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
MER Article The Significance of Stones Visitors to the West Bank and Gaza get a very immediate, sensory grasp of the significance of stones. In the West Bank, the main cities and towns and many larger villages lie along the ridge of hills and plateaus running north to south and forming a sort of geological spine between the Mediterranean Joe Stork • 21 min read
MER Article From the Editors (September/October 1988) In June, the seventh month of the uprising, two of us -- Joe Stork and Jim Paul -- traveled to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, along with photographer Rick Reinhard. We saw firsthand the extent to which this unfolding political event has transformed, and continues to transform, a balance of forces w The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Letter (July/August 1988) I would appreciate your publishing in Middle East Report the information that Zed Books has agreed to withdraw from circulation and pulp all remaining copies of Bantustan Gaza by Richard Locke and Anthony Stewart. This action has been taken at my request on the grounds that substantial portions of t (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf (July/August 1988) The defeat of the Arab states in the June 1967 war was more than a military setback. It was also a blow against the radical nationalist project and its modern and secular cultural orientation which bonded the Arab world and the West even as it provided a framework for resistance to Western economic, Joel Beinin • 5 min read
MER Article Lessing, The Wind Blows Away Our Words Doris Lessing, The Wind Blows Away Our Words (London: Picador and NY: Random House, 1987). The travel book that touches on the political is a tricky genre. At its best it enables the author, freed from the constraints of formal narrative and factual analysis, to present a special insight into a Fred Halliday • 2 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
MER Article Dorman and Farhang, The US Press and Iran William Dorman and Mansour Farhang, The US Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987). Ervand Abrahamian • 4 min read
MER Article Apprehensions of Islam Bruno Etienne, L’islamisme radical (Paris: Hachette, 1987.) Gilles Kepel, Les banlieues de l’islam: naissance d’une religion en France (Paris: Seuil, 1987.) Michael Gilsenan • 14 min read
MER Article Birth (Al-Maulid) BIRTH (AL-MAULID) Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Majdhoub (1921-1982) Hand on the Prophet, God Help and support me with him who speaks for the people on Judgment Day -- with him who drinks pure water from al-Kauthar, Paradise river. On the square’s other side clear light spreads a rainbow of hope and jo Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Majdhoub • 2 min read
MER Article Document: Ismail Besikci on State Ideology and the Kurds Turkish sociologist Ismail Beşikçi, the country’s foremost authority on Kurds, was born in Çorum in 1939. He recounts meeting Kurds for the first time as a student at Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Science. Later he spent time in Turkey’s eastern provinces as a student and during his milit (Author not identified) • 3 min read
