MER Article Jerusalem: Then and Now Jerusalem has often been a restless city, but the pace of change in this century has been truly frenetic. An observer, say, on a comet orbiting the earth every ten years, would gasp at the rapid transformations. For centuries the village of Jerusalem, then the town, and later the city, Mick Dumper • 14 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May/June 1993) We have long wanted to produce an issue dedicated to the proposition that Jerusalem’s political future must be firmly inscribed on the agenda of any Palestinian-Israeli peace talks that presume to be credible. We hope this issue can contribute to a more widespread appreciation among advocates of a n The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Intifada Memoirs Helen Winternitz, A Season of Stones: Living in a Palestinian Village (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991). Gloria Emerson, A Year in the Intifada: A Personal Account from an Occupied Land (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991). Joost Hiltermann • 5 min read
MER Article Recent Books on the Kurds Nader Entessar, Kurdish Ethnonationalism (Lynne Rienner, 1992). Philip Kreyenbroek and Stefan Sperl, eds., The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview (Routledge, 1992). Sheri Laizer, Into Kurdistan: Frontiers Under Fire (Zed, 1991). Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Eric Hooglund • 3 min read
MER Article The Intervention in Somalia: What Should Have Happened John Paul Lederach directs the International Conciliation Service of the Mennonite Central Committee, and has been working closely in the past five years with Somalis in North America, Europe and Somalia, in particular with a Somali forum, Ergada. He also teaches at Eastern Mennonite College in Harr Joe Stork • 11 min read
MER Article Diverting Water, Displacing Iraq's Marsh People Among the under-reported casualties of the Iraq regime’s ongoing war against its people have been the indigenous marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war, the vast riparian marsh areas that form the estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates had become a haven for deserting Iraqi conscripts, and Joost Hiltermann • 2 min read
MER Article The Challenge of Population Growth in Morocco About 30 years ago, a World Bank economic survey mission concluded that “Morocco will continually find itself having to run faster in order to stand still.” [1] A few years later, a Moroccan demographer warned that if the population were to continue to grow at current rates, “all efforts at developm Georges Sabagh • 14 min read
MER Article Spain and the EC Nearly every day, off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, wealthy windsurfers unfold their multicolored sails and plunge into the waters. As often as the wind invites acrobatic risk taking on the crest of the waves, it turns the Straits into a graveyard for hundreds of Moroccan migrants. More than 200 Graciela Malgesini • 14 min read
MER Article The Displacement of Urfiya Hama Ahmad In the summer of 1992, Joost Hiltermann, an editor of Middle East Report, spent three months interviewing Kurdish villagers about Iraq’s military campaigns against the Kurds in the 1980s, for the human rights organization Middle East Watch. These interviews yielded evidence of widespread human rights abuses, and are currently Joost Hiltermann • 9 min read
MER Article Yemeni Workers Come Home With its moderate climate and terraced highlands, Yemen is agriculturally the most productive part of the Arabian Peninsula. Yet people, not crops, have been Yemen’s major export. Migrants from the former North and South Yemen are scattered throughout the world. During the last 20 years, the majorit Thomas Stevenson • 17 min read
MER Article Contested Space Dispossession, displacement, migration and precarious living conditions are intimately connected phenomena. Lines of causality run in every direction. Those enduring such conditions, in their determination to establish some roots and some sense of community, somewhere, often find themselves in viola Omar Razzaz • 11 min read
