MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2004) Abou El Fadl, Khaled et al. Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). Bird, Christiane. A Thousand Sighs, a Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004). Bozarslan, Hamit. Violence in the Middle East: From Political Strugg The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Journey Towards a Route in Common Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, directed by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan (2003). Bashir Abu-Manneh • 7 min read
MER Article A Bloody Stupid War When a war breaks out people say, “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.” But though a war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. -- Albert Camus, The Plague Moustafa Bayoumi • 27 min read
MER Article Doing Time in the Theater of Occupation The photograph fetched from a back room in the narrow two-story house on the edge of Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp shows a precociously handsome adolescent, posing in a baseball cap and sports jacket against a faux backdrop of the Versailles palace gardens. A kaffiyya is tucked around his neck; his Peter Lagerquist • 3 min read
MER Article On the Importance of Thugs From late 2000 to 2004, the most common form of Palestinian resistance to occupation has simply been getting there -- refusing to allow Israeli checkpoints and sieges to shut down daily life. The unlikely symbols of that resistance are checkpoint workers -- van drivers and porters -- whose impromptu Rema Hammami • 21 min read
MER Article Acts of Refusal Rela Mazali, an Israeli writer and feminist peace activist, is a founder of New Profile, a group challenging the militarization of Israeli society and opposing the occupation. Joel Beinin, an editor of Middle East Report, spoke with her in Herzliya, Israel on January 6, 2004 and continued the conver Joel Beinin • 9 min read
MER Article Israeli Constitutional Committee Faces Double Bind As Israel celebrated its fifty-sixth Independence Day in April 2004, with most cars, streets, homes and public buildings draped in the national colors of blue and white, a senior member of the Israeli parliament launched a salvo beloved of the Zionist majority. Ilan Shalgi of the secular Shinui party demanded Jonathan Cook • 16 min read
MER Article Carving Up the Capital Samera remembers a time, during the tumultuous and violent years of the first intifada (1987-1993), when her Jerusalem was a place quite different than it is today. Though tens of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli occupation were imprisoned in those years, many of them tortured, a measure of h Thomas Abowd • 16 min read
MER Article The Challenge to the Two-State Solution Ariel Sharon's push for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four forlorn West Bank settlements in the spring of 2004 came after a year of mounting criticism inside and outside Israel that he had no long-term "solution" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the prime Gary Sussman • 20 min read
MER Article Pakistani Islamists Gamble on the General In January 2002, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized control of the Pakistani government in a 1999 military coup, delivered a major address to the nation—and to the world at large. Mindful of Pakistan’s designation by the global media as a crucial front in the US “war on terrorism,” Musharraf promised Kamran Asdar Ali • 14 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2004) Israel's bloody military campaign in Rafah in May was but the latest blow to the infrastructure of Palestinian society in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the fall of 2000. It has been clear for some time that these assaults, coupled with the contemporaneous expansion of The Editors • 3 min read
