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 Rethinking Jews and Muslims “Your Highness completed the war against the Moors,” Columbus wrote in a letter addressed to the Spanish throne, “after having chased all the Jews...and sent me to the said regions of India in order to convert the people there to our Holy Faith.” [1] In 1492 the defeat of the Muslims and the expulsi Ella Shohat • 11 min read
MER Article Beinin, Was the Red Flag Flying There? Joel Beinin, Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948-1965 (California, 1990). Alain Gresh • 7 min read
MER Article Photos and Art from Palestine John Running, Pictures for Solomon (Northland, 1990). Phyllis Bennis and Neal Cassidy, From Stones to Statehood (Olive Branch, 1990). Kamal Boullata, Faithful Witnesses: Palestinian Children Recreate Their World (Windrush, 1990). Lisa Frank • 6 min read
MER Article Romann and Weingrod, Living Together Separately M. Romann and A. Weingrod, Living Together Separately: Arabs and Jews in Contemporary Jerusalem (Princeton, 1991). After armies come the academics. Usually the first wave comprises archaeologists and historians who wish to legitimize a particular excursion or expansion. These are followed by econom Mick Dumper • 6 min read
MER Article Palestinian Self-Government Proposal On January 14, in the second round of direct talks between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators in Washington, DC, the Palestinian side presented a draft outline of a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority (PISGA). Media accounts of the talks barely noted this unprecedented development, but this is one document that should not Joe Stork • 3 min read
MER Article Aftermath Eighteen-year old Anwar is new to bastat, street peddling. Two days ago his mother bought several crates of corn on the cob, which she boiled for him to sell in Tulkarm refugee camp streets. Recently released from a six-month term at Ansar III detention camp in the Negev desert, Anwar returned home Sharry Lapp • 9 min read
MER Article Erasing Arab Jerusalem Palestinian geographer Khaili Tufukji walks the streets of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem every day, carefully noting the dizzying Israeli construction. He documents cases of demolished and seized houses, follows up on land confiscations, studies new archaeological and historical claims, and tries to decipher the meaning and extent of Israeli government plans Anita Vitullo Khoury • 8 min read
MER Article Why We Negotiate Sami al-Kilani is a member of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks. A poet and short-story writer, he has spent several years in Israeli prisons and under town arrest in his home in Ya‘bad in the occupied West Bank. His brother Ahmad was shot dead by Israeli troops in October 1988. Joost Hi Joost Hiltermann • 7 min read
MER Article Winds of War, Winds of Peace The Gulf war transformed the political landscape of the Middle East, and thus the politics of the Palestinian question. Saddam Hussein’s promised “linkage” between the Gulf and Palestinian questions was in fact established, as the US sought to preserve its regional allies from a popular backlash, an Roger Heacock, Ali Jarbawi • 12 min read
MER Article Palestine in the New Order Since the Gulf war, the Palestinian cause has entered an entirely new phase, one that is not merely a consequence of the war in the narrow sense. The Gulf crisis was the setting for a series of confrontations between local and international forces of such intensity that it is difficult to find a pre Azmi Bishara • 17 min read
Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Joel Beinin • 6 min read
