Palestinian Trade Unions and the Struggle for Independence Not so long ago, to visit the Erez checkpoint on Gaza’s “border” crossing with Israel was to witness a modem slave market. Tens of thousands of Palestinian workers would wake up at 3 am and gather at Erez for the privilege of working in their occupier’s economy, predominantly in construction and agr Graham Usher • 13 min read
MER Article Book Review Lila Abu-Lughod, Writing Women’s Worlds (California, 1992). Edmund Burke III, ed., Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (California, 1993). Zjaleh Hajibashi • 5 min read
MER Article Egypt's Factory Privatization Campaign Turns Deadly The Egyptian government’s campaign to sell off the cream of its state-owned factories to private investors took a violent and murderous turn after some 7,000 evening-shift workers at the Kafr al-Dawwar Spinning and Weaving Factory staged a spontaneous sit-down strike on September 30, 1994. Security Joe Stork • 3 min read
MER Article Aspects of Egyptian Civil Resistance Several films with critical political content opened during the 1992 Ramadan season in Egypt. The most popular was al-Irhab wa al-Kabab (Terrorism and Kebab), directed by Sharif ‘Arafa and starring Egypt’s foremost comic actor, ‘Adil Imam. The protagonist repeatedly visits the hub of the central government bureaucracy Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Women and Work in Istanbul On the Asian side of the Istanbul lies a district which I will call Yenitepe. [1] At its center it is a teeming municipality of small shops and low-rise working-class apartments, but at its edge Yenitepe’s streets branch into a haphazard network of dirt roads threading together Jenny White • 16 min read
MER Article Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (Princeton, 1987). Robert Vitalis • 9 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
Sustaining Movement, Creating Space “Up here at the encampment,” said Abu Tha’ir, peering ahead through the windshield, “we cross the Green Line into ’48. If there is a checkpoint and they stop us, they’ll send me back to prison.” He looked at me as if asking for my opinion, but he did not slow down as we approached the army post perc Joost Hiltermann • 16 min read
MER Article Occupational Health and Safety in Turkey Kandir Baysu has been hospitalized twice over the past eight years, both times for more than two months and requiring dozens of blood transfusions. Baysu, a worker at a battery manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Istanbul, thinks he is about due for another hospital stay. As in the past, he expe Aliza Marcus • 8 min read
MER Article From the Editors (November/December 1989) When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met in Washington in September, President Husni Mubarak was on hand to speak about the Third World debt crisis. For more than a year, Cairo has been negotiating a new $500 million agreement with the IMF that would allow Egypt to reschedule $10 The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker Ellis Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930-1952 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986). The critique of modernization theory that began in the late 1960s had an especially significant impact on a new generation of Western scholars who rejected Eric Davis • 4 min read
MER Article Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran Asef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control (London: Zed Press, 1987.) The participation of workers in the anti-shah struggle, the rise of factory councils in 1979 and 1980, and their battles with the new Islamic state over workers’ control and other Val Moghadam • 1 min read
