MER Article From the Editors (January 1985) We would like to begin this first issue for 1985 with heartfelt thanks to our readers for your very strong support over the past year. Your unprecedented generosity in response to our fundraising appeals was essential to our work, and we appreciate very much the confidence this expresses for MERIP’s The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Letter from the West Bank Driving through the West Bank on Land Day, March 30, we pull to the side of the road outside Balata refugee camp, on the outskirts of Nablus. In the valley, two bulldozers move slowly against the backdrop of the Nablus hills, plowing a new road through wheatfields. Spring has come early this year, a A Special Correspondent • 7 min read
MER Article Visualizing History Sarah Graham-Brown, The Palestinians and Their Society, 1880-1946 (New York: Quartet Books, 1980). Miriam Rosen • 12 min read
MER Article Khalidi and Mansour, Palestine and the Gulf Rashid Khalidi and Camille Mansour, eds., Palestine and the Gulf (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1982). Rex Wingerter • 1 min read
MER Article Books on Palestine and Human Rights Raja Shehadeh and Jonathan Kuttab, The West Bank and the Rule of Law (Geneva: International Commission of Jurists, 1980). David H. Ott, Palestine in Perspective: Politics, Human Rights and the West Bank (London: Quartet Books, 1980). Tim Coone • 1 min read
MER Article Owen, Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine Roger Owen, ed., Studies in the Economic and Social History of Palestine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982). James A. Reilly • 6 min read
MER Article "The People Have Refused to Back Down" Azmi Shuaibi is a dentist and a leading member of al-Bira municipal council, now disbanded by the Israeli military government. He comes from a peasant background, from the village of Dayr Ghassana in the West Bank, and was educated at Cairo University. He was elected to al-Bira municipal council on Beshara Doumani, Salim Tamari • 13 min read
MER Article Halabi, The West Bank Story Rafik Halabi, The West Bank Story (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982). Rafik Halabi is a Palestinian-Israeli Druze. He writes at times with the viewpoint of an Israeli soldier and a former aide to Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, sometimes as an Arab villager. The West Bank Story explores seve (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article Cohen, Political Parties in the West Bank Under the Jordanian Regime, 1949-1967 Amnon Cohen, Political Parties in the West Bank Under the Jordanian Regime, 1949-1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982). Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article The Lebanon War and the Occupied Territories Until the war in Lebanon, official Israeli policy toward the Palestinians under its occupation rested on the premise that the PLO was the only obstacle on the road to what Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir called “the fullest advancement of the process that began in Camp David.” [1] The elimination of Khalil Nakhleh • 10 min read
MER Article Danger Signals and Dress Rehearsals for a Palestinian Exodus Jonathan Kuttab works as an attorney in Ramallah. He grew up in the West Bank. After finishing college in the US and getting a law degree from the University of Virginia, he returned to the West Bank in 1979. He recently obtained accreditation from the Israeli bar. He works with Law in the Service o (Author not identified) • 12 min read
MER Article Demographic Consequences of the Occupation The residual areas of Palestine occupied by Israel in June 1967 (generally referred to as the West Bank and Gaza) contained a population of between 1,300,000 and 1,350,000 Palestinians. At that time, this population represented over half of all the estimated 2,650,000 Palestinians in the world. At p Janet Abu-Lughod • 13 min read
