MER Article Palestinian Self-Government Proposal On January 14, in the second round of direct talks between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators in Washington, DC, the Palestinian side presented a draft outline of a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority (PISGA). Media accounts of the talks barely noted this unprecedented development, but this is one document that should not Joe Stork • 3 min read
MER Article The Iraq Sanctions Catastrophe The continuing public health emergency in Iraq is taking a higher toll in civilian lives than the coalition bombing last January and February. This emergency could have been over by now if the Bush administration and its allies at the United Nations had accepted recommendations on humanitarian needs James Fine • 5 min read
MER Article Tilting Democracy John Simpson of the BBC is one of the most judicious and conservative members of my profession. He bravely holds the record for “staying on” in Baghdad during the bombing, at a time when many reporters found they had to keep appointments elsewhere. In his new book, From the House Christopher Hitchens • 4 min read
MER Article The Democracy Agenda in the Arab World Political liberalization, if not democracy, seems to be on Arab agendas. Algeria is about to conduct national elections that could alter the character of the regime there. Jordan’s monarchy must now take account of a parliament in which opposition forces have considerable sway, following the first elections in a The Editors • 10 min read
MER Article Dangerous Asset Two major schools of interpretation seek to explain why the United States grants Israel an annual subsidy of nearly $4 billion and consistently supports Israeli militarism and expansionism. The domestic politics approach attributes the “special relationship” to the political and financial power of the Zionist lobby and Jewish influence in Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Bush Locks Horns with Shamir On January 21, six days into the US air war against Iraq, Israeli Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai took advantage of Washington’s praise for Israel’s “restraint” in the face of 11 Scud missile attacks to drop a bombshell of his own. Before the assembled Jerusalem press corps, he advised visiting Deput Jeffrey Blankfort • 5 min read
MER Article Ehrenfeld, Narcoterrorism Rachel Ehrenfeld, Narcoterrorism (Basic Books, 1990). Ever since the Reagan administration elevated “narco-terrorism” to the status of a national security threat, ideologists of left and right have staked out predictable positions. [1] Foes of Cuba, Nicaragua and other leftist regimes or movements Jonathan Marshall • 6 min read
MER Article "The Regime Has Simply Barricaded Itself in Khartoum" Bona Malwal was elected to the Sudanese parliament in 1968. He was minister for culture and information from 1972 to 1978 and minister of finance and economic planning for the south from 1980 to 1981. His English-language newspaper, the Sudan Times, was banned when the current regime seized power in Joe Stork • 9 min read
MER Article This Is Not Vietnam In 1926 the French surrealist, Rene Magritte, painted an unmistakable pipe and labeled it, in careful schoolboy script: “This is not a pipe.” In 1991 George Bush began a war in the Persian Gulf which, he insisted, was not Vietnam. Iraq, he pointed out, is a desert; Vietnam was a jungle. Moreover, Ir Marilyn Young • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editors The disorder of George Bush’s “new world” did not take long to reveal itself: On the muddy mountainsides along Iraq’s borders with Iran and Turkey, hundreds of thousands of Kurds seek refuge from the depredations of Iraq’s army, while the rest of Iraq’s battered society confronts The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article America's Egypt Open almost any study of Egypt produced by an American or an international development agency and you are likely to find it starting with the same simple image. The question of Egypt’s economic development is almost invariably introduced as a problem of geography versus demography, pictured by descr Timothy Mitchell • 45 min read
MER Article "Eventually There Can Only Be an Arab Solution" Amb. ‘Abdallah al-Ashtal is Yemen’s representative to the United Nations. He served as ambassador for the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen from 1971 until May 1990, when he became the representative of the newly unified Republic of Yemen. In March and December 1990, he chaired the UN Security C James Paul • 7 min read
