"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
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 Mediations Intifada Chic We’re not really sure what this tells us about the present state of the Israeli Jewish psyche, almost two years into the intifada, but here are some of the designer T-shirts being sold these days in Jerusalem: Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Enduring Intifada Injuries The nightmare started when 24-year-old Ahlam, from the village of Ya’bud in the Israeli-occupied territories, joined a march to commemorate the martyrdom of a fellow villager. “The situation was so tense that the Israeli army could not enter the village,” she recalled from her hospital bed in Amman Rania Atalla • 2 min read
MER Article Palestinian Expression Inside a Cultural Ghetto During the summer of 1986,1 spent a month in the West Bank, keen to learn for myself about the effects of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian forms of expression, particularly in the visual arts and local crafts. A quick look at different cultural products indicated that traditional aesthetic values Kamal Boullata • 16 min read
MER Article A Bullet, A Lie ahmad had those wildly intense eyes that would stare through you as he spoke and would light up every now and then as he listened and would drive me crazy what does he want from me? i remember ahmad when he returned from prison to ya‘bad and his grandmother ululated in jubilation danced in happi Joost Hiltermann • 1 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf (March/April 1989) The Palestinian human rights monitoring organization, Al-Haq/Law in the Service of Man, the West Bank affiliate of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, marked the first anniversary of the intifada with a comprehensive report on Israel’s violations of human rights in its effort to qu Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Cossali and Robson, Stateless in Gaza Paul Cossali and Clive Robson, Stateless in Gaza (London: Zed Press, 1986). Stateless in Gaza comprises interviews with 60 Gazans -- from women activists to housewives, from resistance writers to laborers in Israel -- who talk about life in the occupied strip. Cossali, a teacher and solidarity acti Rania Atalla • 1 min read
MER Article Children's Territory Given the same materials and the same opportunities, young chiliren all over the world paint in a similar way. They don’ necessarily paint the jame things. (Eskimo children will saint different animals from the chilIren in the Sudan.) What is similar is :he way young children make intuitive narks on John Berger • 2 min read
MER Article Abu Farid's House Driving to Salfit through the villages of Yasuf and Iskaka on a sunny fall day is an exhilarating experience. The asphalt road winds like a snake through hill after hill dotted by olive trees whose clusters of tiny, pastel green leaves shimmer in the light breeze. Rich brown earth, freshly Beshara Doumani • 20 min read
