Current Analysis Ariel Sharon and the Jordan Option An avid enthusiast of Ariel Sharon and his unilateral disengagement plan recently opined that the plan “has one inborn defect: it has no vision, has no diplomatic horizon and is devoid of any ideological dimension.” [1] This view of the Israeli prime minister -- tactically brilliant but lacking as a Gary Sussman • 20 min read
Current Analysis Hizballah and Syria's "Lebanese Card" The clock is ticking on a surprising UN Security Council resolution, passed on September 2, calling on Syria to cease its various forms of interference in Lebanon. France and the United States co-sponsored the call on "all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon," which charged the UN Nicholas Blanford • 11 min read
Current Analysis Support for Wall Mocks International law What is most remarkable about the International Court of Justice decision on Israel’s “security barrier” in the West Bank is the strength of the consensus behind it. By a vote of 14-1, the 15 distinguished jurists who make up the highest judicial body on the planet found that the barrier is illegal Richard Falk • 3 min read
MER Article Journey Towards a Route in Common Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, directed by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan (2003). Bashir Abu-Manneh • 7 min read
MER Article Doing Time in the Theater of Occupation The photograph fetched from a back room in the narrow two-story house on the edge of Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp shows a precociously handsome adolescent, posing in a baseball cap and sports jacket against a faux backdrop of the Versailles palace gardens. A kaffiyya is tucked around his neck; his Peter Lagerquist • 3 min read
MER Article On the Importance of Thugs From late 2000 to 2004, the most common form of Palestinian resistance to occupation has simply been getting there -- refusing to allow Israeli checkpoints and sieges to shut down daily life. The unlikely symbols of that resistance are checkpoint workers -- van drivers and porters -- whose impromptu Rema Hammami • 21 min read
MER Article The Challenge to the Two-State Solution Ariel Sharon's push for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four forlorn West Bank settlements in the spring of 2004 came after a year of mounting criticism inside and outside Israel that he had no long-term "solution" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the prime Gary Sussman • 20 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2004) Israel's bloody military campaign in Rafah in May was but the latest blow to the infrastructure of Palestinian society in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the fall of 2000. It has been clear for some time that these assaults, coupled with the contemporaneous expansion of The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article No More Tears Benny Morris, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, second edition, 1994). Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem R Joel Beinin • 19 min read
Current Analysis The Israeli Text and Context of the Geneva Accord The Geneva Accord, the latest unofficial framework for Israeli-Palestinian peace made public in mid-October 2003, has not become the basis for official negotiations. But the initiative has already been successful in one respect: it has uncorked as many vocal hopes as it has protests among Israelis and Palestinians, even though Shiko Behar, Michael Warschawski • 10 min read
Current Analysis Strings and the Global Gulliver Inaugurating the 2003 session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded the alarm about the UN's future in the face of US unilateralism. The world has "come to a fork in the road…a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, Ian Williams • 11 min read
Current Analysis Why There's No Peace in Palestine On September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat signed a Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, heralding the beginning of the Oslo peace process. Ten years later, the process is completely deadlocked. Israel has de Catherine Cook • 2 min read
