I, the undersigned, give full power of attorney to the embassy of the State of Palestine to do everything possible to get my daughter, Laila, student at the University of Sanaa, College of Education, out of Yemen. I certify that she is not allowed to marry in Sanaa since she is still married to her husband, K., in Saudi Arabia. Please note that she is not responsible for any of her actions since she suffers from serious health problems and mental disorders. Signed in the presence of two witnesses, March 13, 1994.
In 1993, I attended a ceremony of trance dancing called “Benga,” organized by the only group still performing in the town of Tebessa where I then lived. [1] The Tidjania group of Tebessa is a residual branch of the larger African Islamic sect that has practiced trance dancing for healing purposes, in particular as therapy in exorcising “bad spirits.” The Benga dance relies on a highly organized drumming team, accompanying religious litanies celebrating the prophet Muhammad, which leads the dancer to fall into a “liberating faint.”
Israeli society, even prior to the formation of the state, has been permeated by a strong myth of sexual equality. Shortly after the establishment of the Jewish nation-state, the Israeli Knesset began intensive debates on a body of legislation that would guide and define subsequent discourse on issues that concern the relationship between women and the state. One of those early laws, the Women’s Equal Rights Law of 1951, has had a lasting influence on the ways in which women have been incorporated into and mobilized by Israeli society. It has a direct impact on the construction of the Jewish Israeli female subject, first and foremost, as mother and wife, and not as individual or citizen.
From June 28-30, 1995, under the slogan “See the World Through the Eyes of a Woman,” a women’s court on political and social violence against women was held in Beirut. Inspired by similar courts organized by the Asian Human Rights Council, the Beirut court — the first of its kind in the Arab world — was convened in preparation for the Beijing NGO Women’s Conference and the “International Court on Women: World Public Hearings on Crimes Against Women” held in Beijing in September.
The debate on citizenship in the Middle East was preceded by and now parallels the debate on civil society. In the West, discussion on these subjects often assumes Middle Eastern countries are incapable of sustaining democratic relations between state and society. [1] The citizenship debate questions the capacities of Middle Eastern governments to allow or enable their members to participate actively in the political process. Despite the burgeoning of these debates, most theorists have neglected or glossed over the issue of gender. [2]
The first month of 1996 saw election monitors and “democratization” consultants falling over each other in the West Bank. Along with the flood of media witnesses, they certified that, in former President Jimmy Carter’s words, “The Palestinian people had an historic opportunity to choose their leaders yesterday, and they did so with enthusiasm and a high degree of professionalism.”
Aburish, Said. The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).
Afkhami, Mahnaz, ed. Faith and Freedom: Women’s Human Rights in the Muslim World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
African Rights. Great Expectations: The Civil Roles of the Churches in Southern Sudan (London, 1995).
Amnesty International. Trial at Midnight: Secret, Summary, Unfair Trials in Gaza (London, 1995).
Aruri, Naseer. The Obstruction of Peace: The US, Israel and the Palestinians (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995).
Fran Hazelton, ed. Iraq Since the Gulf War: Prospects for Democracy (London: Zed Books, 1994).
Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck, eds. Altered States: A Reader in the New World Order (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1993).
John O’Loughlin, Tom Mayer and Edward S. Greenberg, eds. War and Its Consequences: Lessons from the Persian Gulf Conflict (New York: Harper Collins, 1994).
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 Palestinians stranded off the coast of Cyprus.
Egyptian courts have increasingly become a site of political struggle between Islamists and secularists. In a state that restricts political parties and open political debate, courts are now one of the main venues for political expression for groups such as the Muslim Brothers. In the last few years, their lawyers have filed dozens of cases against what they perceive as “un-Islamic” writings by secular intellectuals or “un-Islamic” government decisions. They use the ambiguity inherent in the Egyptian legal system, which seems torn between mainly secular codified positive laws and the rules and regulations of the shari‘a, as interpreted by Islamic law scholars.
For many ordinary investors, the dream of cashing in on the market revolution sweeping the globe turned sour following last year’s collapse of the Mexican peso. But if you have some capital to spare and are in search of the elusive next big boom, take a chance on Foreign and Colonial Emerging Middle East Fund. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol EME. The fund has 60 percent of its total assets working hard in Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and Oman. But its savvy, high-rolling managers are gambling the largest sums in Morocco.
The United States and France are developing strategies for using nuclear weapons in developing countries, ostensibly to counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological). The Middle East in particular has become a testing ground for nuclear war games. [1] This worrisome trend is more likely to provoke a Middle East arms race than to stop proliferation.
Foreign policy insiders in Washington are fond of describing France as a uniquely amoral weapons-trafficking nation that will sell anything to anyone. This harsh judgement seemed to be confirmed last August, when the latest Congressional Research Service report on arms transfers revealed that France had replaced the United States as the leading exporter of arms to the Third World, and in a decisive fashion had grabbed 45 percent of all new arms agreements with developing nations in 1994, nearly twice the level of sales registered by the outgoing titleholder.
The year is 2002. Saddam Hussein has been assassinated, and Shi‘i forces in Basra have declared their independence from Baghdad. Iran, the dominant regional power, invades Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to gain regional hegemony, control the price of oil, finance its military buildup “and ameliorate its social problem.” Tehran threatens to use nuclear weapons if the United States intervenes to defend its Gulf allies.
On August 22 and 23, 1993, Saudi Arabia’s finances received rare front-page coverage in the New York Times, inaugurating a period of hand wringing inside the Beltway and among the academy’s consulting class over the kingdom’s future. This is a tradition going back decades, to the 1940s, when the Saudi treasury was managed by a decrepit alcoholic and the Americans created the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority to replace him. Nostalgia was probably unavoidable among the ranks of Saudi watchers “present at the creation,” like Herman Eilts, then a young US embassy official, or Phebe Marr, an ambitious analyst in what the American ambassador called Aramco’s private intelligence service.
The camera avoids faces, except those of the plainclothes police. The black-and-white images are hazy, jumpy. They evoke the antiquated style of negatives that have escaped the censor and customs searches. “This could be any country,” says the commentator — Chile under Gen. Pinochet, or Burma under the military. But here the men who gather wear long white robes and checkered headdresses, held in place by an ‘iqal, a black silk tress. The women remain invisible.
This issue marks a milestone for MERIP, as we celebrate this fall our twenty-fifth year as an organization and, in May 1996, 25 years of publication. It also marks a point of transition for me: As those of you who have seen our most recent appeal letter already know, at the end of this year I will be leaving my position here to begin work as the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. Geoff Hartman, who joined our staff in July after 3 years as managing editor of the monthly News from Within in Jerusalem, will take over as editor of this magazine in January.
Agha, Hussein J. and Ahmad S. Khalidi. Syria and Iran: Rivalry and Cooperation (London: Pinter, 1995).
Amnesty International. Syria: Repression and Impunity (London, 1995).
Archibugi, Daniele and David Held, eds. Cosmopolitan Democracy: An Agenda for a New World Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
Arrighi, Giovanni. The Long Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1994).
Barakat, Halim. Democracy and Social Justice (Ramallah, 1995). [Arabic]
Budeiri, Musa, ed. A Critical Perspective on Palestinian Democracy (Ramallah, 1995). [Arabic]
