Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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Joost Hiltermann

Joost Hiltermann is program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.

MER Article

Improvisation and Continuity

Sabreen is considered the premier Palestinian musical group performing today. Influenced by Western rock and jazz, their distinctive style blends traditional Arab rhythms and instruments with subtly political lyrics reflecting the current active resistance to Israeli occupation. Two members of Sabre

Kamal Boullata, Joost Hiltermann • 7 min read

MER Article

Teddy Kollek and the Native Question

On Saturday night, June 10, 1967, Israeli authorities informed more than 100 families living in the Moroccan Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City that they had three hours to evacuate their homes, where some had lived for generations. As Teddy Kollek, mayor of the western half of the city since 1965, rec

Joost Hiltermann • 11 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

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 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

Why We Negotiate

Sami al-Kilani is a member of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks. A poet and short-story writer, he has spent several years in Israeli prisons and under town arrest in his home in Ya‘bad in the occupied West Bank. His brother Ahmad was shot dead by Israeli troops in October 1988. Joost Hi

Joost Hiltermann • 7 min read

MER Article

Eyewitness: Iraq

Joost Hiltermann, an editor of this magazine, traveled through Iraq from March 23 to April 10, 1991, as Middle East field coordinator of the Boston-based organization Physicians for Human Rights. The delegation, whose mission was to study the impact of the Gulf war and civil conflict on the health o

Joost Hiltermann • 4 min read

MER Article

Calculating "Collateral Damage"

Early reports of casualties in Iraq provided only a scattershot picture of damage to residential areas and loss of civilian life, not a clear sense of scope or scale. Only on February 11, after four weeks of intense bombing, did Iraqi officials acknowledge that civilian deaths were in the range of 5

Joost Hiltermann • 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

Sustaining Movement, Creating Space

“Up here at the encampment,” said Abu Tha’ir, peering ahead through the windshield, “we cross the Green Line into ’48. If there is a checkpoint and they stop us, they’ll send me back to prison.” He looked at me as if asking for my opinion, but he did not slow down as we approached the army post perc

Joost Hiltermann • 16 min read

MER Article

A Bullet, A Lie

ahmad had those wildly intense eyes that would stare through you as he spoke and would light up every now and then as he listened and would drive me crazy what does he want from me? i remember ahmad when he returned from prison to ya‘bad and his grandmother ululated in jubilation danced in happi

Joost Hiltermann • 1 min read

MER Article

Abu Jamal's Family

In MER 146,1 wrote about Abu Jamal and his family. In mid-December, two weeks into the uprising, soldiers came to the house of Abu Jamal in the Old City of Ramallah. They arrested two of his teenage sons, Nasir and ‘Umar, and one of their cousins from across the street, and took them to the new pris

Joost Hiltermann • 3 min read