Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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Israel’s War on Reproduction in Gaza — Palestinian women sew diapers at a workshop in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 18, 2024, amid severe shortages of basic necessities. (Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)

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Israel’s War on Reproduction in Gaza

Hala Shoman reports on reprocide as a tactic of eliminationist violence.

Hala Shoman • 13 min read

Syria's New Men — The leader of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, addresses a crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on December 8, 2024. Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP via Getty ImagesSocks mocking former president Bashar al-Asad and the regime forces for sale in Salhiyya, Damascus on January 29, 2025. Rahaf Aldoughli.Fighters in SNA groups during operation Deterrence of Aggression against Bashar al-Asad. Northern Syria, December 3, 2024. Fieldwork photo by the author’s research fixer. Shared courtesy of the author.

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Syria's New Men

Gender and the post-Asad political order.

Rahaf Aldoughli • 15 min read

Israel Is Waging War on Palestinian Prisoners — Palestinian men are detained by Israeli forces in the streets of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, December 7, 2023. Photo taken by Israeli soldiers and widely distributed on social media. Some men in the photo were interviewed by journalists from +972/Local Call.Image and caption from Human Rights Watch: Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh (far left in the front) and Dr. Wadee Qasem (far right in the front) are detained along with other healthcare workers, internally displaced civilians, and patient’s families near the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. © 2023 Channel 12 via journalist Nir Debori/TelegramImage and caption from Human Rights Watch: A leaked photograph of the detention facility at the Sde Teiman military base shows a blindfolded man with his arms above his head. Interviewed healthcare workers described this image as punishment imposed by Israeli soldiers on Palestinian detainees if they speak or move. © 2024 PrivateKnesset member Limor Son Har-Melech (right) and Yitzhak Kroizer (in white) from the far right-wing Otzma Yehudití party stand with armed and masked reservists from Force 100. Israeli right-wing activists demonstrated with masked IDF reservists and broke into Beit Lid military police base following the detention of 9 military reservists from the unit today, who were suspected of sexual abuse of a detainee at the Sde Teiman compound. Matan Golan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesA Palestinian man who was detained by Israeli forces is welcomed by his wife and son (whose hand is holding onto his father’s arm) as he arrives for a checkup at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis after his release alongside others on August 20, 2024. Bashar Taleb / AFP via Getty Images

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Israel Is Waging War on Palestinian Prisoners

Behind the systematic torture and sexual violence in Israeli prisons, from MER's fall issue, 'Carceral Realities and Freedom Dreams."

Lisa Hajjar, Basil Farraj • 24 min read

MERIP Statement on the Arrest of Steve and Sandra Tamari

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MERIP Statement on the Arrest of Steve and Sandra Tamari

The following statement is being issued on behalf of MERIP’s Board of Directors, the co-chairs of the Editorial Committee, the Editorial Staff and the Executive Director. On April 27, Professor Steve Tamari was brutally beaten by police on the campus of Washington University at St. Louis (WashU) while

Marya Hannun • 2 min read

Land, Livestock and Darfur’s 'Culture Wars' — Sudanese who had been forced off of their land in Darfur and were living on the outskirts of El Fasher in Abu Shuk Camp begin farming again, 2007. Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images.

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Land, Livestock and Darfur’s 'Culture Wars'

How austerity politics and the changing environment have fueled war in Sudan.

Edward Thomas • 12 min read

India, Israel and the Coordination of Control — A municipal worker cleans the road ahead of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Ahmedabad, India, January 15, 2018. Amit Dave/ReutersNSUI activists protest against Modi’s government for using military-grade, Israeli spyware Pegasus to monitor political opponents, journalists and activists. New Delhi, India, August 2, 2021. Mayank Makhija/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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India, Israel and the Coordination of Control

How India weaponizes the 'Israeli Experience' to target dissent.

Abdulla Moaswes • 14 min read

Water, Oil and Iraq’s Climate Future — Mehdi, Abbas and Eidan hanging out after school in the town of Chibayish, near the Iraqi Marshlands, 2018. Tamara Abdul HadiRead this article in Arabic at Jummar. Image designed by Atef Al-Jaffal/Jummar.

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Water, Oil and Iraq’s Climate Future

In the second preview article from MERIP's spring issue, The State of Iraq—twenty years after the invasion, Zeinab Shuker writes about how oil and water tell the story of Iraq's climate vulnerability.

Zeinab Shuker • 9 min read

Perpetual Protest and the Failure of the post-2003 Iraqi State — Image of a protester and the Turkish restaurant building in Tahrir Square, Baghdad, designed by Atef Al-Jaffal/Jummar.A Tishreeni mural from Tahrir Square, Baghdad. Photograph by author.A Tishreeni mural from Tahrir Square, Baghdad. Photograph by author.The November 2020 Sadrist demonstration at the Turkish restaurant. Photograph by the author.Safaa Al SarayThe Turkish restaurant during Tishreen. Photograph by the author.Hashd commemoration in Tahrir Square of the first anniversary of the assassination of Abu Mahdi al Muhandis and Qasim Suleimani. January 2021. Khalid Al-Mousily/ReutersBanner on the Turkish restaurant announcing the forthcoming Tishreen Museum. Photograph by the author.

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Perpetual Protest and the Failure of the post-2003 Iraqi State

Tishreen transformed Iraq's protest culture. Can protest transform the post-2003 state?

Fanar Haddad • 13 min read

MER Article

Editorial (Summer 2018)

The articles in this issue of Middle East Report illuminate some of the sources of displacement, dispossession and loss found throughout urban areas in the contemporary Middle East, which often produce the very population outflows that militarized border zones seek to contain. The merciless killing by Israeli snipers of over

Steve Niva • 2 min read