MER Article Democratization Without Democracy When King Mohammed VI succeeded the late Hassan II in the summer of 1999, expectations soared. The young king’s investiture seemed to be the final step in a series of political changes that would set Morocco on the road to democracy. Along with a new bicameral legislature and an Catherine Sweet • 13 min read
MER Article A Truth Commission for Morocco The grim names Moroccans assign to the post-independence years -- in Arabic, zaman al-rusas and al-sanawat al-sawda, in French les anneés de plomb and les années noires or in English “the years of lead” and “the black years” -- evoke an era of grayness and lead bullets, fear and repression. During Susan Slyomovics • 10 min read
MER Article Political Authority in Crisis When King Mohammed VI succeeded his father Hassan II in July 1999, he instantly became a symbol of hope for a democratic Morocco. Unlike his father, whose 38-year rule was tarnished by human rights violations, corruption and a discredited political system, Mohammed VI -- lauded in the Moroccan and foreign Abdeslam Maghraoui • 17 min read
MER Article The Rise and Fall of Fa'ezeh Hashemi Both politics and women’s political activities are radically different under the Islamic Republic of Iran from what they were before the 1979 Revolution. But one fundamental fact has not changed: Politics is still the domain of men, and women who enter the field tend to be related -- either by blood Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 11 min read
MER Article Toward a War of Attrition in Palestine As the second intifada in the Occupied Territories approaches its sixth month, the activities of increasingly effective armed cells have been supplanting civil forms of resistance. This gradual "Lebanonization" of the conflict poses a challenge to Israel. For all his bluster about refusing to negotiate under fire, putting Mouin Rabbani • 7 min read
MER Article Gaza Agonistes To walk through Gaza is to penetrate the heart of the Palestinian uprising, to realize why it happened and why, sporadically, it endures. This is not simply because you sometimes have to enter Israel's vast, fortress-like Erez crossing into Gaza under fire from Palestinian guerrillas or stones thrown Graham Usher • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Spring 2001) On February 16, US and British warplanes bombed targets outside the no-fly zones for the first time since December 1998, prompting a brief media frenzy that refocused the world's attention on the low-level US-UK air war waged against Iraq since the 1990-1991 Gulf war. But the media mostly missed the The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Winter 2000) Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif, ed. Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2000). Arat, Zehra F., ed. Deconstructing Images of “The Turkish Woman” (New York: Palgrave, 2000). Armbrust, Walter, ed. Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Cul The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Jerusalem Texts Reviewed Salim Tamari, ed., Jerusalem, 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and Their Fate in the War (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Badil Resource Center, 1999). Meron Benvenisti, City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996). Mic Thomas Abowd • 7 min read
MER Article The Sneer of Memory Last February 10, readers of Lebanon’s leading Arabic daily, al-Nahar, awoke to find a strange apparition on an inner page of their morning paper. Slotted in the top lefthand corner of page five was an open letter written by one As‘ad Shaftari, a former attendant to Elie Hobeika, Michael Young • 8 min read
MER Article Olives, Stones and Bullets On the evening of November 17, the villagers of Hares called and asked people from Gush Shalom to please come there. This Palestinian village is cut off from the world. The army is blockading it -- no one is allowed to enter or leave. The olives, the only product of the village, are going to rot on Uri Avnery • 4 min read
MER Article Protest Amid Confusion Beginning with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and continuing during the first intifada in 1987-93, large numbers of Israelis took to the streets to express their clear rejection of the state’s military policies. 400,000 people angrily protested Israeli general Ariel Sharon’s complicity in the Efraim Davidi • 10 min read
