Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

Max Ajl

Max Ajl is an associated researcher with the Tunisian NGO Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and writes on Arab agrarian issues and dependency theory. His book, A People’s Green New Deal, is forthcoming from Pluto Press.

MER Article

Six Steps to Reform US Agricultural Policy in the Arab Region

People in the Arab region have long been hungry—for dignity, but also for food. Hunger is a social phenomenon: the “biological manifestation of underdevelopment,” in the words of Brazilian geographer Josué de Castro.[1] Underdevelopment is the reverse coin of development. Each are made by global class relations and

Max Ajl • 10 min read

Agrarian Politics and the Slow Revolution Yet to Come

Almost a decade after the 2011 uprisings, we now have an excellent synthetic text by Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush, long-time activists and researchers of (North) African agrarian questions as they relate to food sovereignty, social equality, and the ecology.

Max Ajl • 6 min read

MER Article

Why Does the Occupation Continue?

Shir Hever, The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation (Pluto, 2010). There is a latter-day tendency to see the 44-year Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as the organic outward growth of the Zionist idea -- as though the aspiration to hold the entirety of the land, embedded in Lab

Max Ajl • 12 min read