MER Article From the Editors (May/June 1993) We have long wanted to produce an issue dedicated to the proposition that Jerusalem’s political future must be firmly inscribed on the agenda of any Palestinian-Israeli peace talks that presume to be credible. We hope this issue can contribute to a more widespread appreciation among advocates of a n The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Clinton, Israel and the Hamas Expulsion On December 16, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin issued Order 97, authorizing military commanders to “expel inciters from among the population of their locality.” Israeli forces that day seized, bound and blindfolded 418 Palestinian men and threw them onto buses which then headed north. The military censor forbade the broadcast or The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article From the Editors (January/February 1993) “Propaganda to Journalism” was the New York Times headline on a year-end story about mass media in former Socialist countries, without the slightest self-consciousness about how US coverage of events like the Somalia intervention exemplifies “journalism to propaganda.” Perhaps there have been equall The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors (November/December 1992) With this issue we return to the question of the prospects for democratic forces in the Middle East, and the role of religiously based political movements there. These essays and interviews share a resolutely secularist perspective, a conviction that the construction of a just and viable social orde The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article From the Editors (September/October 1992) Our intent with this issue is simple enough: to redirect attention from the westward reverberations of European “discoveries” across the Atlantic to their eastward impact in the Mediterranean and the mainly Muslim domains of Arabs and Turks. In the opening essay Charles Tilly reminds us that the integration of what The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors In the pages that follow, our authors envision a set of compelling scenarios that could halt and reverse the ratchet wheel of militarization in the Middle East. Yahya Sadowski sees in the worsening material circumstances of most states of the region an unusual opportunity for arms control, as governments seek The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article The Democracy Agenda in the Arab World Political liberalization, if not democracy, seems to be on Arab agendas. Algeria is about to conduct national elections that could alter the character of the regime there. Jordan’s monarchy must now take account of a parliament in which opposition forces have considerable sway, following the first elections in a The Editors • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editors When MERIP came together in 1971, it was with a purpose to integrate the Middle East into the progressive political agenda in the United States. Toward this end we began this magazine to provide information and analysis about the material conditions of Middle Eastern societies and to examine US poli The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors Iraq and Kuwait, on the eastern frontier of the Arab world, represent one face of the region’s future. Sudan, on the southern frontier, represents another. Unlike the regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Sabahs, the Khartoum junta led by Omar al-Bashir has experienced neither constraint nor favor from The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors (July/August 1991) The US military deployment to Saudi Arabia was on a scale not seen since the height of the Vietnam war. The “victory” parade in Washington on June 8 was the largest celebratory military exhibition, we are told, since World War II. The parade, like the war, was designed in part to obliterate the hist The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors The disorder of George Bush’s “new world” did not take long to reveal itself: On the muddy mountainsides along Iraq’s borders with Iran and Turkey, hundreds of thousands of Kurds seek refuge from the depredations of Iraq’s army, while the rest of Iraq’s battered society confronts The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article From the Editors This issue of Middle East Report is about power, intent, imagery and deceit. We begin with a brief consideration of the impact of the first two weeks of the “allied” air war on civilian populations in Iraq. The antiseptic briefings from the Pentagon and from Gen. Schwarzkopf’s headquarters in The Editors • 2 min read
