MER Article They’re Hounding Bishara Because He’s Right In April, Azmi Bishara, a contributing editor of this magazine and a member of the Israeli Knesset, left Israel and did not return as planned. Toward the end of the month, Israel’s General Security Services (Shabak) announced charges against Bishara of “aiding the enemy” during Israel’s summer 2006 Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin • 13 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
Current Analysis The Intimate History of Collaboration Sometime in the late 1990s, employees in the Israeli State Archive unintentionally declassified an array of police documents. Many of the files consisted of the unremarkable personal data of prostitutes, petty thieves and black marketeers, but others dealt with a far more sensitive matter: the Pales Yoav Di-Capua • 19 min read
Current Analysis Behind the Gaza Breakdown The latest convoluted set of events within Palestine, and at its borders, form a depressing tableau that mirrors the conflict as a whole. Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Israeli Siege is Undermining Peace Since Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent Middle East tour concluded without concrete results, and unity talks between Fatah and Hamas remain at a standstill, the possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian political compromise appears bleaker than ever. But Palestinian lives and livelihoods shou Lori Allen • 2 min read
MER Article The Ghetto vs. the Gun Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (trans. Chaya Galai) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Shira Robinson • 7 min read
MER Article Palestinian Women in the Israeli Knesset On March 28, 2006, Nadia Hilou from the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa became only the second Palestinian woman to be elected to the Knesset since 1949, the year of Israel’s first national elections. Hilou’s sole predecessor was Husniyya Jabara, who made history in 1999 when she won a seat in the I Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud • 17 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 Humanitarian Crisis in Lebanon is Huge After passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 and the ensuing "cessation of hostilities," hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese are venturing across bombed roads and bridges returning to their destroyed homes and villages in the south. Although Israel’s aerial bombardment h Samia Mehrez • 2 min read
Current Analysis Hizballah: A Primer Hizballah, the Lebanese Shi‘i movement whose militia is fighting the Israeli army in south Lebanon, has been cast misleadingly in much media coverage of the ongoing war. Much more than a militia, the movement is also a political party that is a powerful actor in Lebanese politics and a Lara Deeb • 20 min read
Current Analysis Israel’s War Against Lebanon’s Shi‘a When Israel undertook its aerial and naval bombardment of Lebanon on July 12, one announced goal was to recover two Israeli servicemen seized by Hizballah in a cross-border raid earlier that day. The attacks upon civilian infrastructure—beginning with Beirut International Airport and continuing with Jim Quilty • 12 min read
Current Analysis Letting Lebanon Burn Israel is raining destruction upon Lebanon in a purely defensive operation, according to the White House and most of Congress. Even some CNN anchors, habituated to mechanical reporting of “Middle East violence,” sound slightly incredulous. With over 300 Lebanese dead and easily 500,000 displaced, wi The Editors • 8 min read
