Current Analysis In Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means At an intersection in front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women threaded a knot of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed across the street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t you see the red light?” Not long after, his patience exhausted, the self-appointed traffic cop himse Mouin Rabbani, Robert Blecher • 14 min read
Current Analysis Forty Years of Occupation An outpouring of retrospectives—good, bad and indifferent—has marked the fortieth anniversary of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Predictably, and perhaps appropriately, most looks backward have also attempted to peer forward, and consequently most have focused on the impasse between Israel and the P Jeremy Pressman, Samera Esmeir, Yoav Peled, Mouin Rabbani, Robert Blecher, Lori Allen • 14 min read
MER Article The Only Place Where There's Hope Beginning in December 2004, and then every Friday since February 2005, Palestinians, Israelis and internationals have converged on the West Bank village of Bil‘in to demonstrate against the barrier that Israel is building there, as part of the chain of walls and fences (the Wall) that the Israeli go Robert Blecher • 15 min read
Current Analysis Converging Upon War “WAR,” proclaimed the three-inch headline in Ma‘ariv, Israel’s leading daily, the day after Hizballah launched its cross-border attack on an Israeli army convoy on July 12. With the onset of Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Lebanon that evening, its aerial and ground incursions into Gaza were tr Robert Blecher • 13 min read
MER Article Transportational Contiguity Israel seems to have gotten the message that Palestinian land, in any final resolution to the conflict, cannot simply be divided into isolated cantons. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon still intends to hold onto large chunks of the West Bank. How can Israel link Palestinian enclaves and dampen critic Robert Blecher • 3 min read
Current Analysis "Free People Will Set the Course of History" As the Bush administration struggled to find a justification for launching an attack on Iraq, churning out sketchy intelligence reports about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links with al-Qaeda, Washington wordsmiths produced their own grist for the war mill: the prospect of a democratic pax Robert Blecher • 22 min read
MER Article Living on the Edge The transfer of the Palestinians has begun. Piling their furniture and personal belongings into a truck, the last residents of Yanoun abandoned their West Bank village on October 18, 2002. "Our life here is more bitter than hell," said one villager, lamenting years of attacks, recently intensified, from Robert Blecher • 17 min read
MER Article History as Social Critique in Syrian Film Muhammad Malas’ al-Layl and Ryad Chaia’s al-Lajat History is back in fashion in Syria. The last few years have seen a flurry of Syrian films and TV series treating historical epochs from Zenobia’s Palmyra to the French occupation (1920-1946). The latter has been especially well represented in this Robert Blecher • 6 min read
MER Article A New World Order, A New Marcel Khalife Marcel Khalife has always demanded a certain respect for his formal compositions when performing, interspersing his most popular songs featuring the phenomenal voice of Omayma al-Khalil with more symphonic, purely instrumental pieces. But during his last tour of the United States this insistence on his status as a composer was Robert Blecher, Elliott Colla • 7 min read
