MER Article Palestinian Communists and the National Movement George Hazboun is a leading Palestinian trade unionist. He was dismissed from his elected position as deputy mayor of Bethlehem by a January 22 municipal council decision, spearheaded by Mayor Elias Freij, for his alleged abstention from attending council meetings since May 1982. Coming as it did th (Author not identified) • 9 min read
MER Article Report from the Occupied Territories Snow fell seven times on the hill towns north of Jerusalem this past winter, and the warmth of spring did not come until after the middle of April. But the welcome spring did not bring relief from the harshness of the Israeli occupation. In the town centers, Israeli troops were a constant reminder o Sarah J Graham-Brown • 19 min read
MER Article From the Editors (March/April 1983) Most readers are only too familiar with the litany of harassments endured by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, from restrictions on personal freedoms to attacks on institutions and confiscation of land. Nonetheless, for the purposes of building campaigns to support Palestinian rights, The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article West Bank Journal Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank (London: Quartet Books, 1982). My problem with the newspapers is that I can’t settle on the right time to read them. In the morning they darken the day, at noon they kill my appetite, after lunch they make me sick, and in the evening Anita Vitullo Khoury • 3 min read
MER Article The 100-Year War “Israel is fighting in Lebanon,” declared Israel’s armed forces chief of staff Raphael Eitan on July 10, “to win the struggle for Eretz Yisrael.” Addressing officers and soldiers of a front-line armored unit, Eitan declared that “destroying and uprooting the terrorists’ base in Lebanon, would weaken Joan Mandell, Salim Tamari • 8 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May 1982) Professor Menachem Milson, the Israeli “Arabist” who heads the West Bank occupation forces, compares the intensity and seriousness of the recent unrest there with the war of 1948. The Begin government, determined to root out all assertions of Palestinian nationalism, is trying to destroy those insti The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article From the Editors (January/February 1982) It is no easy task to comprehend the significance of religion in its political dimension. Here in the US, for instance, Black churches have played a vital and progressive role in the struggle for political and civil rights. More recently, fundamentalist and revivalist Christian churches have partici The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Two Views of Said, The Question of Palestine Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Quandrangle, 1979). In the late 1950s, my political education began at the knees, or rather the soapboxes, of Union Square’s old lefties. Saturday morning meanderings among the Fourth Avenue bookstores were followed by afternoon “classes” in New Stu Cohen, Beshara Doumani • 12 min read
MER Article "The Palestinian Demand for Independence Cannot Be Postponed Indefinitely" Salim Tamari was born in Jaffa and now teaches sociology at Birzeit University, in the West Bank. He spoke with Penny Johnson, Peter Johnson and Judith Tucker in Boston in July 1981. The Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is entering its fifteenth year. How would you characterize Salim Tamari • 20 min read
MER Article A Palestinian Option Fred Halliday’s comments on the debate that constitutes the bulk of Towards a Socialist Republic of Palestine (1978) require a serious Palestinian response. Unwittingly, perhaps, Halliday’s comments tend to undermine this debate, and put a damper on Palestinian intellectual and passionate exploratio Khalil Nakhleh • 7 min read
MER Article Revolutionary Realism and the Struggle for Palestine The discussion of socialist strategy in Palestine recorded in Towards a Socialist Republic of Palestine has lost none of its pertinence despite the fact that it was recorded some time ago, in 1976. Sadat’s initiatives have not yet revised the basic terms in which the problem has been set since 1948. Fred Halliday • 27 min read
MER Article From the Editors (May/June 1981) The question of Palestine has consistently been of great importance to our work ever since the first issue of MERIP Reports was published ten years ago, in May 1971. More recently, in our introduction to “The PLO at the Crossroads” (July-August 1979), we wrote that MERIP is interested “in encouragin The Editors • 3 min read
