“The aim of the Turkish armed forces is to ensure that the separatist terrorist organization bows down to the law and the mercy of the nation.” Thus did the Turkish chief of staff, Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, brusquely dismiss the one-month ceasefire announced on August 19, 2005 by the Kurdistan People’s Congress (or Kongra-Gel). Kongra-Gel is the name adopted in 2003 by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which had renewed its armed struggle with the Turkish state just over one year before proclaiming its latest truce.
In March 2005, Hamas, the largest Islamist party in Palestine, joined its main secular rival Fatah and 11 other Palestinian organizations in endorsing a document that seemed to embody the greatest harmony achieved within the Palestinian national movement in almost two decades. By the terms of the Cairo Declaration, Hamas agreed to “maintain an atmosphere of calm”—halt attacks on Israel—for the rest of the year, participate in Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for July and commence discussions about joining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Gaza City—“I’ll go visit Auntie Lina in Ramallah after I obtain a tasreeh (an Israeli permit) and when Erez checkpoint is open, OK mama?”
This is what my son, who is almost three years old, told me the other day after having a chat with his cousin Laila who lives in Ramallah, in the West Bank. The problem is that during the last five years I have received permission to go to the West Bank only four or five times. Although I have a West Bank identity card from Nablus, I live and work with my husband and son in Gaza City. My son already knows the world: tasreeh , tukh (shoot) and Erez checkpoint is closed.
Forget for a moment how shamelessly President George W. Bush tried to manipulate Americans’ emotions by invoking September 11 six times during his recent prime-time sales pitch for staying the course in Iraq. There is no need to recall the reports finding no connection between that day’s terrorist attacks and Iraq, and no call for repeating that Iraq was not in danger of becoming a “safe haven” for al-Qaida until after it was invaded. The president doesn’t really claim otherwise.
Activists for women’s rights are prominent among the many Iranians who fear a reinvigorated crackdown on personal and social freedoms in the wake of the surprise election of the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of the Islamic Republic. Though Ahmadinejad sought to soften his image on gender issues during the week before the runoff on June 24, 2005, even speaking against “sexist attitudes,” his electoral base on the far right continually agitates for a harder line. His base is particularly offended by the looser standards of “Islamic dress” for women and the freer mixing of the sexes in public places that have slowly developed over the two terms of President Mohammad Khatami, who will vacate his office on August 4.
Israel’s national colors are blue and white. In the summer of 2005, however, an Israeli driver adorning his vehicle with ribbons in those hues runs the risk of a broken antenna or a vandal’s scratches in the paint job. Conversely, the motorist would be far safer joining what appears to be the general trend by accepting the strips of bright orange proffered at every main intersection by eager youngsters in orange T-shirts. Indeed, so dominant is the orange that one may be forgiven for suspecting a mass takeover by Protestant militants from Ulster.
Anderson, Betty. Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005).
Anderson, Irvine. Biblical Interpretation and Middle East Policy: The Promised Land, America and Israel, 1917-2002 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005).
Arat, Yeşim. Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkey (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005).
Atabaki, Touraj and Erik Zürcher, eds. Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization Under Atatürk and Reza Shah (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004).
Texts Reviewed:
Roy Armes, Postcolonial Images: Studies in North African Film (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005).
Kevin Dwyer, Beyond Casablanca: M. A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004).
Oil is by its very nature a finite commodity. The question has always been not whether it would run out, but when it would. The doomsday scenarios that some predict –mass blackouts and the imminent demise of suburbia — may be far-fetched, but the era of “peak oil” is here.
One year after a failed referendum on reunification, divisions on the island of Cyprus are widening. In both the Turkish north and the majority-Greek south, ethnic nationalism is on the rise.
Turkey passed a milestone in its long and arduous journey toward acceptance into the exclusive club of the European Union when the EU gave Turkey a date for the start of accession talks. But major obstacles remain — chiefly resurgent anti-Muslim feeling in Europe and resurgent ethnic nationalism in Turkey.
The 2004 law banning "conspicuous" religious symbols (read, headscarves) in French public schools cast France as an intolerant and radically secular state hostile to the manifestation of difference, especially Muslim difference, in the public sphere. During debates about the new law, a clear distinction was drawn between French republicanism and an "Anglo-Saxon" multiculturalism decried by many French as a sure path to national disintegration. President Jacques Chirac even declared that France "would lose her soul" if she went the way of an Anglo-American pluralism that recognizes and accepts internal difference.
The murder of the controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a radical Islamist youth induced a deep national trauma in the Netherlands. Very quickly, debate about the murder and the subsequent outbreak of anti-Muslim violence led to a larger and disturbing debate about the place of Muslims and Islam in the traditionally tolerant country — and the meaning of tolerance itself.
On April 14, 2005, Ibrahim Isneiri, a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was shot dead by Israeli forces in the Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus, a town located between two mountains in the northern West Bank. Palestinian eyewitnesses said Israeli forces opened fire first, while the Israeli military claimed that they were returning the Palestinian’s fire. Israeli soldiers had entered the camp looking for Isneiri because, Israeli security sources alleged, he was planning an armed operation to be carried out inside Israel.
