MER Article Memories of Birth I never knew that cold could burn. It was a wild wind and my fingers were numb and clumsy. I fumbled with the sheet of paper, turning the page over and over. It was little more than tatters now, covered in smeared ink. My mother wrote all the instructions for me on this page and I held it in the pal Diana Abu-Jaber • 5 min read
MER Article Burj al-Barajna Dispatch After making my way through the rubble and squalor of the overcrowded refugee camp near Beirut’s International Airport, I arrived half an hour late for my appointment with Umm Muhammad, a local living repository of Palestinian folk song traditions. Reem Kelani • 3 min read
MER Article Dis/Solving the "Refugee Problem" “A displaced person owns nothing but the spot where he is standing, which is always threatened.” -- Murid Barghouti Israeli power, US backing, Palestinian weakness, Arab complicity -- these are the basic ingredients for a coercive settlement of the “refugee problem” based not on refugees’ rights bu Rosemary Sayigh • 12 min read
MER Article Fifty Years Through the Eyes of "New Historians" in Israel Since the 1980s, professional Israeli scholars have been challenging the official Israeli version of the origins of Zionism and the birth of Israel. The “new historians” view of the past is much closer to the Palestinian historical narrative than to the Zionist one. Their criticisms also correspond to demands and Ilan Pappe • 9 min read
MER Article Documenting Land Ownership in the Palestinian Authority The Protocol Concerning Civil Affairs, an annex to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of September 1995, formalized the process by which Israeli authorities would transfer responsibility over land matters to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The first Oslo ag Michael R. Fischbach • 5 min read
MER Article Political Negotiations on the Palestinian Refugee Question Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the Palestinian refugee question began with the first meeting of the Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs in 1992. After the 1993 Oslo accords, the question of the repatriation of the 1967 refugees to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip was to be dealt Ingrid Gassner-Jaradat • 9 min read
MER Article Palestinians in Post-War Lebanon As Lebanon’s elite strategizes post-war reconstruction and national reconciliation, the future of the Palestinian community in the country hinges on the outcome of the Arab-Israeli peace talks, particularly the multilateral talks on refugees. [1] Popular sentiment holds that “peace” will not produce Julie Peteet • 11 min read
MER Article Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon Palestinians have endured military occupation, deportation, torture, land confiscation, massacre, siege, aerial bombardment and internecine conflict but until this year they had been spared the experience of being boat people. That has now changed with the recent odyssey of a boatload of some 650 Pa Muhammad Ali Khalidi • 8 min read
Homecoming I was afraid. Why should I be? But once I stood in front of the young women in the white and blue-striped shirt I was reduced to shivering with a tongue as dry as the Negev. She asked me insistently, “Why are you here?” I had earlier thought of two or three convincing answers, but suddenly I could n Numan Kanafani • 7 min read
An Interview with Mark Duffield Mark Duffield visited Croatia and Bosnia between January 9 and 22, 1994, as part of a study of complex political emergencies. Joe Stork spoke with him on January 28, 1994. In your field report you refer to the failure to provide protection as representing a political failure of historic consequence Joe Stork • 8 min read
MER Article Lebanon's Palestinians This article was written by a special correspondent. Residents of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have been cautiously peeking out of their prison-like camps after nearly a decade of sieges and assaults. But looking out is now fraught with anxiety. There is no future in the camps, residents co (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article The Displacement of Urfiya Hama Ahmad In the summer of 1992, Joost Hiltermann, an editor of Middle East Report, spent three months interviewing Kurdish villagers about Iraq’s military campaigns against the Kurds in the 1980s, for the human rights organization Middle East Watch. These interviews yielded evidence of widespread human rights abuses, and are currently Joost Hiltermann • 9 min read
