MER Article Editor's Picks (Spring 1997) Accad, Evelyne. Wounding Words: A Woman’s Journal in Tunisia (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996). Arab Coordinating Committee on Housing Rights/Israel. Housing for All: Implementation of the Right to Adequate Housing for the Arab Palestinian Minority in Israel (Nazareth, 1996). Alexander, Meena. The Sho (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article Making It on the Middle Eastern Margins of the Global Capitalist Economy Victoria Bernal, Cultivating Workers: Peasants and Capitalism in a Sudanese Village (Columbia, 1991). Jenny White, Money Makes Us Relatives: Women’s Labor in Urban Turkey (Texas, 1994). Janet Bauer • 6 min read
MER Article Youssef Chahine's "Cairo" An unemployed young man wanders into a mosque where an Islamist is calling for jihad against those who falsely claim to be Muslim. The “fundamentalist” quotes the Qur’an: “For he who lives not by my law is but an infidel.” Prayer. Voiceover: “Cut.” The fundamentalist and the unemployed man jump up a Nur Elmessiri • 6 min read
MER Article Documenting Land Ownership in the Palestinian Authority The Protocol Concerning Civil Affairs, an annex to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of September 1995, formalized the process by which Israeli authorities would transfer responsibility over land matters to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The first Oslo ag Michael R. Fischbach • 5 min read
MER Article "Is This Case for Real?" Michel Shehadeh is one of the defendants in the 10-year old LA 8 case. The following are excerpts from an interview with him conducted by Joan Mandell on February 8, 1997. You have been wanting to write something about the case. Have you always wanted to be a writer or were you motivated by the cas Joan Mandell • 4 min read
MER Article Ten Years of the Los Angeles Eight Deportation Case Ten years after their January 1987 arrest, the Los Angeles Eight are still on trial. While the courts continue to debate the case, the seven Palestinians and one Kenyan [1] continue to face separation from their families and homelands and the prospect of forced deportation. Initially charged under the McCarthy-era Phyllis Bennis • 8 min read
MER Article The Taliban, the Shari'a and the Pipeline Underlying the appearance of the Taliban movement, first of all, are factors internal to Afghan society, in particular the discrediting of the government and the “commandos” born out of the resistance to Soviet intervention. The rapid expansion of the militia, culminating with the conquest of Kabul Olivier Roy • 8 min read
MER Article Political Islam Under Attack in Sudan Through binoculars I can see clouds of reddish-brown dust billowing behind a Toyota pickup racing across the burnt savannah. A Dashka .50-caliber machine gun is mounted on its back. Crouched around me are a dozen guerrillas armed with AK-47s, hand grenades and light machine guns. The mood is casual, but Dan Connell • 9 min read
MER Article Street Vendors “Modern” is the way in which Cairo’s city administration would like to portray the Egyptian capital -- a Singapore-style, business metropolis stretching along the banks of the Nile, clean, rich and air-conditioned. In its latest campaign to create such an image, the city’s administration has identified unlicensed street Karim El-Gawhary • 2 min read
MER Article Sheikha in al-Warraq Clouds of smoke fill the room. Young women sit talking about the events of the day, while Sana’ inhales smoke from the strongest water pipe tobacco available on the market. “Everything else is for innocent children,” she scoffs. Her smoking habit symbolizes her social status. Sana’ is the sheikhat a Karim El-Gawhary • 5 min read
MER Article Community Participation and Environmental Change Cairo -- a city home to upwards of 14 million inhabitants -- is known to be one of the most polluted cities in the world. Although measures of pollutants in some places in Cairo exceed internationally recognized standards, popular collective action organized around environmental issues is rare. The Inas Tewfik • 6 min read
MER Article Environmental Conditions in Cairo In a 1994 assesment of environmental health risks prepared for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), American and Egyptian experts identified three leading environmental health risks for residents of Cairo: particulate matter air pollution, lead and microbiological diseases from envir Sally Ethelston • 3 min read
