MER Article Letters (May/June 1987) I read Kevin Kelly’s update on Jordan’s plan for the West Bank (MER 144). Although it is hard to argue that the path of relationship between Jordan and the Palestinian movement led by Yasser Arafat was smooth and rosy, it is quite important to consider the reality of the ties that bind Jordanians an (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Gaza Ghetto Pea Holmquist, Joan Mandell and Pierre Bjorklund, Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family, 1948-1984 (Icarus Films, 1984). Taline Voskeritchian • 4 min read
MER Article Van den Berg, Stranger at Home Rudolf van den Berg, Stranger at Home (1985). It is no small compliment to say that Stranger at Home is a film you want to see more than once (and should). Over the years -- 19 to be precise -- Palestine documentaries have become a veritable genre, but with few exceptions, they have hardly become a Miriam Rosen • 6 min read
MER Article Shipler, Arab and Jew David Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land (New York: Times Books, 1986). Reading this massive 556-page book by David Shipler, the New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem from 1979-1984, is dizzyingly similar to reading 200 Times feature stories in a row. Shipler’s compendi Penny Johnson • 5 min read
MER Article Exporting Nuclear Triggers Richard Smyth, indicted in May 1985 for illegally exporting nuclear trigger devices to Israel, is now a fugitive. In August 1985, two days before he was scheduled to appear in court, Smyth and his wife sailed his boat to Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California, and disappeared, forfeit Richard Sale, Geoffrey Aronson • 9 min read
MER Article "You Have to Prove to the Palestinians That You Are Serious About Peace" Arie Arnon has been a leading Israeli proponent of political negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and opponent of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Golan. He is currently a member of the Progressive List for Peace, and teaches economics at Beersheva Universi Zachary Lockman • 10 min read
MER Article The Politics of Social Welfare On June 27, 1967, Arab East Jerusalem was annexed to the State of Israel. With the annexation, 120,000 residents of the Arab sector were joined with the Jewish citizens as equal residents under Israeli law of the united city of Jerusalem. Dori Aronson • 10 min read
MER Article "The Pressure Should Be on the US and Israel to Recognize the PLO" Hilton Obenzinger is a member of the executive committee of the November 29 Committee for Palestine, and on the staff of their bimonthly, Palestine Focus. His book of poems, This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, was reviewed in our February 1982 issue. Joel Beinin interviewed him i Joel Beinin • 7 min read
MER Article "The US Must Start Negotiations with the PLO" Gail Pressberg is the Middle East coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Joe Stork spoke with her in Washington in late March 1987. Where is the peace movement at now with regard to Middle East issues? Joe Stork • 9 min read
MER Article "They Control the Hill, But We've Got a Lot of Positions Around the Hill" Jim Zogby is the director of the Arab American Institute in Washington. He was a founder of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Joe Stork spoke with him on March 18, 1987. How did you get engaged in Middle East organizing? Joe Stork • 14 min read
MER Article An Invitation for the Fifth of June I For the fifth year you come to us lugging a burlap sack on your back, barefoot, on your face the sadness of heavens and the pain of Hussein. We’ll receive you at every airport with flower bouquets, and drink -- to your health -- rivers of wine. We’ll sing and recite insincere poems in your presen Nizar Qabbani • 1 min read
MER Article Profiles of Two Families The two West Bank families profiled here were not selected to be “representative,” but rather to explore, through people the authors knew intimately, particular lives and livelihoods as they both changed and maintained themselves in the last two decades of Israeli military occupation in the West Ban Penny Johnson • 23 min read
