MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 2007) B’Tselem. Act of Vengeance: Israel’s Bombing of the Gaza Power Plant and Its Effects (Jerusalem, September 2006). B’Tselem. Barred from Contact: Violation of the Right to Visit Palestinians Held in Israeli Prisons (Jerusalem,September2006). Eyal, Gil. The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Thinner Than Air Rachel Bronson, Thicker Than Oil: America’s Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) Robert Vitalis • 6 min read
MER Article Comrades and Brothers Emad Mubarak is a busy man. Director of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, and a lawyer with the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, the leftist Mubarak cannot hold a meeting without being interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. The calls these days come from student members of the Mus Hossam El-Hamalawy • 12 min read
MER Article The Battle Over Family Law in Bahrain On November 9, 2005, over 100,000 protesters—approximately one seventh of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s population—flooded the streets of the capital, Manama. Most of the protesters were Shi‘a demonstrating their resistance to the government’s campaign to implement a codified family law, announced a mont Sandy Russell Jones • 21 min read
MER Article Saudi Arabia's Not So New Anti-Shi`ism Enmity for the Shi‘a in Saudi Arabia, never entirely absent, has become increasingly strident in 2006 and early 2007. The empowerment of the Iraqi Shi‘a and the bloody escalation of Sunni-Shi‘i violence in Iraq have intensified sectarian animosity around the Middle East, but in Saudi Arabia Toby Jones • 9 min read
MER Article Basra, the Reluctant Seat of "Shiastan" On December 24, 2005, an Iraqi writing under the signature “Hammad” published a remarkable message on a website devoted to southern Iraqi affairs: Reidar Visser • 19 min read
MER Article The Lebanese Impasse On November 11, 2006, the six Shi‘i ministers in the Lebanese government, affiliates of Hizballah and the Amal movement, left the cabinet in protest of their colleagues’ rejection of their demand for a government of “national unity.” Such a government would give the Shi‘i parties and their Christian Fawwaz Traboulsi, Elias Khoury • 8 min read
