MER Article M-I-C K-E-Y S-A-'-U-D In the days before globalization, when the US Air Force operated the only television station in his magic kingdom and the adventures of Davy Crockett were standard fare, the Saudi king loved to shower visitors with gifts. While heads of tribes received sacks of gold, Westerners often took home wrist (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article "Nothing More to Lose" Economic liberalization is now hitting the Egyptian countryside. After decades of Nasserist regulations favoring small land tenants, a new law will “reform” the relationship between landowners and tenants in favor of the first. It will more fully integrate the Egyptian countryside into the global ma Karim El-Gawhary • 6 min read
MER Article A New Strategy for the Palestinian "Minority" in Israel In December 1997, the first “Equality Conference” was held in Nazareth to address the continuing marginalization of the Palestinian Arab community in Israel. This event represents part of the ongoing struggle of Palestinian citizens to overcome discriminatory laws and state practices in Israel. The Hatim Kanaaneh, Rhoda Kanaaneh • 3 min read
MER Article Bringing the Peninsula In from the Periphery Research on the political and economic development of the contemporary Arabian Peninsula is often relegated to the fringes of general comparative and Middle Eastern scholarship, isolated from larger theoretical debates and narrowly defined in terms of threat typologies, regional security alliances a Gwenn Okruhlik • 7 min read
MER Article Bahrain's Crisis Worsens Since early June 1997, an upsurge of crude firebombings, street demonstrations and heavy repression has added some nine deaths and an unknown number of arrests and injuries to the toll of the ongoing unrest in Bahrain. The troubles erupted there three years ago with demonstrations over unemployment, discrimination and the Joe Stork • 11 min read
MER Article "This Is the Bride" With only approximately 6 percent of married women in Yemen living in polygamous marriages, such relationships are neither popular nor widespread. Nevertheless, polygamy in Yemen remains a complicated issue. Janine A. Clark • 3 min read
MER Article The Romance of Tahliyya Street For middle and upper class elite, entertainment in Jidda is overwhelmingly centered around commodities. In particular, the city’s Tahliyya Street is a monument to commercialization in Saudi Arabia: a string of shops and fast food restaurants such as Benetton, Esprit, McDonald’s and Sbarro, mixed in Lisa Wynn • 6 min read
MER Article Arabia Without Sultans Revisited For an author to revisit a book he wrote a quarter of a century, and a half lifetime ago, is a perilous undertaking. Arabia Without Sultans was conceived of, and written, in the early 1970s, and published in 1974 in Britain, in 1975 in the US, and subsequently, in Arabic, Fred Halliday • 10 min read
MER Article A Clash of Fundamentalisms During the past two decades, a proselytizing, reformist, “Islamist” movement -- mainly characterized as “Wahhabi” -- has gained increasing popularity throughout Yemen. Wahhabism actively opposes both the main Yemeni schools -- Zaydi Shi‘ism in the north and Shafi‘i Sunnism in the south and in the Ti Shelagh Weir • 6 min read
MER Article The Closing of the Arabian Frontier and the Future of Saudi-American Relations In 1893, the University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner traveled to the Chicago world’s fair to deliver the most famous paper in the annals of the US historical profession. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” turned “the fact of conquest” into the myth of pioneers settling Robert Vitalis • 20 min read
MER Article Arms Supplies and Military Spending in the Gulf While not as great as it had been in the recent past, the role of arms and military spending in the societies and economies of the Gulf states is still much larger than in any other area of the world. It was not until after the Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf war that these states felt that they cou F. Gregory Gause • 6 min read
MER Article Oil, Gas and the Future of Arab Gulf Countries The political and economic structures of the Arab Gulf countries have been surprisingly resistant to change. The resilience of the “old political deal” between royal families and traditional elites -- the ‘ulama’, tribal leaders, urban merchants and technocrats -- can be attributed to three main factors. First, the institutional, tribal Fareed Mohamedi • 11 min read
