The Search for Good Governance in Palestine
From the Editor (Fall 2001)
Upon its installment in the White House, the second Bush administration was universally expected to be the loyal handmaiden of Big Oil. The US oil and gas industry lavished $1,387,975 upon the hastily assembled committee which planned the inaugural festivities for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. BP-Amoco contributed $100,000, and executives from Conoco, Chevron and Exxon Mobil ponied up the same amount. In all, Big Oil gave $26 million to Bush, Cheney and their fellow Republicans in the 2000 election campaign.
Editor’s Picks (Summer 2001)
Amin, Galal. Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000).
Brumberg, Daniel. Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
B’Tselem, Illusions of Restraint: Human Rights Violations During the Events in the Occupied Territories, 29 September-2 December 2000 (Jerusalem, December 2000).
In the Shadow of Kurdish
The arrest of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), at the beginning of 1999 and the almost instantaneous wave of protest across Europe, in Australia and later within Turkey briefly increased the prominence of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy in Turkey. As one of the most important symbols of Kurdish identity, the Kurdish language has been subject to legislation that curbs its use. While attempts by Kurds to preserve their language in the face of stringent prohibitions have received significant media and academic attention, the fate of other linguistic minorities in Turkey under the same prohibitions has been almost entirely overlooked.
Challenging the Embargo
What impresses one is the will to ignore and reduce the Arabs that still exists in many departments of Western culture, and the unacceptable defeatism among some Arabs that a resurgent religion and indiscriminate hostility are the only answers.
— Edward Said (1990)
Arab “World Music” in the US
Nature Has No Culture
In April 2000, Abbas Kiarostami received the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. While in the United States, Kiarostami visited New York City, where the Andrea Rosen Gallery mounted the first US exhibition of Kiarostami’s photographs. The photographs, which were shown in a stark white loft space, appeared without titles, dates or labels. Anthony Shadid and Shiva Balaghi spoke with Kiarostami about his art photography.
Iranian Cinema
Following the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the inauguration of the Islamic Republic, many predicted that new restrictions would kill off Iran's cinema. But Iranian film has survived, undergoing remarkable transformations in parallel with the wider changes in Iranian culture and society. Today, Iranian cinema is recognized as one of the most innovative and exciting in the world, and films from Iranian directors are being screened to increasing acclaim at international festivals. The key to resolving the apparent contradiction between Iran's repressive image and the renaissance of Iranian cinema is to understand the relationship that developed between art, society and the state after the Islamic revolution.
How “Berber” Matters in the Middle of Nowhere
Downveiling
Take Them Out of the Ballgame
The Joint Strike Fighter in the Middle East
An Uprising at a Crossroads
From the Editor (Summer 2001)
This May's escalations in the long-since militarized confrontation in the Occupied Territories prompted the obligatory calls upon the US to intensify its diplomatic efforts. Secretary of State Colin Powell responded with the lackluster Mitchell Commission report and another attempt to broker a ceasefire. But as usual, the much-ballyhooed US initiative did not depart from basic support for Israel's positions.
Editor’s Picks (Spring 2001)
Ahmad, Eqbal. Confronting Empire: Interviews with David Barsamian (Boston: South End Press, 2000).
Akash, Munir and Moore, Daniel, eds. Mahmoud Darwish: The Adam of Two Edens (Syracuse, NY: Jusoor/Syracuse University Press, 2000).
Al-Ali, Nadje. Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Economic Reform in Egypt
Texts Reviewed
Ray Bush, Economic Crisis and the Politics of Reform in Egypt (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999).
Nicholas S. Hopkins and Kirsten Westergaard, eds. Directions of Change in Rural Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998).
Marsha Pripstein Posusney, Labor and the State in Egypt: Workers, Unions and Economic Restructuring (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
“This Time I Choose When to Leave”
Fatna El Bouih was born July 10, 1955, in Benahmed, a village in Settat province. In 1971, she received a boarder's scholarship to Casablanca's prestigious girls' high school, Lycée Chawqi, and became active in the national union of high school students (Syndicat National des Elèves). Arrested the first time as a leader of the January 24, 1974 high school student strike, for her second arrest she was forcibly disappeared from May 17 to November 1977 in Derb Moulay Cherif, Casablanca's notorious torture center, with other women activists, such as Latifa Jbabdi, Ouidad Baouab, Khadija Boukhari and Maria Zouini. Transferred to Meknes Prison, they were held from 1977-79 without trial.
Sahrawi Demonstrations
Within two months of the death of King Hassan II and the enthronement of his eldest son, King Mohammed VI in July 1999, a series of demonstrations erupted in the Western Sahara. This territory has been administered by the Kingdom of Morocco since 1976, though Morocco’s claim of sovereignty in the Western Sahara is not recognized internationally. Since September 1991, the United Nations has deployed a mission there to organize a referendum that would give qualified Sahrawi voters the choice of integration into Morocco or independence.
From Madrasa to Maison d’hote
There’s a Moroccan expression similar to the English expression “the apple never falls far from the tree.” In Morocco, it’s phrased as a rhetorical question: “Where does wood come from? From the tree.” A year and a half after King Mohammed VI’s ascension to the throne, many Moroccans are wondering just how much the wood will be like the tree.
Networks of Discontent in Northern Morocco
What are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues people, it openly arrogates itself the title of kingdom.
— Saint Augustine
