MER Article From the Editors The United States and the Arab world are on the edge of war. What is at stake is no longer the fate of Kuwait’s privileged elite. Nor is it only the political future of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The US military intervention, unilateral in all but name, has transformed a regional crisis into a contest The Editors • 4 min read
Muhawi and Kanaana, Speak Bird, Speak Again Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana, Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989). Speak, Bird, Speak Again, a collection of 45 Palestinian folktales, represents the largest selection of Palestinian folklore in English. The tales were recor Ann Barhoum • 2 min read
Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Joel Beinin • 6 min read
Prison Text, Resistance Culture The Israeli prison apparatus is a critical and contested site in the manifold struggle to control communication and information in the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. During the two decades of occupation before the intifada, prisons in Israel and the Occupied Territories housed an aver Barbara Harlow • 6 min read
Forbidden Territory, Promised Land Ilan Halevi, A History of the Jews (trans. A. M. Berrett) (London: Zed Books, 1987). Shlomo Swirski, Israel: The Oriental Majority (trans. Barbara Swirski) (London: Zed Books, 1989). Ella Shohat, Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1 Ammiel Alcalay • 10 min read
Al Miskin The Law Is the Law! That was the headline of the following news item, published in late December 1989 in the Egyptian opposition newspaper al-Ahali: “The [Egyptian] Passports and Travel Documents Administration refused to issue a travel document and residency permit to Libyan citizen Mus‘ab Muhammad Al Miskin • 4 min read
Consequences of Perestroika Arab progressives tend to view the changes initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika as harmful to the cause of Arab national liberation. One leading pan-Arab statesman privately described the rapprochement between East and West as portending the disintegration of the Communist bloc and the total Mohamed Sid-Ahmed • 6 min read
Jordan's Election The pundits got it wrong. They had predicted that the Jordanian general election of November 8 would result in the overwhelming return of traditional candidates with only a smattering of opposition deputies, enough to provide a vigorous, vocal check on government, but marginal in terms of setting a Philip Robins • 7 min read
Religion and Political Identity in Bayt Sahour In 1989, the West Bank village of Bayt Sahour made international headlines by staging a successful tax strike against Israeli military authorities. My introduction to Bayt Sahour came six years earlier, in late December 1983, when I attended Latin Christmas Eve celebrations at Manger Square in neigh Glenn Bowman • 12 min read
A "Miracle" Made in Moscow and Washington If the intifada has been an Israeli nightmare, upsetting a reality with which most Israelis had grown comfortable, the immigration wave of Soviet Jews to Israel which began in December may turn into a “miracle” that will lift the morale of many Israelis for years to come. The Soviet immigration wave Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi • 4 min read
Aspersion and Intrigue Question: What is more popular reading in the West Bank than the UNLU’s leaflets? Answer: Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari’s Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising -- Israel’s Third Front, now translated into Arabic and serialized in the daily al-Quds this spring. Like the fake manifestos written by Israel Joost Hiltermann • 2 min read
