MER Article The Arab World’s Non-Linear Electricity Transitions For many, especially in the United States, the Arab world is closely associated with fossil fuels. But over the past several years, a raft of news articles, opinion pieces and analyses have hailed the advent of renewable energy—especially solar power—in Arab countries. Many such pieces open with ima Zachary Cuyler • 19 min read
MER Article Into the Emergency Maze It was a sunny and warm day in February 2015, in the midst of an otherwise atypically rainy and cold Sicilian winter. Awate and Drissa sat next to one other on the edge of the covered balcony at the small reception center for asylum seekers where they lived. Both wore headphones but their bodies mov Silvia Pasquetti • 14 min read
MER Article Municipal Politics in Lebanon The municipal system has been a key pillar of debates on administrative decentralization, economic development and political participation in Lebanon. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists sought to stop the demolition of the 1924 Barakat Building on the basis that it was a heritage site. Ziad Abu-Rish • 22 min read
MER Article From The Editors (Fall 2016) The surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has already had a dramatic and troubling impact on the domestic politics and foreign policy of the US, and it is sure to affect international relations around the world. Trump is the very caricature of the most negative The Editors • 9 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2016) Achcar, Gilbert. Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016). Abu-‘Uksa, Wael. Freedom in the Arab World: Concepts and Ideologies in Arabic Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Al-Nakib, Farah. Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Armed Social Science Counterinsurgency is sometimes referred to as armed social work; it could also be called armed social science. Kristian Williams • 8 min read
MER Article Israel as Innovator in the Mainstreaming of Extreme Violence The present era of counter-terrorism wars has severely damaged what, in hindsight, looked like a solid international consensus about which forms and levels of violence are “legal” in war and what “humanitarian” limits are imposed on such violence. The counter-terrorism paradigm of “with us or agains Lisa Hajjar • 19 min read
MER Article A Lonely Songkran in the Arabah The colonization of Palestine began in the late nineteenth century with the First Aliyah, or Zionist immigration, and the establishment of plantations worked by Palestinians under the management of Jewish settler-owners. A generation later, the “socialist” or “labor settlement” wing of the Zionist m Matan Kaminer • 12 min read
MER Article Education Under Occupation Most Palestinian universities are underfunded, but Hebron University is extreme in its needs. Compared to other institutions in Palestine, there are few buildings named for wealthy donors. Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement mean that students rarely enroll in a university outside the vicinity where they were raised. Most of Birzeit Joshua Stacher • 1 min read
MER Article Hebron, the Occupation's Factory of Hate What makes Hebron special is the religious-nationalist militancy of the Israeli settler projects in the city and its environs—along with the ferocity of the accompanying violence. In the province as a whole, the settlement pattern is the same as elsewhere in the West Bank—the inward creep of coloniz Joshua Stacher • 11 min read
MER Article Wadi Natroun and Worse On January 25, 2014, Karim Taha and Muhammad Sharif organized separate marches about five miles apart in Cairo to commemorate the third anniversary of the uprising that toppled Husni Mubarak. Both demonstrations were quashed, and the two men met up to share a cab home. The driver took a detour that Nadeen Shaker • 4 min read
MER Article The Plight of Egypt's Political Prisoners On December 2, 2013, Mahienour al-Massry organized a protest on the corniche running along the Mediterranean seafront in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city. The human rights attorney’s raven ponytail and oversized black glasses made her easy to spot amid the dozens of people with their backs turned to Nadeen Shaker • 14 min read
