MER Article States of Fragmentation in North Africa Nearly 50 years after independence, the North African states of Algeria and Morocco face challenges to their national unity and territorial integrity. In Algeria, a Paul Silverstein • 18 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2009) Abboud, Samer and Salam Said. Syrian Foreign Trade and Economic Reform (Fife, Scotland: St. Andrews Center for Syrian Studies, 2009). Anderson, Liam and Gareth Stansfield. Crisis in Kirkuk: The Ethnopolitics of Conflict and Compromise (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Arjoman The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Stein, Itineraries of Conflict Rebecca L. Stein, Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians and the Political Lives of Tourism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). “To read Israel as itinerant is to imagine its alternative future.” With these optimistic words, Rebecca L. Stein closes the introduction to her beautifull Gil Hochberg • 4 min read
MER Article No Shelter “Angela” came to Jordan to work as a housekeeper because she is a single mother and needs to save for her children’s schooling. She paid a recruiter in the Philippines 11,000 pesos, about $234, “for the processing of my papers.” An hour before she went to the airport, she says, she signed a contract Rola Abimourched • 13 min read
MER Article Normalization Politics on the Nile On September 23, Farouq Husni lost a close vote for the post of head of the UN cultural and educational body, UNESCO, to the Bulgarian Irina Bokova. Husni, the sitting minister of culture in Egypt, had become the “controversial” contender for the position, his candidacy marred by accusations of anti Ursula Lindsey • 14 min read
MER Article Planning Apartheid in the Naqab The authority to plan and order physical space is among the most significant powers a government possesses. Spatial planning can be a force for reform and emancipation or a mechanism of control and subordination. In Israel, national planning goals are rooted in Zionism’s agenda of nation building an Monica Tarazi • 15 min read
MER Article Locked In, Locked Out of Work Article VI, Item 2 of the 1993 Oslo accords concluded between Israel and the Palestinians states, “After the entry into force of this Declaration of Principles and the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area, with the view to promoting economic development in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, au Jennifer Olmsted • 11 min read
MER Article Beyond Compare “Rolling into Gaza I had a feeling of homecoming,” writes the novelist Alice Walker. “There is a flavor to the ghetto. To the bantustan. To the ‘rez.’ To the ‘colored section.’” In a poetic vein, Walker captures the confinement and marginality one senses in the Gaza Strip, and its familiarity to tho Julie Peteet • 22 min read
