MER Article Editor's Bookshelf (September/October 1988) In December 1975, just as the presidential election campaign was getting underway, the Brookings Institution published the report of a study group entitled Toward Middle East Peace. Several members of the group (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Philip Klutznick and William Quandt) joined the Carter administrati Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Column “Al Miskin” is a new Middle East Report column that keeps one eye focused on how the major media cover the Middle East, and the other looking out for choice items that the arbiters of information have buried. Readers should send Al things they would like to see in print: confidential memos that need Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Letter from Dublin As in nearly all Western European countries, there are those in Ireland who would have us believe that their country has a special relationship with the Middle East. Some of this has to do with trade, some with the sharing of enemies. But the affinities of Ireland with the Middle East, these Irish c Fred Halliday • 6 min read
MER Article Letters Arab Documentation on Palestinians I have read a number of reviews of Benny Morris’ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, including your own. All give the book the praise which it deserves, but there is one point about Morris' approach to which I have so far seen no reference in (Author not identified) • 4 min read
MER Article Zionism, Anti-Semitism and Jewish Identity in the Women's Movement Zionism made its first entry into global feminist debate at the founding UN Decade for Women conference in Mexico City in 1975. There, during discussions of the introduction to a program of action for the decade, the conference passed wording that called for “the elimination of colonialism and neo-c Ellen Cantarow • 20 min read
MER Article Who's Afraid of Mahmoud Darwish? Under normal circumstances, Arabic literature of any kind passes virtually unnoticed in Israel, despite the fact that a few of the most well-known contemporary Arab writers are Israeli citizens. But the publication of “Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words,” a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinia Ammiel Alcalay • 9 min read
MER Article Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words O those who pass between fleeting words Carry your names, and be gone Rid our time of your hours, and be gone Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea and the sand of memory Take what pictures you will, so that you understand That which you never will: How a stone from our land builds the ce Mahmoud Darwish • 2 min read
MER Article Notes on Palestinian Political Leadership The question of Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza is one of the key issues in the effort to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel has systematically suppressed political expression in the Occupied Territories, deporting or imprisoning local leaders as they emerge. The Pales Ziad Abu 'Amr • 8 min read
MER Article The PLO and the Uprising For many years, for many people, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict consisted primarily of the struggle between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, a struggle waged mainly outside of Palestine. The uprising in the Occupied Territories has firmly fixed the attention of the world on Rashid Khalidi • 8 min read
MER Article Palestine for Beginners After World War I, the League of Nations (controlled by the leading colonial powers of the time, Britain and France) carved up the territories of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The territory now made up of Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan was granted to Great Britain as a Mandate (a qu Lisa Hajjar, Joel Beinin • 8 min read
MER Article Points of Stress Eight months into the intifada, Israel’s occupation appears as unyielding as the rocky hills of Palestine. Bolstered by arms and funds from the United States and supported by a rightward-leaning public, the Israeli political establishment stands utterly intransigent, opposed to any political comprom James Paul • 14 min read
