Current Analysis Sparks of Activist Spirit in Egypt For a few days in October 2000, near the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada, it looked as though Egypt's student movement had finally found its voice again after years of quiescence. Students at Cairo University and other schools demonstrated daily and even clashed with security forces dur Paul Schemm • 7 min read
MER Article Mediterranean Blues Under pressure to solve immediate economic problems, Middle Eastern countries seek to industrialize as quickly and as cheaply as possible. While developed countries around the world are very slowly adopting technologies and production methods that exert less pressure on the environment, Western in Zeina al-Hajj • 4 min read
MER Article Egyptian Environmental Activists' Uphill Battle In 1990, citizens of Alexandria organized to fight the loss of public access to a street in a main downtown square. The city had given the street to the World Health Organization for a planned expansion of their local offices. In a landmark case against then-governor Ismail al-Gawsaqi, the citizen Jennifer Bell • 4 min read
MER Article Americans Against the Sanctions As US policy supporting the continuation of sanctions on Iraq becomes ever more isolated abroad, domestic criticism of sanctions also mounts. Opponents of sanctions gained new visibility in February 1998 at Ohio State University, when pointed questions from the audience disrupted the Clinton adminis (Author not identified) • 7 min read
MER Article The Israeli Peace Movement Mordechai Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996). Iman Abdel Megid Hamdy, “Dissenters in Zion: The Bi-nationalist and Partitionist Trends in the Politics of Israel,” unpublished PhD dissertation (Cairo Univ Joel Beinin • 7 min read
MER Article Community Participation and Environmental Change Cairo -- a city home to upwards of 14 million inhabitants -- is known to be one of the most polluted cities in the world. Although measures of pollutants in some places in Cairo exceed internationally recognized standards, popular collective action organized around environmental issues is rare. The Inas Tewfik • 6 min read
MER Article ADL's Spy Ring The scandal has not yet received the national media attention it deserves, but West Coast activists are up in arms about revelations that the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith secretly employed a self-styled art dealer named Roy Bullock to collect information on a wide range of individuals and Al Miskin • 4 min read
MER Article Left In Limbo The late 1970s saw the demise of the organized left as a viable political force in Arab society. Egypt’s socialists were confined to intellectual circles gathered around al-Ahali newspaper and the Tagammu‘ party. The two largest and most vigorous Arab communist parties, in Iraq and Sudan, had been crushed Salim Tamari • 15 min read
MER Article Peace Projects We may come to recall 1992 as the year of the peace activist in the burgeoning literary and cinematographic record of the Palestinian intifada. By rupturing the structure of the occupation, Palestinian popular collective action and the decisions of the nineteenth Palestine National Council expanded Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Responsibilities of the US Peace Movement Once again the American peace movement faces the threat of war. In the 1960s and 1970s it was Vietnam, in the 1980s Central America and the nuclear threat, and now it is Arabia. This dangerous moment calls for a major change of direction for peace and anti-intervention forces. Activities underway be David Cortright • 3 min read
MER Article Palestine and Israel in the US Arena Ordinary children, women and men, a million and a half of them, have confounded the state of Israel, Washington’s major military ally in the Middle East, with their incredible courage and resourcefulness. Their resounding demand for political independence then prompted the Palestine Liberation Organ The Editors • 5 min read
