MER Article New Data on Palestinian Workers in Israel A survey covering the inhabitants of the territories who work inside Israel, conducted by the manpower planning section of the Department of Employment, reveals that in 1981 some 76,000 of them were working in Israel. In 1971, the equivalent figure had been 21,000 and in 1975 it had been 66,000. Acc (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article The Peace Now Demonstration of February 10, 1983 This account by Shulamit Har-Even appeared in Yediot Aharanot on February 14, 1983. It was translated from Hebrew by Israel Shahak. According to Shahak, who was present at the demonstration himself, the pro-Sharon crowd was made up of West Bank settlers (“Gush Emunim types”) and young yeshiva studen (Author not identified) • 8 min read
MER Article Divisions in the Kibbutz Israel’s kibbutzim, each a block of neat cottages built round a communal dining room, have always concerned themselves with more than the shared tilling of soil pioneered by Jewish settlers in 1911. Since the prospect of a spring election appeared in the autumn of 1982, kibbutz members have been pre Elfi Pallis • 5 min read
MER Article Israeli Economy Struggles for Appearance of Solvency In a year when much of the world endured a protracted economic crisis, and Israel itself was politically torn by the invasion of Lebanon, that country&rsquos economy appeared deceptively unruffled. True, inflation rebounded to a near-record level of 131.5 percent, [1] but most of the country’s citiz Joe Stork • 7 min read
MER Article "There Is a Basis for an Israeli-Palestinian Strategy of Joint Struggle" Daniel Amit is a physicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a founding member of the Committee Against the War in Lebanon and its predecessors, the Committee in Solidarity with Birzeit University and the Committee Against Settlement in Hebron. During the 1982-1983 academic year, he is Ei The Editors • 20 min read
MER Article Iron and a King There is a new wisdom, already becoming conventional, which explains Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the attendant massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese by reference to two crucially interconnected developments in Israel: the “orientalization” of Israeli society and the rise to power of the Likud Kenneth Brown • 29 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May/June 1983) This is the first of several issues we have planned which will examine the Middle East in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last June. This issue explores the existing political divisions inside Israel itself. Kenneth Brown investigates the complexities underlying Israel’s own “war between th The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Manoucheir Kalantari It is with the deepest sadness that I have learned of the death of Manoucheir Kalantari, a dear friend and valiant comrade with whom I worked closely for several years. He was an Iranian socialist who worked for many years as a leader of the opposition in Britain and Western Europe to the Shah’s reg Fred Halliday • 3 min read
MER Article Book Notes (March/April 1983) Sepehr Zabih, The Mossadegh Era: Roots of the Iranian Revolution (Chicago: Lakeview Press, 1982). A sympathetic narrative of Mossadeq’s tenure as prime minister from April 1951 to August 1953, to the point of being unable to criticize some of the National Front’s more serious blunders. Zabih also e (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article Keddie, Roots of Revolution Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (with a section by Yann Richard) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). (Author not identified) • 4 min read
MER Article Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). A major lesson of the Iranian revolution was how poorly students of the Middle East understood the social and political forces there. This was a country which had been the object of more official and Eric Hooglund • 5 min read
MER Article Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran Eric Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.) Azar Tabari • 11 min read
