MER Article Notes on Palestinian Political Leadership The question of Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza is one of the key issues in the effort to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel has systematically suppressed political expression in the Occupied Territories, deporting or imprisoning local leaders as they emerge. The Pales Ziad Abu 'Amr • 8 min read
MER Article The PLO and the Uprising For many years, for many people, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict consisted primarily of the struggle between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, a struggle waged mainly outside of Palestine. The uprising in the Occupied Territories has firmly fixed the attention of the world on Rashid Khalidi • 8 min read
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 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 "Something Was in the Air All of 1987" Mahmoud and Naji, both in their early twenties, are full-time participants in the uprising. Both were politically active before the uprising and, in addition to joining demonstrations, they play leading roles in local neighborhood committees. Both are college students. Mahmoud majors in civil engine Beshara Doumani • 5 min read
MER Article Mosque and Church in the Uprising It was only one of the hundreds of incidents that cumulatively have come to be known as “the uprising.” Here there were no beatings or shootings, no bloodshed, and, as far as I know, no one was arrested. In fact, compared with the dramatic events we have been witnessing nightly on the evening news, Dale Bishop • 6 min read
MER Article Two Poems About Palestine In the Refugee Camp The huts were of mud and hay, their thin roofs feared the rain, and walls slouched like humbled men. The streets were laid out in a grid, as in New York, but without the dignity of names or asphalt. Dust reigned. Women grew pale chickens and children feeding them fables from the Sharif Elmusa, Nizar Qabbani • 1 min read
MER Article "When the Rest Is Quiet, There Is Revolution in Dahaysha" We enter Dahaysha through one of several gates, past rusted oil drums piled high in a stockade and a chain-link barbed-wire fence that residents keep tearing down. The alleyways are quiet; people must be inside. M. takes us to the home of his friend A., 27, a business student at Bethlehem Universit Melissa Baumann • 6 min read
MER Article Abu Jamal's Family In MER 146,1 wrote about Abu Jamal and his family. In mid-December, two weeks into the uprising, soldiers came to the house of Abu Jamal in the Old City of Ramallah. They arrested two of his teenage sons, Nasir and ‘Umar, and one of their cousins from across the street, and took them to the new pris Joost Hiltermann • 3 min read
MER Article What the Uprising Means This article is adapted from a talk Salim Tamari gave at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC on February 25, 1988. Salim Tamari • 20 min read
MER Article Uprising in Gaza One year before the Palestinian mass uprising began, the writing was on the grey cement walls of refugee camp houses in Gaza, where you could read the anguish of Gaza camp residents at the spectacle of the Amal militia bombarding Palestinians in the camps in Lebanon. These attacks forged a real unit Anita Vitullo Khoury • 11 min read
MER Article Morning in Ramallah Military Court The main street was completely deserted on the way to Ramallah Military Headquarters the morning of February 25. It was the second day of a general strike called for in the eighth statement by the United National Leadership to protest the visit of Secretary of State George Shultz. Few people were ev Lee OBrien, Penny Johnson • 2 min read
