IN THIS ISSUE:
From the Editors (Spring 2010)
The Middle East is running out of water.
States of Fragmentation in North Africa
Nearly 50 years after independence, the North African states of Algeria and Morocco face challenges to their national unity and territorial integrity. In Algeria, a
Editor’s Picks (Winter 2009)
Abboud, Samer and Salam Said. Syrian Foreign Trade and Economic Reform (Fife, Scotland: St. Andrews Center for Syrian Studies, 2009).
Anderson, Liam and Gareth Stansfield. Crisis in Kirkuk: The Ethnopolitics of Conflict and Compromise (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
Arjomand, Said Amir. After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Braverman, Irus. Planted Flags: Trees, Land and the Law in Israel-Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Stein, Itineraries of Conflict
Rebecca L. Stein, Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians and the Political Lives of Tourism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
“To read Israel as itinerant is to imagine its alternative future.” With these optimistic words, Rebecca L. Stein closes the introduction to her beautifully written ethnography of Israeli tourism in the years between the 1993 Oslo agreement and the second intifada that began in the fall of 2000. What shines through in this book, indeed, is Stein’s optimism, which, far from being romantic or dreamy, emerges out of a sober and well-crafted socio-political analysis. Joining a growing body of works dedicated to the mechanisms of Zionist domination, Itineraries in Conflict stands out in its commitment not only to documenting the present predicaments of Israel-Palestine, but also to thinking through these predicaments and the often paradoxical possibilities they open for setting the political reality on a different trajectory.
CURRENT ANALYSIS
“The AKP’s ‘New Kurdish Strategy’ Is Nothing of the Sort”
Selahattin Demirtaş is co-president of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party of Turkey (BDP), the fourth largest political party in the country. The BDP is not formally tied to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been in armed conflict with the Turkish state since 1984, but it shares the PKK’s core political demands and the two groups likely have many supporters in common. As such, the BDP is a pivotal player in the search for peace.
Letters re: Humanitarian Drones
Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Darryl Li square off re: “Some Bad Ideas Can’t Be Shot Down,” Li’s post about Sniderman’s January 30 op-ed, “Drones for Human Rights,” in the New York Times:
Darryl,
I’m glad you took the time to criticize my op-ed in your post, because I’m more than glad to have it torn down publicly and brutally if it’s a bad idea.
Fighting Mush
LATEST ISSUES
FEATURED PRIMER
Primer: Palestine-Israel
Read the newest iteration of MERIP’s Palestine primer. Published in March 2025, and updated to reflect developments in the ten years since our previous primer, it provides an overview of key actors, organizations, historic events, political developments and diplomatic initiatives that have shaped the status and fate of Palestinians and the State of Israel from the late nineteenth century to the present.
