
earth” in Pakistani tourist brochures, where the provincial
government tried to placate the Taliban by agreeing to implement
Islamic law (sharia). The February agreement, the Nizam-e
Adal regulation, was approved by the lower house of the Pakistani
parliament on April 12 and signed into law soon afterward by
the president, Asif Zardari. But since then, fighting has continued,
with both sides accusing the other of breaching the peace. As
of April 27, according to a cleric close to the TIP, talks with
the provincial government about Swat are suspended. Full
Story>>
The
Reawakened Specter of Iraqi Civil War
Middle East Report Online
April 17, 2009
By Michael Wahid
Hanna
April has already
been a cruel month in Iraq. A spate of bombings aimed at Shi‘i
civilians in Baghdad has raised fears that the grim sectarian
logic that led the capital to civil war in 2005-2007 will reassert
itself. On April 6, a string of six car bombs killed at least
37 people; the next day, shortly after President Barack Obama
landed in Baghdad, another car bomb killed eight; and on the
morrow, still another bomb blew up close to the historic Shi‘i
shrine in Kadhimiyya just northwest of the capital’s central
districts, taking an additional seven civilian lives. Worryingly
for Iraqis, the bombings occurred following gun battles between
the security forces of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shi‘i-led
government and Sunni Arab militiamen, fueling rumors that the
disgruntled militiamen have spearheaded the violent campaign. Full
Story>>
Bouteflika’s
Triumph and Algeria’s Tragedy
Middle East Report Online
April 10, 2009
By Jacob
Mundy
Shoes
and pants soaked with rain, I tagged along with a journalist
from the popular Arabic daily Echorouk -- his paper my umbrella
-- while he visited polling stations in the Belcourt neighborhood
of Algiers on the day of local elections in November 2007. At
the first site, disgruntled party officials quickly ejected
us. We did not have the right papers, they said, and the police
who looked on bored were inclined to agree. At the second station,
we kept our distance. Watching for half an hour, we could count
the voters who entered on two hands. Next to us stood four youths,
escaping the rain under a shop awning. They laughed at us when
we asked if they were going to vote. Down the road we saw an
older gentleman on his way back from voting. For the occasion,
he had donned a woolen Nehru-type cap and a brown burnoose,
to which he had proudly affixed a medal earned during the war
for independence from France (1954-1962). Full
Story>>
Introducing
Algeria’s President-for-Life
Middle East Report Online
April 1, 2009
By Ahmed Aghrout
and Yahia H. Zoubir
Across nearly
the breadth of North Africa, the head of state enjoys a lifetime
appointment. Morocco has a king. In Tunisia, Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali, president since 1987, pushed for a constitutional amendment
removing term limits and has now announced a bid for a fifth
term in office. President Husni Mubarak of Egypt, who assumed
office in 1981, is already serving his fifth term. Libyan strongman
Mu‘ammar Qaddafi, in power since September 1969, has never permitted
a meaningful election. In March, during a visit to Niamey, Niger,
where President Mamadou
Tandja is also seeking to rescind term limits, Qaddafi denied
that such measures are “anti-democratic,” declaring: “I am for
freedom of popular will; the people must choose who should govern,
even if it is for eternity.” Full
Story>>
The
Hazy Path Forward in Sudan
Middle East Report Online
March 24, 2009
By Sarah Washburne
On
the day after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued
an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the
wanted man addressed a pre-planned rally of thousands in front
of the presidential palace in Khartoum. Bashir was defiant,
denouncing the warrant as “neo-colonialism,” and praising his
supporters in Martyrs’ Square as “grandsons of the mujahideen,”
a reference to the participants in the Mahdiyya uprising against
Anglo-Egyptian rule in 1885. The atmosphere was almost one of
jubilation; one might have mistaken the crowds for soccer fans
celebrating a win. As Bashir condemned the ICC and the West
from the microphone, the protesters waved the Sudanese flag
and held aloft pictures of Bashir, as well as posters depicting
the face of Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, superimposed
upon the body of a pig. There were sporadic outbreaks of drumming,
dancing and singing. Full Story>>
Bring
In the Dead: Martyr Burials and Election Politics in Iran
Middle
East Report Online
March
19, 2009
By Rasmus Christian
Elling
Beating their
chests and wearing black, a procession of young men and women
filed toward the gates of Tehran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic University
on February 23. The mourners -- drawn primarily from the ranks
of the Basij militia and unaffiliated hardline Islamist vigilantes
-- were carrying the remains of five unknown soldiers, martyred
during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, to campus, where they intended
to rebury them. Inside the gates, a gathering of angry students
had assembled to protest what they saw as a blatant show of
state force, and when the procession crossed onto campus, a
confrontation ensued. Students claimed the fight pitted 1,500
protesters against a smaller group of mourners, most of whom
were armed with clubs, knives and martial arts weapons. Security
forces arrested more than 70 of their number, the students reported,
and nine were hospitalized. In subsequent days, more student
activists were picked up in police raids, and at press time,
some of them were still in detention. Full Story>>
Assessing
Italy’s Grande Gesto to Libya
Middle
East Report Online
March
16, 2009
By Claudia
Gazzini
The
Song Does Not Remain the Same
Middle
East Report Online
March
12, 2009
By Ramin Sadighi
and Sohrab Mahdavi
Starting
in the late 1990s, and especially following two stories by CNN's
chief international correspondent, the British-Iranian Christiane
Amanpour, Westerners were treated to a slew of articles and
broadcast reports aiming to “lift the veil” on Iran. Amanpour’s
second story revolved around “youth and the party scene.” She
visited the house of another hyphenated Iranian to show a group
reveling in youthful abandon, toasting each other with alcoholic
drinks to the tune of playful music, and so consuming two illegal
items of consequence in the Islamic Republic. With youth, it
seemed, came merriment and rebelliousness. Full
Story>>
Interventions
Interventions
is a feature in Middle East Report Online offering
critical reviews of important Middle East-related books,
films and other cultural production. Click here for
past Interventions articles.
Shooting
Film and Crying
Interventions
Ursula Lindsey
March 2009
Waltz
with Bashir (2008) opens with a strange and powerful
image: a pack of ferocious dogs running headlong through
the streets of Tel Aviv, overturning tables and terrifying
pedestrians, converging beneath a building’s
window to growl at a man standing there. It turns
out that this man, Boaz, is an old friend of Ari Folman,
the film’s director and protagonist. Like Folman,
he was a teenager in the Israeli army during its 1982
invasion of Lebanon. And the pack of menacing dogs
is his recurring nightmare, a nightly vision he links
to the many village guard dogs he shot -- so they
wouldn’t raise the alarm -- as his platoon made
its way through southern Lebanon. Full
Story>> |
Wanted:
Omar al-Bashir—and Peace in Sudan
Middle
East Report Online
March
5, 2009
By Khalid Mustafa
Medani
For the first
time, the international community has indicted a sitting president
of a sovereign state. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan stands accused
by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague of “crimes
against humanity and war crimes” committed in the course of
the Khartoum regime’s brutal suppression of the revolt in the
country’s far western province of Darfur. Having indicted two
other figures associated with the regime in 2007, ICC prosecutor
Luis Moreno Ocampo began building a case against the man at
the top, and on March 4, the court issued a warrant for Bashir’s
arrest. Full Story>>
A
Litmus Test for Iraq
Middle
East Report Online
January
30, 2009
By Reidar Visser
Former
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari arrived in Basra on
January 24. His mission in the southern oil port was to stump
for his Reformist Front, a breakaway faction of the Da‘wa Party
of the current premier, Nouri al-Maliki, ahead of Iraq’s January
31 provincial elections. His itinerary included visits to the
Five Miles area -- often described as a stronghold of the movement
loyal to the young Shi‘i leader Muqtada al-Sadr -- as well as
a rally at a sports stadium. Only days earlier, he had been
preceded by Maliki himself, and in the first days of 2009 numerous
other national politicians trooped to Basra as well. Full
Story>>
The
Continuity of Obama’s Change
Middle
East Report Online
January
27, 2009
By Mouin Rabbani
and Chris Toensing
President
Barack Obama’s campaign pledge that his administration would
begin working for peace in the Middle East from its first day
in office is one that he almost met. On January 21, a mere 24
hours after his inauguration, Obama placed phone calls from the
Oval Office to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian
Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Husni
Mubarak and Jordanian King ‘Abdallah II. The next day, together
with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, he visited the State Department to announce the appointment
of former Sen. George Mitchell as the new special envoy for the
Middle East. Full Story>>
Birth
Pangs of a New Palestine
Middle
East Report Online
January
7, 2009
By Mouin Rabbani
Shortly after
11:30 am on December 27, 2008, at the height of the midday bustle
on the first day of the Gazan week and with multitudes of schoolchildren
returning home from the morning shift, close to 90 Israeli warplanes
launched over 100 tons of explosives at some 100 targets throughout
the 139 square miles of the Gaza Strip. Within minutes, the near
simultaneous air raids killed more than 225 and wounded at least
700, more than 200 of them critically. These initial attacks
alone produced dozens more dead than any other day in the West
Bank and Gaza combined since Israel’s occupation of those lands
commenced in June 1967. Full
Story>>
Cast
Lead in the Foundry
From
the Editors
December 31, 2008
A
stopped clock, the saying goes, is right twice a day. The “senior
Bush administration official” who chatted with the Washington
Post on December 28 was right that Israel is “not
trying to take over the Gaza Strip” with the massive
assault launched the previous day, and correct that the
Israelis are bombing now “because they want it to
be over before the next administration comes in.”
That’s twice, and so one must take this official’s
remaining reasoning -- that President-elect Barack Obama
may not smile upon Israel’s gross abuses of military
power as the Bush administration has done -- with a grain
of salt. Full Story>> |
Dangerous
Liaisons: Pakistan, India and Lashkar-e Taiba
Middle
East Report Online
December
31, 2008
By Graham Usher
The
day after Christmas, the wires buzzed with reports that Pakistan
was moving 20,000 troops from its western border with Afghanistan
to locations near the eastern border with India. The redeployment,
said Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Qureshi, came in response
to “certain developments” on the Indian side of the
boundary, one reportedly being that New Delhi might be considering
military strikes on militant bases inside Pakistan. Pakistani
security officials stressed that these moves were “minimum
defensive measures”: No soldiers had been taken away from
the theater of counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban
and al-Qaeda, only from “snowbound areas” where the
army sits idle. Still, the troop transfers marked another dip
in relations between India and Pakistan since the November 26
massacre of over 170 people in the Indian metropolis of Mumbai. Full
Story>>
Interventions
Interventions
is a feature in Middle East Report Online offering
critical reviews of important Middle East-related books,
films and other cultural production. Click here for
past Interventions articles.
Recipe
for a Riot: Parsing Israel’s Yom Kippur Upheavals
Interventions
Peter
Lagerquist
November
2008
On
October 8, 48-year old Tawfiq Jamal got into his car with
his 18-year old son and a friend, and set out for the house
of his relatives, the Shaaban family, who lived as of then
in a new, predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the eastern
edges of Acre. A walled city on the sea, mainly famed in
the West for having served as the CENTCOM of the crusading
Richard the Lionheart, Acre is today a “mixed” Israeli
town, inhabited by Jews as well as Arabs like Tawfiq. That
day, he was on his way to pick up his daughter, who had
been helping the Shaabans prepare cakes for a wedding scheduled
for the following week. He insists that he drove slowly
and quietly, with his radio turned off. It was Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement, one of the holiest days of the Jewish
religious calendar, on which the streets of Israel’s Jewish
cities and towns customarily empty of traffic. After he
parked his car at the Shaaban home, a group of Jewish youths
attacked Tawfiq and chased him inside. For the next few
hours, a mob besieged the place, and as rumors spread that
one of its inhabitants had been killed, Arab youths poured
out of the city’s old casbah ghetto, some reportedly to
come to the rescue. On their way back home the youths proceeded
to break a number of windows in Jewish shops. Full Story>> |
Bypassing
Bethlehem’s Eastern Reaches
Middle
East Report Online
October 7, 2008
By Nate Wright
The town of
Bayt Sahour spills down the hills to the east of Bethlehem, spreading
out along ridges and valleys that mark the beginning of the long
descent to the Dead Sea. Up the slopes the roads carve out twisting
rivers of dirt and asphalt, wending their way through clusters
of soft brown stone houses, but across the ridges they run straight
and smooth.
At
the end of one of these roads lies a hill called ‘Ush Ghurab,
known to Israelis as Shdema, the name of the military base that
sat on the summit until 2006. Today there are only a few hollowed-out
buildings, thick concrete blocks with gaping windows and doorways
set low behind earthen walls, to remind visitors of the previous
occupants. On the northern slope, small pillboxes stare out vacantly
over Bayt Sahour and Bethlehem. Full Story>>
Livni
in Principle and in Practice
Middle
East Report Online
September 30, 2008
By Peretz Kidron
On the eve
of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, the sitting Israeli prime
minister spoke more plainly than ever before in public about
what will be required of Israel in a comprehensive peace with
the Palestinians and Syria. In a September 29 interview with
the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, Ehud Olmert said that,
to achieve peace, “we will withdraw from almost all the territories,
if not all the territories” that have been under Israeli occupation
since the 1967 war, including most of the West Bank, East Jerusalem
and the Golan Heights. Particularly coming from Olmert, who long
opposed the notion of swapping land for peace, these words might
have inspired hope that deals on the Palestinian or Syrian fronts
were at hand. Full
Story>>
Interventions
Interventions
is a feature in Middle East Report Online offering
critical reviews of important Middle East-related books,
films and other cultural production. Click here for
past Interventions articles.
Another
Struggle: Sexual Identity Politics in Unsettled Turkey
Interventions
Kerem Öktem
September
2008
What
happens when almost 3,000 men, women and transgender
people march down the main street of a major Muslim metropolis,
chanting against patriarchy, the military and restrictive
public morals, waving the rainbow flag and hoisting banners
decrying homophobia and demanding an end to discrimination?
Or when a veiled transvestite carries a placard calling
for freedom of education for women wearing the headscarf
and, for transsexuals, the right to work? Full
Story>> |
Lebanon’s
Post-Doha Political Theater
Middle
East Report Online
July 23, 2008
By Stacey Philbrick
Yadav
After 18 months
of political paralysis punctuated by episodes of civil strife,
Lebanon finally has a “national unity” cabinet -- but the achievement
has come at a steep price. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and new
President Michel Suleiman announced the slate for the 30-member
cabinet on July 11, six weeks, and much agonizing and public
criticism, after Lebanon’s major political factions agreed on
Suleiman’s presidential candidacy and principles of power sharing
at a summit in the Qatari capital of Doha. As with much else
in Lebanon, however, the words “national unity” are sorely at
odds with reality. If anything, the politicking behind the composition
of this cabinet has deepened the polarization of the country.
The battle lines are largely familiar: the classic sectarian
divides, as well as economic and regional disparities sharpened
by the lagging pace of reconstruction following the 2006 war.
And the March 8 and March 14 forces, the two cross-sectarian
blocs named for the protests organized by their respective camps
during the 2005 “Beirut spring,” remain in polar opposition even
as they sit together at the cabinet table. Full Story>>
Pakistan
Amidst the Storms
Middle
East Report Online
June 27, 2008
By Graham Usher
Less than
three months after being formed, Pakistan’s coalition government
is in trouble. The leader of one of its constituent parties,
Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), is awaiting
a decision from the country’s Supreme Court about whether he
can run in parliamentary by-elections that began on June 26.
The court is packed with judges appointed by President Pervez
Musharraf, the ex-general who overthrew Sharif, a two-time prime
minister, in a 1999 coup. Full
Story>>
Lebanon’s
Brush with Civil War
Middle
East Report Online
May 20, 2008
By
Jim Quilty
When Israel
commenced its bombardment of Lebanon on July 12, 2006, Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and his general staff declared that the
air raids were provoked by Hizballah’s kidnapping of two Israeli
soldiers that day. As the destruction piled up over the ensuing
33 days, then, Lebanese did not ask themselves, “Why is Israel
bombing us?” Rather, the question in many Lebanese minds, those
of ordinary citizens and analysts alike, was “Why did Hizballah
provoke this? Why now?” The implicit answer -- that the Shi‘i
Islamist party was acting in the interests of its friends in
Tehran and Damascus rather than those of its constituents and
compatriots in Lebanon -- has reverberated through the country’s
political discourse ever since, with few bothering to recall
the rhetorical and historical precedents for the abduction operation.
Full Story>>
Interventions
Interventions
is a feature in Middle East Report Online offering
critical reviews of important Middle East-related books,
films and other cultural production. Click here for
past Interventions articles.
Lawfare
and Wearfare in Turkey
Interventions
Hilal
Elver
April
2008
With
war on its eastern borders, and renewed turmoil inside
them, Turkey is transfixed by something else entirely:
the desire of university-age women to wear the Muslim headscarf
on campus, a seemingly innocent sartorial choice that has
been forbidden by the courts, off and on, since 1980. At
public meetings and street demonstrations, in art exhibits,
TV ads, and dance and music performances, headscarf opponents
argue vociferously that removing the ban will be the first
step backward to the musty old days of the Ottoman Empire.
A quieter majority of 70 percent, according to a recent
poll, thinks that pious students should be allowed to cover
their heads, perhaps because approximately 64 percent of
Turkish women do so in daily life. There is almost no middle
ground between the two poles: Even completely apolitical
Turks have gravitated one way or another. Full Story>> |
Underbelly
of Egypt’s Neoliberal Agenda
Middle
East Report Online
April 5, 2008
By Joel
Beinin
It was business
as usual for Orascom, a gigantic Egyptian conglomerate with major
interests in everything from Cairene highway construction to
Red Sea luxury resorts to cell phones in Iraq.
On
February 26 Orascom Construction Industries, one of the Orascom
family of enterprises, proudly announced that it had acquired
the International Company for Manufacturing Boilers and Steel
Fabrication (IBSF) for $13.6 million. The corporate press release
trumpeted the doubling of Orascom’s steel capacity, but mentioned
nothing about the fate of the firm’s workers or its recent history.
Those stories, as told by a group of skilled IBSF workers --
a lathe operator, a machinery fitter, a welder and a storeroom
supervisor, each with at least 20 years’ experience in the factory
-- are the underbelly of the advancing neoliberal agenda in Egypt.
Fearing reprisals from the firm, they asked that their names
not be used and spoke in the name of their trade union committee
and its president, Husayn Abu Dahab. Full
Story>>
Debating
Devolution in Iraq
Middle
East Report Online
March 10, 2008
By
Reidar
Visser
In early August
2007, Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a Shi‘i preacher affiliated with
the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, made headlines with striking
comments to a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor.
The cleric revealed in an interview with Sam Dagher that “a massive
operation” was underway to secure the establishment of a Shi‘i
super-province in Iraq, to be named the “South of Baghdad Region,”
and projected to encompass all nine majority-Shi‘i governorates
south of the Iraqi capital. Saghir claimed that his party had
already drafted detailed plans for how such a super-province
would be governed -- plans of such importance to Iraq and the
region that there was “no room for misadventures.” While Saghir
did not mention a timeline for this remarkable undertaking, other
Supreme Council supporters of the idea were less reticent: “The
Shiite federal region will be announced in April 2008,” wrote
one enthusiastic proponent. Full
Story>>
Disengagement
and the Frontiers of Zionism
Middle
East Report Online
February 16, 2008
By
Darryl Li
In
mid-January, when Israel further tightened its blockade of the
Gaza Strip, it hurriedly assured the world that a “humanitarian
crisis” would not be allowed to occur. Case in point: Days after
the intensified siege prompted Hamas to breach the Gaza-Egypt
border and Palestinians to pour into Egypt in search of supplies,
Israel announced plans to send in thousands of animal vaccines
to prevent possible outbreaks of avian flu and other epidemics
due to livestock and birds entering Gaza from Egypt. Medicines
for human beings, on the other hand, are among the supplies that
are barely trickling in to Gaza now that the border has been
resealed. Full
Story>>
In
Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means
Middle
East Report Online
November 26, 2007
By Robert Blecher
and Mouin Rabbani
At an intersection
in front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women threaded a knot
of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed across the
street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t you
see the red light?” Not long after, his patience exhausted, the
self-appointed traffic cop himself stepped off the curb and made
his way to the other side of the boulevard. Such is life in the
West Bank on the eve of the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, where
the Bush administration intends to create the semblance of a
“peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians for the first
time since it assumed office. There is excitement in Palestinian
towns about the urban order newly emerging from years of chaos;
there is a willingness to play by the rules even as many remain
convinced that doing so will not get them very far; and, lastly,
there is the reality that when the waiting grows tiresome, people
will again take matters into their own hands. As for the Annapolis
meeting itself, it is being greeted with indifference, with few
believing it will lead to either meaningful change in their daily
lives or substantive progress toward the end of an Israeli occupation
now in its fifth decade. Full
Story>>
War
Is Peace, Sanctions Are Diplomacy
Middle
East Report Online
November 23, 2007
By Carah Ong
The White
House is pressing ahead with its stated goal of persuading the
UN Security Council to pass far-reaching sanctions to punish
Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear research program. Sanctions
are what President George W. Bush is referring to when he pledges
to nervous US allies that he intends to “continue to work together
to solve this problem diplomatically.” The non-diplomatic solution
in this framing of the “problem,” presumably, would be airstrikes
on nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic. Full
Story>>
The
Militancy of Mahalla al-Kubra
Middle
East Report Online
September 29, 2007
By
Joel Beinin
For
the second time in less than a year, in the final week of September
the 24,000 workers of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in
Mahalla al-Kubra went on strike -- and won. As they did the first
time, in December 2006, the workers occupied the Nile Delta town’s
mammoth textile mill and rebuffed the initial mediation efforts
of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Yet this strike
was even more militant than December’s. Workers established a
security force to protect the factory premises, and threatened
to occupy the company’s administrative headquarters as well.
Their stand belies the wishful claims of the Egyptian government
and many media outlets that the strike wave of 2004-2007 has
run its course. Full Story>>
Rallying
Around the Renegade
Middle
East Report Online
August 27, 2007
By Heiko Wimmen
Back
in the fall of 2006, student elections at the American University
of Beirut produced an unexpected aesthetic: female campaigners
for the predominantly Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM)
of the ex-general Michel Aoun sporting button-sized portraits
of bearded Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah on their stylish
attire. “Hizballah stands for the unity and independence of Lebanon,
just as we do,” went the party line, as reiterated by Laure,
an activist business student clad in the movement’s trademark
orange. “And imagine, the Shi‘a and us,” she mused, off-script
and with a glance at her co-campaigners, covered head to toe
in the black gowns of the staunchly Islamist party, but spiced
up with bright orange ribbons for the occasion. “How many we
will be.” Full Story>>
Boxing
In the Brothers
Middle
East Report Online
August 8, 2007
By Samer Shehata
and Joshua Stacher
The
latest crackdown by the Egyptian state on the Muslim Brotherhood
began after a student demonstration at Cairo’s al-Azhar University.
Dressed in black, their faces covered with matching hoods whose
headbands read samidun, or “steadfast,” on December 10,
2006 several dozen young Muslim Brothers marched from the student
center to the university’s main gate. Six of the masked youths,
according to video and eyewitnesses, lined up in the middle of
a square formed by the others and performed martial arts exercises
reminiscent of demonstrations by Hamas and Hizballah. Full Story>>
Harbingers
of Turkey’s Second Republic
Middle
East Report Online
August 1, 2007
By Kerem Öktem
On July 23,
the day after the ruling Justice and Development Party won Turkey’s
early parliamentary elections in a landslide, Onur Öymen, deputy
chairman of the rival Republican People’s Party (CHP), interpreted
the results as follows: "If
you are in need and hungry, if you are not at all content with
your life, if you criticize the government every day from dusk
till dawn and you then vote for the very same government, there
must be something which cannot be explained with logic." Full Story>>
The
Golan Waits for the Green Light
Middle
East Report Online
July 26, 2007
By Nicolas Pelham
Since
their government has not, Shoshi Anbal and a posse of her fellow
Tel Aviv housewives are preparing to engage in diplomacy with
Syria. On May 18, they assembled along the Israeli-Syrian frontier
to applaud what at the time was Syrian President Bashar al-Asad’s
latest iteration of his call for negotiations to end the 40-year
standoff over the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967,
and indeed the legal state of war prevailing between the two
states since 1948. “Asad! Israel wants to talk,” the
women chanted. And, less reverently, “Let’s visit
Damascus -- by car, not by tank." Full Story>>
Iran's "Security
Outlook"
Middle
East Report Online
July 9, 2007
By Farideh Farhi
Widespread
apprehension attended the June 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
to the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at least among
those Iranians who had approved of the country’s direction under
the reformist clerics led by President Mohammad Khatami. Their
worries
had little to do with Ahmadinejad’s signature campaign issue, the
flagging Iranian economy, and much to do with potential reversal
of the political and cultural opening under Khatami, now that hardline
conservatives controlled every branch of the government. The opening
had begun to close long before the hardliners’ accession to power,
of course, but many Iranians feared that Ahmadinejad would seal
it tight, by shuttering the remaining opposition or independent
publications, for instance, or by censoring books, music, film
and
theater, dismantling satellite dishes, imprisoning political activists
and more rigorously imposing an “Islamic” dress code. Full
Story>>
The
Collateral Damage of Lebanese Sovereignty
Middle
East Report Online
June 18, 2007
By Jim Quilty
Residents
of Lebanon might be forgiven for wanting to forget the last 12
months. The month-long Israeli onslaught in the summer of 2006,
economic stasis, sectarian street violence, political deadlock
and assassinations -- most recently that of Future Movement deputy
Walid ‘Idu, who perished along with ten others in a June
13 car bomb explosion -- have weighed heavily upon the country.
It is as if the dismembered corpse of the 1975-1990 civil war
-- assumed to be safely buried -- has been exhumed and reassembled,
all the more grotesque. Since May 20, the Palestinians in Lebanon,
too, have been made to relive past nightmares. Full Story>>
Forty
Years of Occupation
A Middle East Report Online Forum
June 6, 2007
An
outpouring of retrospectives -- good, bad and indifferent --
has marked the fortieth anniversary of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli
war. Predictably, and perhaps appropriately, most looks backward
have also attempted to peer forward, and consequently most have
focused on the impasse between Israel and the Palestinians. This
question, though predating 1967 and not the only one left unresolved
by the war, is nearly synonymous with “the Middle East” in the
global media. Plentiful as the 1967 commentary has been, the
relative silences have also spoken volumes. Middle East Report
asked six critically minded scholars and analysts for their reflections
on what has been missing from the conversation about Israel-Palestine
occasioned by the passage of 40 years since that fateful June. Full
Story>>
Interventions
Interventions
is a feature in Middle East Report Online offering
critical reviews of important Middle East-related books,
films and other cultural production. Click here for
past Interventions articles.
The
Intimate History of Collaboration: Arab Citizens and the State
of Israel
Interventions
Yoav
Di-Capua
May 2007
Sometime
in the late 1990s, employees in the Israeli State Archive
unintentionally declassified an array of police documents.
Many of the files consisted of the unremarkable personal
data of prostitutes, petty thieves and black marketeers,
but others dealt with a far more sensitive matter: the
Palestinian Arab minority in Israel during the 1950s and
1960s. Though these
“Arab files” also contained records of mundane
criminal cases, most of the documents concerned the politically
explosive subject of Palestinian Arab collaboration with
the Jewish state. By means of the mistaken declassification,
the actions, methods and goals of multiple Israeli security
agencies among the Palestinian Arabs of Israel -- in short,
the entire history of two decades of espionage directed at
a group of Israeli citizens -- lay exposed. At the heart
of these documents was detailed information about individuals
and families and the well-guarded secrets of what they “gave” and
what they “got” in return. Many retired collaborators
are still alive. Full Story>> |
Strikes
in Egypt Spread from Center of Gravity
Middle
East Report Online
May 9, 2007
By
Joel Beinin and Hossam el-Hamalawy
The
longest and strongest wave of worker protest since the end of
World War II is rolling through Egypt. In March, the liberal
daily al-Masri
al-Yawm estimated that no fewer than 222 sit-in strikes,
work stoppages, hunger strikes and demonstrations had occurred
during 2006. In the first five months of 2007, the paper has
reported a new labor action nearly every day. The citizen group
Egyptian Workers and Trade Union Watch documented 56 incidents
during the month of April, and another 15 during the first week
of May alone. Full Story>>
Behind
Turkey’s Presidential Battle
Middle
East Report Online
May 7, 2007
By Gamze Çavdar
“This
is a bullet fired at democracy,” snapped Recep Tayy?p Erdo?an,
Turkey’s prime minister and chairman of the country’s
ruling party, in reaction to the May 1 ruling by the Constitutional
Court. The court had validated a maneuver by the opposition party
in Parliament to block the nomination of Erdo?an’s foreign
minister, Abdullah Gül, to accede to the presidency of the
Turkish Republic. To deny the ruling party the quorum it needed
to make Gül president, the opposition deputies simply stayed
home. The pro-government parliamentarians voted on the candidate
anyway, but the Constitutional Court agreed with the opposition’s
contention that the balloting was illegal -- and thus null and
void. After Parliament tried and failed again to elect Gül
president on May 6, he withdrew his candidacy. Full
Story>>
Egyptian
Textile Workers Confront the New Economic Order
Middle East Report Online
March 25, 2007
By Joel Beinin and Hossam el-Hamalawy
For
the last ten years Muhammad ‘Attar, 36, has worked in the
finishing department at the gigantic Misr Spinning and Weaving
Company complex at Mahalla al-Kubra in the middle of the Nile
Delta. He takes home a basic wage of about $30. With profit sharing
and incentives, his net pay is about $75 a month. His 33-year-old
wife, Nasra ‘Abd al-Maqsoud al-Suwaydi, makes about $70
a month working in the ready-made clothing division of the same
firm. Full story>>
Western
Sahara Between Autonomy and Intifada
Middle East Report Online
March 16, 2007
By Jacob Mundy
In
late February 2007, Western Saharan nationalists celebrated the
thirty-first anniversary of their government, the Saharan Arab
Democratic Republic. The official ceremonies did not take place
in Laayoune, the declared capital of Western Sahara, but in the
small outpost of Tifariti near the Algerian border. This is because
most of Western Sahara is under the administration and military
occupation of Morocco, which claims the desert land as its own.
The Western Saharan independence movement, led by the POLISARIO
Front and the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic, exists largely
in exile, as does nearly half the native population. Roughly
100,000 Sahrawis have lived in refugee camps in the southwest
corner of Algeria, near Tindouf, since POLISARIO proclaimed an
independent republic in 1976. A generation has come of age in
the camps, knowing nothing but refugee life and cut off from
contact with their homeland. The other half of the population,
those Sahrawis living under Moroccan occupation, have become
a minority in their own country, pushed to the margins by three
decades of “Moroccanization.” Full
story>>
Turkey,
Cyprus and the European Division
Middle East Report Online
February 25, 2007
By Rebecca Bryant
More
than three years after the opening of the ceasefire line that
divides Cyprus, the island is closer than ever to rupture. When
the Green Line first opened in April 2003, there was an initial
period of euphoria, as Cypriots flooded in both directions to
visit homes and neighbors left unwillingly behind almost three
decades before. But a year later, when a UN plan to reunite the
island came to referendum, new divisions emerged. While Turkish
Cypriots voted in favor of the plan, their Greek Cypriot compatriots
rejected it in overwhelming numbers. Visits stalled, and today
social relations are mired in an increasingly divisive politics.
Recent polls indicate that more Cypriots on both sides of the
line favor partition than reunification, while Turkish Cypriots
are anxious about a spate of lawsuits over property that they
occupied when the island was divided. They perceive these suits
as a direct threat to their existence in the absence of an acceptable
plan for reunification. Full Story>>
The
Pigeon on the Bridge Is Shot
Middle East Report Online
February 16, 2007
By Ayşe Kadıoğlu
“Sometimes
they ask me what it is like to be an Armenian. I tell them that
it is a wonderful thing and I recommend it to everyone.” These
were Hrant Dink’s opening remarks at a conference entitled “Ottoman
Armenians During the Collapse of the Ottoman Empire,” held
in Istanbul on September 24 and 25, 2005. Those of us lucky enough
to hear the mischievous introductory lines received them with
joyous laughter, but we also knew we were witnesses to a lecture
of historic significance, a momentous step forward in the efforts
of Armenians and Turks to come to terms with the horrors of the
past. Full Story>>
The
Pakistan Taliban
Middle East Report Online
February 13, 2007
By Graham Usher
A
severed head is waved before a baying crowd. The camera zooms
in to show a second bloodied corpse, the eyes gouged out and
a wad of cash stuffed in the mouth, swinging from a pole. He
is one of 29 “criminals, drug pushers, bootleggers and
extortionists” executed for running “dens of iniquity,” says
the voiceover on the videotape. The last reel shows a mess of
bodies, some headless, being hauled in a pickup truck along a
muddy street. Young men with shaggy black hair and guns slung
over their shoulders are seen watching the lynchings. “The
Taliban have done the job the ‘enlightened moderates’ refused
to do. May God provide us with leaders like Mullah Omar,” concludes
the narrator. Full Story>>
There
and Back Again in Somalia
Middle
East Report Online
February
11, 2007
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