MER Article Rescheduling the Camp David Debt Egypt’s current debt crisis is one of the fruits of Camp David. Much of the principal and interest now in arrears or coming due was contracted in the heady days when oil prices were soaring and the treaty with Israel and military alliance with Washington certified Egypt as a credit-worthy customer f Joe Stork • 3 min read
MER Article Egypt's New Political Map Compared with 1984, the atmosphere of the 1987 Egyptian elections was decidedly less free. The outcry of the opposition in 1984 primarily concerned the forged results on election day itself. [1] In 1987, the pressure on the opposition during the campaign was much stronger. The Emergency Law, extende Bertus Hendriks • 22 min read
MER Article Egyptian Political Parties Alliance (Tahaluf) An opposition list formed for the 1987 elections by the Socialist Labor Party, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Socialist Liberals Party. Officially identified as the SLP list, since the Muslim Brotherhood, as a religious organization, cannot legally participate in elections. (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Egypt's Elections If the riots of February 1986 ushered in a year of doubt about the future of Husni Mubarak’s regime, the events of early 1987 appear to indicate that he has consolidated his position both domestically and internationally. [1] Mubarak upstaged the opposition and enhanced his legitimacy by calling new Erika Post • 16 min read
MER Article Egypt: A Primer The People Nearly 50 million Egyptians live in this flat, hot, dry land the size of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas combined. Most of them are crowded into a fertile strip along the Nile River and its delta. In greater Cairo, the 17th largest city in the world, population density is an astounding 27,0 Martha Wenger • 4 min read
MER Article The President and the Field Marshal Husni Mubarak succeeded Anwar al-Sadat in October 1981 at a time of troubled civil-military relations. Sadat’s pursuit of a separate peace with Israel after the war in 1973 raised important questions about the military’s future role, size and sources of weapons. If Egypt was no longer at war, it wou Robert Springborg • 36 min read
MER Article From the Editors (July/August 1987) At the beginning of June, a new, heavily armored Mercedes arrived in Cairo. It had been ordered for the new US ambassador to Egypt, Frank Wisner. Just a week earlier, in the heart of the crowded capital, a group calling itself Egypt’s Revolution had ambushed a car carrying three US Embassy staff, in The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Letters (May/June 1987) I read Kevin Kelly’s update on Jordan’s plan for the West Bank (MER 144). Although it is hard to argue that the path of relationship between Jordan and the Palestinian movement led by Yasser Arafat was smooth and rosy, it is quite important to consider the reality of the ties that bind Jordanians an (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Gaza Ghetto Pea Holmquist, Joan Mandell and Pierre Bjorklund, Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family, 1948-1984 (Icarus Films, 1984). Taline Voskeritchian • 4 min read
MER Article Van den Berg, Stranger at Home Rudolf van den Berg, Stranger at Home (1985). It is no small compliment to say that Stranger at Home is a film you want to see more than once (and should). Over the years -- 19 to be precise -- Palestine documentaries have become a veritable genre, but with few exceptions, they have hardly become a Miriam Rosen • 6 min read
MER Article Shipler, Arab and Jew David Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land (New York: Times Books, 1986). Reading this massive 556-page book by David Shipler, the New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem from 1979-1984, is dizzyingly similar to reading 200 Times feature stories in a row. Shipler’s compendi Penny Johnson • 5 min read
MER Article Exporting Nuclear Triggers Richard Smyth, indicted in May 1985 for illegally exporting nuclear trigger devices to Israel, is now a fugitive. In August 1985, two days before he was scheduled to appear in court, Smyth and his wife sailed his boat to Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California, and disappeared, forfeit Richard Sale, Geoffrey Aronson • 9 min read
