"What Elections? When?" At the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip, 35 kilometers south of Gaza City, lies the city of Rafah and its refugee camps. Of the total population of 110,000, 78,000 are refugees. A Rafah resident, ‘Isam Younis, interviewed a 28-year old worker from Rafah’s Shabura refugee camp. (Author not identified) • 2 min read
"The PLO Is Still Waging a Struggle for Recognition Rather Than for a Solution" ‘Ali Jarbawi, an associate professor of political science at Birzeit University, is the author of The Intifada and Political Leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Beirut: Dar al-Tali‘a, in Arabic). MERIP contributing editor Penny Johnson interviewed him in Ramallah in late February 1990. You Penny Johnson • 5 min read
The Intifada in Israel Our visitors -- activists coming to express solidarity with the Palestinians, human rights workers documenting the latest atrocities, itinerant journalists doing the definitive intifada story -- sometimes see things clearer than we do. Here, in the eye of the storm, it is easy to be misled. The sign Stanley Cohen • 15 min read
US Aid to Israel The US has provided over $50 billion in economic and military aid to Israel since 1949, more than to any other country. Israel has the highest GNP per capita of all US aid recipients ($6,810). In 1991 Israel will receive more US aid per capita ($686) than the total GNP per capita of many countries, Martha Wenger • 3 min read
The Money Tree How much money flows from US taxpayers’ pockets into the Israeli treasury each year? Is it the $3 billion figure so often quoted in the press? And what is it used for? When Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) asked the State Department these questions, he learned that the total for fiscal year 1989 was actual Martha Wenger • 5 min read
Washington's Game Plan in the Middle East The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nowhere does this cynical adage seem more descriptive than regarding United States policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rashid Khalidi, Joe Stork • 9 min read
The Uprising's Dilemma As the Palestinian uprising enters its thirtieth month, it faces a crisis of direction. Its main achievement seems to lie behind: a spectacular ability to mobilize whole sectors of a civilian population, through networks of underground civilian resistance and communal self-help projects, challenging Salim Tamari • 13 min read
From the Editors The Palestinian uprising, along with its other achievements, has enabled Palestinian voices finally to reach the United States. Among the most eloquent of these voices are the many different expressions of Palestinian culture. In theater, film, music, art and literature, Palestinian cultural product The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Karsh, The Soviet Union and Syria Efraim Karsh, The Soviet Union and Syria: The Asad Years (London: Routledge, 1988.) Fred H. Lawson • 2 min read
MER Article Abrahamian, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin The roots of the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) reach back to the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI), a modernist liberal-religious party formed in 1961. The founders of the LMI, virtually all educated members of the traditional middle class, opposed the Shah’s rule on both political and moral gro Mansour Farhang • 4 min read
MER Article Sacrilegious Discourse More than a quarter of a century after independence, the Maghrib’s Francophone literary output is flourishing. If one adds to this the Beur literature produced by second and third generation immigrants of North African heritage, Maghribi literature in French appears to be the single most important l Hedi Abdel-Jaouad • 8 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf During four months in Oxford last fall, I spent part of my time pursuing the charge of my editorial colleagues to seek out new and distinctively British approaches to the Middle East. My main finding is that British nostalgia for empire, which many North Americans came to know in the popular televis Joel Beinin • 4 min read
