False Resolution Looms in EU-Israeli Settlement Trade Dispute
Military Families Feel Betrayed by Administration
For everyone except George W. Bush and his entourage, the recent siege of Falluja and the standoff with the militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gave occasion to rethink the conventional wisdom about the US-led occupation of Iraq.
Lost in Our Own Little World
Two days after a lethal car bomb exploded outside the Mount Lebanon Hotel in downtown Baghdad last month, I sat down for tea with an Iraqi poet near the capital’s famous open-air book market. In between jokes delivered with a mock Egyptian accent, he laid out his theory of the hotel bombing: the US military staged the violence, he posited, in order to justify its continuing occupation of Iraq.
Mystery Surrounds Tashkent Explosions
Sharon’s Sights on Strategic Objective
Many critics of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon depict him as an adroit tactician who has a ready answer for every immediate problem, but entirely lacks a long-term strategy. Ari Shavit, a columnist for the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, recently characterized the present Sharon government as having "no principles, inspiration or vision…no comprehensive, coherent concept." Of course, Shavit's comment referred above all to the prime minister himself.
Protests Hint at New Chapter in Egyptian Politics
An Algerian Presidential Free-for-All
A New Kind of Killing
Editor’s Picks (Spring 2004)
Brown, Nathan. Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003).
Cook, Catherine, Adam Hanieh and Adah Kay. Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children (London: Pluto Press, 2004).
Diamond, Larry, Marc F. Plattner and Daniel Brumberg, eds. Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
No More Tears
Benny Morris, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, second edition, 1994).
Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
“We Invite People to Think the Unthinkable”
What prompted you to found Hurriyyat Khassa, and what are its goals?
Disavowed Homosexualities in Beirut
Transgender Bolero
Egypt’s Virtual Protection of Morality
Action by states to impose excessive regulations on the use of…the Internet, on the grounds that control, regulation and denial of access are necessary to preserve the moral fabric and cultural identity of societies, is paternalistic. These regulations presume to protect people from themselves and, as such, they are inherently incompatible with the principles of the worth and dignity of each individual. These arguments deny the fundamental wisdom of individuals and societies and ignore the capacity and resilience of citizens, whether on a national, state, municipal, community or even neighborhood level, often to take self-correcting measures to re-establish equilibrium without excessive interference or regulation by the state.
The Trials of Culture
Session after session, the men stood packed against the cage bars, their eyes furtive behind masks made from torn handkerchiefs or underwear. That and their white jail uniforms gave them a ghostlike look: disincarnate in the sweaty chaos of the courtroom, incarcerated wraiths.
Letters (Spring 2004)
Martyr’s Monument
I was partly responsible for the US Marine battalion that secured the portion of Baghdad containing the Martyr’s Monument. Sinan Antoon (“Monumental Disrespect,” MER 228) portrays the US occupation of the monument as an episode of unthinking American disregard for the sanctity of an Iraqi memorial, but it is a story of compromises forced upon soldiers by the exigencies of war. We undertook sincere efforts to make the unfortunate, but at least temporarily necessary, foreign military presence as inoffensive as possible.
Aida Dabbas
MERIP mourns the passing of Aida Hashim al-Dabbas, who died of cancer on November 1, 2003. A dedicated grassroots activist, Aida gave the last seven years of her life to advocacy for peace and justice in Palestine, the welfare of the Iraqi people, and political and civil freedoms in her home country of Jordan. Her efforts for these causes did not waver even as her condition worsened. Downplaying her illness, she made phone calls to raise funds, extend networks and launch new projects from her hospital bed.
From the Editors (Spring 2004)
"An educated wife and mother is a better wife and mother. No husband is better off because she is chained by ignorance. No son is better off because his mother cannot read." Students of Middle East history might guess that these are the words of Qasim Amin, the Egyptian lawyer whose writings at the turn of the twentieth century foreshadowed that common trope of Middle Eastern nationalism and state feminism linking partial women's liberation to national liberation through the benefits of both to men. Perhaps L.
Downsizing Saddam’s Odious Debt
If Kerry Wins, Little Will Change in US Middle East Policy
The victory of John Kerry in the Democratic Party primaries following Super Tuesday this week leads to an observation. To a remarkable degree, the urgent desire to deny George W. Bush a second term in the White House has papered over the schisms in the broad Democrat church, even enticing many members of renegade sects back into the fold.
