MER Article UN Impasse in the Western Sahara In his January 1996 report on the UN operation in the Western Sahara, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali expressed the Security Council’s “frustration...at the absence of even a reasonably clear indication of when the [referendum] process might come to an end.” This was one of Boutros-Ghali’s m (Author not identified) • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 1996) From June 4-14, tens of thousands of officials and experts from around the globe will gather in Istanbul for the Second UN Conference for Human Settlement (Habitat II), the last of the global UN summits. The non-official NGO gatherings should take the occasion to scrutinize how the attending states (Author not identified) • 3 min read
Letter (July/August 1995) In “Iran’s Revolutionary Impasse,” Ali Banuazizi has provided a bifurcated account of the recent developments in Iran (i.e., the coexistence of a dynamic society and a rigid, intolerant regime) that ultimately adopts the popular characterizations of Iran under the guise of debunking them. (Author not identified) • 1 min read
Justice in Transition? Without quite the same resonance as “new world order” or “end of history,” another set of terms has rapidly become part of the international political discourse: “transition,” “democratization,” “reconstruction” and “building civil society.” Aside from their purely rhetorical uses, these terms descr (Author not identified) • 8 min read
Letters (March/April 1994) I want to congratulate you on the excellent January issue that finally came my way. If there were prizes for excellence in magazine publishing, this issue would surely get first prize. With a broken heart over what Edward Said called the “surrender,” I cannot help admiring your ability to knit toge (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Lebanon's Palestinians This article was written by a special correspondent. Residents of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have been cautiously peeking out of their prison-like camps after nearly a decade of sieges and assaults. But looking out is now fraught with anxiety. There is no future in the camps, residents co (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Pride and Prejudice in Saudi Arabia Ahmad and Fatima Abdallah (not their real names) are an Arab professional couple who worked in Saudi Arabia for four years in the 1980s. They discussed their impressions with a Middle East Report editor in September 1993. Coming from elsewhere in the Arab world, what were your first impressions of (Author not identified) • 7 min read
MER Article Managing News and Iraqi Nukes MANAGING NEWS In the Logic textbook that my students use there is a chapter entitled “Managing The News.” Henceforth your lead article “Power Structure of the American Media” (January-February 1993) will become obligatory reading. The guided tour by Joe Stork and Laura Flanders behind the media cur (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Rabin's Gaza "Goodwill Gesture" Gazans stand in the wreckage of their home, destroyed by Israeli anti-tank missiles and dynamite. Some 20 families in the al-Amal quarter of Khan Yunis were made homeless on February 11 when more than 200 Israeli soldiers and border police carried out a 13-hour military assault in search of “terrori (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Jerusalem Voices Editor’s Note: In preparing this special issue, we asked a number of Jerusalem residents to share their thoughts about the significance of the city to them and about ways of thinking about Jerusalem’s future. AZMI BISHARA Azmi Bishara teaches philosophy at Birzeit University in the West Bank. (Author not identified) • 7 min read
