MER Article "The Pressure Should Be on the US and Israel to Recognize the PLO" Hilton Obenzinger is a member of the executive committee of the November 29 Committee for Palestine, and on the staff of their bimonthly, Palestine Focus. His book of poems, This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, was reviewed in our February 1982 issue. Joel Beinin interviewed him i Joel Beinin • 7 min read
MER Article "The US Must Start Negotiations with the PLO" Gail Pressberg is the Middle East coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Joe Stork spoke with her in Washington in late March 1987. Where is the peace movement at now with regard to Middle East issues? Joe Stork • 9 min read
MER Article "They Control the Hill, But We've Got a Lot of Positions Around the Hill" Jim Zogby is the director of the Arab American Institute in Washington. He was a founder of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Joe Stork spoke with him on March 18, 1987. How did you get engaged in Middle East organizing? Joe Stork • 14 min read
MER Article An Invitation for the Fifth of June I For the fifth year you come to us lugging a burlap sack on your back, barefoot, on your face the sadness of heavens and the pain of Hussein. We’ll receive you at every airport with flower bouquets, and drink -- to your health -- rivers of wine. We’ll sing and recite insincere poems in your presen Nizar Qabbani • 1 min read
MER Article Profiles of Two Families The two West Bank families profiled here were not selected to be “representative,” but rather to explore, through people the authors knew intimately, particular lives and livelihoods as they both changed and maintained themselves in the last two decades of Israeli military occupation in the West Ban Penny Johnson • 23 min read
MER Article The Palestinians Twenty Years After The current situation of the Palestinian people appears grim today. But it is revealing to compare it with the situation of 20 years ago, in the wake of the June War. For while many of the problems the Palestinians face today date back at least to that cataclysmic event, other problems were undreame Rashid Khalidi • 18 min read
MER Article 1967 and the Consequences of Catastrophe The June 1967 war was immediately seen in the Arab world as an event of catastrophic proportions. It destroyed the credibility of radical Arab nationalism, strengthened the position of Israel in the region, and left Israel in control of large areas of Arab territory -- Sinai, the Golan Heights, Gaza Fred Halliday • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May/June 1987) The fate of Palestine seems strangely linked to years ending in seven. Theodore Herzl’s new Zionist movement held its first congress in Basel in 1897. In November 1917, the Balfour Declaration tried to define the Palestinians into oblivion as the country’s “non-Jewish inhabitants.” In July 1937, the The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article The Fate of the Family Farm Samir Radwan and Eddy Lee, Agrarian Change in Egypt, An Anatomy of Rural Poverty (London: Croom Helm, for the International Labor Organisation, 1986). Alan Richards, ed., Food, States and Peasants, Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986). These t Karen Pfeifer • 8 min read
MER Article Letter from Algiers Walking past the video stores, jewelry shops and fashion boutiques in Riad al-Fetr, the large, modern shopping mall in Algiers, an American could almost feel at home. Local radio, heard over the PA system, plays songs by Phil Collins and Van Morrison. Madonna, Elvis and James Dean posters festoon sh Anthony B. Toth • 6 min read
MER Article Israel Cracks Down on Jewish Peace Activists Jerusalem, March 10 -- On November 7, 1986, 21 Israeli peace activists landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport, returning from a three-day trip to Romania. Within minutes, four were ordered to report for interrogation by the Israeli police. The four -- Latif Dori (of the left-Zionist MAPAM party) (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article Palestinians Arrested in Los Angeles Witch Hunt It was the West Coast, not the West Bank, but for many Palestinians, the unfolding dragnet scenario had an all-too-familiar ring. Shortly after dawn on the morning of January 26, agents of the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and local police arrested eight Palestinians and the Judith Gabriel • 6 min read
