MER Article Reading Culture, Identity and Space in US Foreign Policy Inundated by “theories” about the putative role of Islamic and Arab culture in shaping Middle East politics, one might ask: what role does American culture play in US foreign policy? In recent years, some of the most innovative contributions to the study of US relations with the Middle East have com Waleed Hazbun • 9 min read
MER Article Jordan's New "Political Development" Strategy “We have a problem here. There is no real [opposition] party except for the Muslim Brotherhood.” [1] So an official of Jordan’s new Ministry of Political Development and Parliamentary Affairs summed up the raison d’etre of his place of employment. Anne Baylouny • 11 min read
MER Article A Landscape of Uncertainty The events following the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri and Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon have not discernibly changed the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon. While a surprising government edict has made it easier for Palestinians to get clerical and manual jobs, calls for disarming them and pe Laleh Khalili • 14 min read
MER Article Of Specters and Disciplined Commodities “Lebanon was built with Syrian muscles,” declared an elderly Lebanese in the early 1990s. He was referring to the hundreds of thousands of semi- and unskilled Syrians who have worked in Lebanon on a temporary basis in construction, agriculture, manufacturing and services since the mid-twentieth cent John Chalcraft • 15 min read
MER Article Beirut Diary: April 2005 PREFACE Like most places in the world that, time and time again, have been fit into the journalist's script or forced into the novelist's frame, Lebanon has been tirelessly taxed with metaphors and allegories. Simultaneously, it has been presented as the terrain for metaphorical and allegorical con Rasha Salti • 14 min read
MER Article Syria and Lebanon: A Brotherhood Transformed Unlike its incremental intervention in Lebanon throughout early 1976, Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon in late April 2005 was swift, unplanned and humiliating. On both occasions, Lebanese, regional and international factors overlapped to shape Syrian behavior. But whereas the 1976 intervention consol Bassel Salloukh • 20 min read
MER Article Syria's Curious Dilemma Seasoned observers of Syria have learned not to make much of apparent political changes in the country. This lesson holds true today, but with a twist. Bassam Haddad • 17 min read
MER Article Samih Farsoun We mourn the passing of Samih Farsoun on June 9, 2005 and offer our heartfelt condolences to his partner Katha Kissman, his daughter Rudi, and his other family and friends. A long-time professor of sociology at American University in Washington, DC, Samih was one of the earliest members of the Middl Lisa Hajjar, Joe Stork • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Fall 2005) Mere months ago, devotees of President George W. Bush's Iraq adventure were positively giddy. Not only were they convinced that Iraq was on the fast track to peace, prosperity and perpetual friendliness with Washington, they believed that countries across the Greater Middle East were following close behind. Neo-conservative The Editors • 6 min read
MER Article Villages of No Return During the bitter war with the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the 1990s, the Turkish army and paramilitary “village guards” depopulated and burned villages in southeastern Turkey on a systematic scale. Clearance of the countryside and resettlement of the rural population, from which the PKK drew membership, Joost Jongerden • 11 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2005) Anderson, Betty. Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005). Anderson, Irvine. Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land, America and Israel, 1917-2002 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005). Arat, Yeşi The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Europe and the Political Economy of Arab Cinema TEXTS REVIEWED: Roy Armes, Postcolonial Images: Studies in North African Film (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005). Kevin Dwyer, Beyond Casablanca: M. A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004). Garay Menicucci • 4 min read
