Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).
Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993).
John Foran, Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993).
Middle East Watch, Guardians of Thought: Limits on Freedom of Expression in Iran (New York, 1993).
She doesn’t look like a classic madam. About 50 years old, Hagga lives in a simple flat in the chic Cairene quarter of Muhandisin. Her black abaya (cape and headscarf) evince a more traditional outlook. Even her language is full of religious references. “Tomorrow you can have two girls, God willing. For the furnished flat you have to pay extra. May God make it easy for us.”
Summer is the peak season for the business of furnished fiats, complete with a “housemaid” who can come at any time of the day or night and in any shape, color or size. That is when the khaligiyyin — the Gulf Arabs — invade the city looking for cool air and a hot time.
Until 1985, the small B’doul tribe resided among the historic ruins of Petra. They made most of their income from tourism, serving as guides, renting out their caves, and selling food and beverages. They also sold archaeological objects found among the ruins, mostly the shards of pots.
In 1985 the Jordanian government moved them to a new village. This relocation was a consequence of two ongoing projects: one to sedentarize the Bedouin, the other to give Petra the status of a national park and thus improve tourism. The actual move was 20 years in the making.
One bizarre aspect about life in Palestine is the scrutiny to which we are subjected by journalists, researchers and political tourists who descend daily. Birzeit University is particularly attractive to researchers who come to “do Palestine.” At first glance, the benefits would seem great: publicity, access to the media and protection against institutional harassment by the Israelis. Indeed, this was important during the intifada, when the university was closed for four and a half years.
Is Israel experiencing an identity crisis? Some such symptoms are evident in a confusion over the territorial, historical and cultural boundaries of contemporary Israeli society. The tourism industry, with its consumer demands and political agendas, is exacerbating this crisis.
In Near East Travel’s East Jerusalem office, a satellite photograph of the Middle East is framed under glass, inscribed with the names of countries and major cities. National borders are unmarked. The Holy Land — so the map is labeled — appears as a single, seamless territory.
A full-page advertisement for Galilee Tours, an Israeli company, features a mock road sign in green and white. A single arrow, diverging from a central vector with Tel Aviv at its base, points the way to Jerusalem, Amman and Petra, another to Tiberias and Damascus.
In 1987, during one of my first visits to Morocco, I attended a series of rock concerts in Marrakesh with a group of friends who had been invited to the event to represent their youth group. The organizers of the concerts, the local Grand Atlas association, invited us to tour the medina. During one such walk, one of the Marrakeshis talked about how delicious steamed sheep’s head would be for lunch. In spite of the torrid July heat, most of our group agreed that a casual lunch in a small restaurant was a fine idea.
Ayman wanted a job in tourism. But he did badly on his high-school language exams and spent two years at a school in Luxor, across the river from his village, struggling to master enough rudimentary English and German to get into the hotel school at Qina. His most vivid memory from his two years in Qina was the night when he and the other front-desk trainees played the role of guests in a restaurant for the final exam of the student waiters and cooks.
One tourism strategy in the Middle East is the cordon sanitaire or containment model. Tourist activities are limited to specific areas — what Algeria and Tunisia call “zones touristiques.” Club Med in Egypt is outside Hurghada, on the Red Sea coast. In Algeria, every worker at the hotel complex at Sidi Ferruj, west of Algiers, happily informed me that the site was chosen by the government to mark the place where the French first landed in 1830. Algeria also promotes “nature” tourism to the Sahara, making it possible to fly directly from Europe to Tamanrasset in the Algerian interior and completely bypass the populated coastal region.
Thomas Cook and Sons’ first tour excursions in 1841 mark the birth of a global industry, in a decade that also included the founding of the Cunard Lines and the Wells Fargo successor, American Express. Cook began to internationalize its operations in the 1860s, creating the first package tours for England’s consumers and turning southern Egypt into one of the original resorts of the rich and famous.
Not all international travelers are tourists. The August deployment of thousands of US troops to participate in war games in Jordan and Kuwait will not show up in the statistics of this fast-growing global industry, though shore leaves may boost some bar and brothel receipts in Haifa and Bahrain. But vacationers contemplating trips to the region may take pause from this blustering reminder that the Middle East is the region US military planners see as the most likely site of future military action involving US forces.
African Rights. Sudan’s Invisible Citizens: The Policy of Abuse Against Displaced People in the North (London, 1995).
Article 19. Secret Decree: New Attack on the Media in Algeria (London, 1994).
Badran, Margot. Feminism, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Bash, Tami. Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Territories, 1992-1993 (Jerusalem: B’tselem, 1994).
B’tselem. Bureaucratic Harassment, Abuse and Maltreatment During Operational Activities in the West Bank in the First Year of the Declaration of Principles (Jerusalem, September 1994).
In “Iran’s Revolutionary Impasse,” Ali Banuazizi has provided a bifurcated account of the recent developments in Iran (i.e., the coexistence of a dynamic society and a rigid, intolerant regime) that ultimately adopts the popular characterizations of Iran under the guise of debunking them.
Marianne Heiberg and Geir Ovensen et al, Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions (FAFO, 1993).
Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Indiana, 1994).
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Free Press, 1993).
Ebba Augustin, ed., Palestinian Women: Identity and Experience (Zed, 1993).
George Baramki Azar, Palestine: A Photographic Journey (California, 1991).
J. C. Tordai, Into the Promised Land (Cornerhouse, 1991).
Both of these books present photographs taken in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between 1988 and 1990 that transcend the usual images of stone-throwing youths and gun-wielding soldiers. Both photographers portray newly destitute families around their demolished houses, lines of people at UNRWA food distribution centers, children studying in dilapidated classrooms, peaceful rallies and demonstrations, and the painful wait for the wounded outside hospitals.
Ian Lustick, Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (Cornell, 1993).
Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance: Israel and US Foreign Policy (Columbia, 1994).
This long overdue inquiry into what Camille Mansour, with typical understatement, calls “the privileged character of American-Israeli relations”(p. xi) provides an exceptionally lucid analysis of a central feature of US policy in the Middle East.
Donald Hannan Akenson, God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster (Cornell, 1992).
Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World (trans. Alan Braley) (Pennsylvania State, 1994).
In Turkey’s March 1994 local elections, the pro-Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party won 19 percent of all votes nationwide. This was almost equivalent to the roughly 20 percent each of the government party (True Path) and of the major opposition party (Motherland), and significantly higher than the 13 percent of the junior partner of the coalition government, the Social Democratic Populist Party. Refah particularly triumphed in big cities and in the southeast. Both Istanbul and Ankara now have Islamist mayors, as do most of the towns and cities in the Kurdish region. Non-Islamist circles reacted to this Refah victory with shock and disbelief, despite indications that foreshadowed it throughout the second half of the 1980s.
