MER Article Economic Dimensions of the Uprising Beyond the cameras, outside the glare of the kleig lights of television talk shows, a quiet but potentially very significant campaign for economic disengagement is developing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. From the Boston Tea Party to Gandhi’s Salt March, struggles over economic issues have histo Sheila Ryan • 11 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 Italian Communists' New Historic Compromise The revolt in the Occupied Territories broke out at a time when support for the Palestinian cause was at a low ebb in Europe. The Italian Communist Party (PCI), for example, had for the past couple of years been giving priority to building relations with the mainstream Israeli left rather than with Diana Johnstone • 5 min read
MER Article "The Ship of Return" Some day, an Israeli intelligence officer will write his memoirs. He will recount his brave deeds and reveal how his cunning strategy thwarted the enemy at every turn. The book will not be banned in Israel. The retired officer will appear on television to promote the book. Some interviewer, whose re Charles Glass • 6 min read
MER Article "I Am Not a Russian Dissident" Akram Haniyyah was editor of the Jerusalem daily al-Sha‘b, circulation 5,000 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He was deported on December 28, 1986 to travel on an Algerian passport. He has no place of residence. This article first appeared in the Manchester Guardian Weekly, February 15, 1987. Akram Haniyyah • 5 min read
MER Article Recent Films Aqabat Jaber: Passing Through. Directed by Eyal Sivan. Produced and distributed by Dune Vision, 1987. Rissala... Min Zamen al-Harb (Letter from a Time of War). Directed by Borhan Alaouie. Produced and distributed by France Media, 1986. Zahrat al-Kindoul: Women of South Lebanon. Directed by Jean Ch Miriam Rosen • 3 min read
MER Article Naji al-'Ali Remembered A ragged, barefoot boy, hands clutched behind his back, stands witness to the scene before him. The small boy in the cartoon is Naji al-‘Ali, popular cartoonist, at age 10, when he was expelled from his native Palestine to Lebanon in 1948. Naji used to say that the boy was a symbol of the Palestinia Joan Mandell • 3 min read
MER Article Police Riot in Yarmuk Just after midnight on May 15, 1986, some 75 Special Forces of the Public Security Department stormed a dormitory at Yarmuk University to put an end to a student demonstration. They tear-gassed and clubbed the students with “a zeal that bordered on the ruthless,” according to witnesses. At least thr Joe Stork • 1 min read
MER Article Profiles of Two Families The two West Bank families profiled here were not selected to be “representative,” but rather to explore, through people the authors knew intimately, particular lives and livelihoods as they both changed and maintained themselves in the last two decades of Israeli military occupation in the West Ban Penny Johnson • 23 min read
MER Article The Palestinians Twenty Years After The current situation of the Palestinian people appears grim today. But it is revealing to compare it with the situation of 20 years ago, in the wake of the June War. For while many of the problems the Palestinians face today date back at least to that cataclysmic event, other problems were undreame Rashid Khalidi • 18 min read
MER Article Palestinians Arrested in Los Angeles Witch Hunt It was the West Coast, not the West Bank, but for many Palestinians, the unfolding dragnet scenario had an all-too-familiar ring. Shortly after dawn on the morning of January 26, agents of the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and local police arrested eight Palestinians and the Judith Gabriel • 6 min read
MER Article Khalidi, Under Siege Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Among the many books dealing with the 1982 war in Lebanon, Rashid Khalidi’s stands out by focusing on the perceptions and decisions of that campaign’s main target: the PLO. The book asks Yezid Sayigh • 4 min read
