MER Article Letters (November/December 1983) I’ve been working for some time on the question of Israeli military sales. I found Esther Howard’s article, “Israel: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” (MERIP Reports 112) invaluable. However, I have uncovered two minor errors which might mislead others using it as a source. (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article Two Books on Jordan Avi Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, 1948-1957 (London: Frank Cass, 1981). Peter Gubser, Jordan: Crossroads of Middle Eastern Events (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983). Mary C. Wilson • 2 min read
MER Article Khalidi and Mansour, Palestine and the Gulf Rashid Khalidi and Camille Mansour, eds., Palestine and the Gulf (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1982). Rex Wingerter • 1 min read
MER Article Le Carre, The Little Drummer Girl John Le Carre, The Little Drummer Girl (Random House, 1983). Le Carre has forsaken the world of the Circus and its post-imperial wiles to explore the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, particularly that between the underground agencies of the two sides. The central character is a young E Fred Halliday • 2 min read
MER Article Abu Iyad, My Home, My Land Abu Iyad, My Home My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle (with Eric Rouleau) (New York: New York Times Books, 1981). My Home, My Land provides important information on the man who is second in command of Fatah and also presents the largely untold “internal” history of that organization. A John Egan • 3 min read
MER Article Israeli, American Military Confer on Combat Stress On January 2-6, 1983, I attended the Third International Conference on Psychological Stress and Adjustment in Time of War and Peace, sponsored by Tel Aviv University. The first two conferences in the series, convened in 1975 and 1978, were also held in Tel Aviv. According to the organizers, the conf A Special Correspondent • 2 min read
MER Article Letter from Kabul At night, dogs take over the streets of Kabul. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, roam the city, dig through garbage that’s dumped into the ditches during the day, and engage in vicious barking battles to defend their territories. The dogs are rarely bothered: Small groups of soldiers patrol the d Konrad Ege • 8 min read
MER Article "Abu 'Ammar's Biggest Mistake Was Gambling on the Americans" ‘Abd al-Jawad Salih was born in al-Bira, Palestine, in December 1931. He finished high school there and later attended the American University in Cairo, where he received a B.A. in political economy in 1955. He taught briefly in Jerusalem, and then at a teachers’ training college in Tripoli, Libya. (Author not identified) • 9 min read
MER Article Palestinian Life at Ground Level Since the summer of 1982 everything has changed. The Palestinians’ lives have been transformed in a way which touches all the details of everyday existence and comes to seem almost “normal.” They were refugees then. Now they have become pariahs. Life today remains at ground level. The forces of orde Marie-Christine Aulas • 7 min read
MER Article Yasser Arafat's Nightmare Eqbal Ahmad, a close observer of the Palestinian resistance movement since 1968, has made many visits to the region and conferred with Palestinian leaders. His involvement developed out of his speaking and writing on behalf of the national liberation struggles in Algeria and Vietnam. Ahmad, who is f Eqbal Ahmad • 18 min read
MER Article The Mutiny Against Arafat The mutiny that broke out in May has shaken Fatah with the most serious crisis of its existence. This crisis not only threatens to split the main organization of the Palestinian resistance (with 80 percent of its members), but also calls into question the very existence of the PLO. Eric Rouleau • 13 min read
MER Article Behind the Fatah Rebellion Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar, is associate professor of politics at the American University of Beirut and a research fellow of the Institute for Palestine Studies. He is currently a visiting professor at Georgetown University, and he has written widely on political developments in the Arab Rashid Khalidi • 18 min read
