Middle East Quarterly articles from March 2001

Middle East Quarterly archives from March 2001

Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. By Lisa Wedeen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 244 pp. $45 (paper, $17). In 1994, the American journalist Milton Viorst published a book based on...

Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Aztecs, Moors, and Christians: Festivals of Reconquest in Mexico and Spain. By Max Harris. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. 309 pp. $55 (paper, $24.95). Harris, a specialist on Mexico at the University of Wisconsin, describes and tries...

British Petroleum and Global Oil, 1950-1975, vol. 3, The Challenge of Nationalism.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... British Petroleum and Global Oil, 1950-1975, Volume III: The Challenge of Nationalism. By James Bramberg. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 637 pp. $39.95 (paper). In the decades leading up to the 1973 oil crisis, the major...

Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Changed Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia. By Mai Yamani. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2000 (Distributed by the Brookings Institute). 170 pp. $19.95. Yamani, a Saudi national educated in the...

China and Israel, 1948-1998: A Fifty Year Retrospective.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... China and Israel, 1948-1998: A Fifty Year Retrospective. Edited by Jonathan Goldstein. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1999. 215 pp. $65. Many topics fall under the rubric China and Israel, 1948--1998, including relations between the Republic...

China and the Middle East: The Quest for Influence.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... China and the Middle East: The Quest For Influence. Edited by P.R. Kumaraswamy. New Delhi: Sage Publication, 1999. 228 pp. $49.95. Kumaraswamy and his authors note that it took the PRC more than four decades to establish formal diplomatic...

Dangerous Drift: Russia's Middle East Policy.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Dangerous Rift: Russia's Middle East Policy. By Eugene Rumer. Washington: The Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy. 80 pp. $19.95. Rumer's excellent study shows the incoherence of Russian policy in the Middle East. Concentrating...

Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege. By Amira Hass. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999. 352 pp. $26, ($16, paper). As a Palestinian affairs writer for Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper, Hass bravely moved to Gaza City and...

Economic Policy and Performance in the Arab World.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Economic Policy and Performance in the Arab World. By Paul Rivlin. Bouler, Colo: Lynne Rienner, 2001. 237 pp. $49.95. The economic performance of Arab countries during the last twenty years has been miserable. True, the region's economic growth...

Female Genital Mutilation: A Guide to Laws and Policies Worldwide.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Female Genital Mutilation: A Guide to Laws and Policies Worldwide. Edited by Anika Rahman and Nahid Toubia. London: Zed, 2000. 249 pp. $65 (paper, $25). Although not strictly speaking an Islamic phenomenon, for nowhere does Islamic law call...

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, vol. 21, Near East Region, Arabian Peninsula.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968. Volume XXI, Near East Region; Arabian Peninsula. Edited by Nina Davis Howland. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000. 919 pp. $61. The volumes look dry-as-dust, more than 350...

France and Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... France and Algeria: A History of Decolonization and Transformation. By Phillip C. Naylor. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000. 457 pp. $49.95. It is difficult for those outside of the two countries directly involved to plumb the...

Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy. Edited by Richard N. Haass and Meghan L. O'Sullivan. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Press, 2000. 212 pp. $16.95 (paper). Two Brookings scholars who have joined the Bush State...

Israel and the Bomb.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Israel and the Bomb. By Avner Cohen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 470 pp. $32. Confronted with an intensely hostile environment, Israeli leaders have always understood the significance of nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor...

Jerusalem in America's Foreign Policy: 1947-1997.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Jerusalem in America's Foreign Policy, 1947-1997. By Shlomo Slonim. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1998. 421 pp. $135 (paper, $25). Whatever one's views on Jerusalem, there is widespread consensus that American policy toward the holy...

Middle East Contemporary Survey, vol. 22, 1998.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Middle East Contemporary Survey, Volume XXII, 1998. Edited by Bruce Maddy-Weizman. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2001. 710 pp. $99. The year 1998 in the Middle East, it turns out, was one of waiting. With the exception of a new president in...

The New Mamluks: Egyptian Society and Modern Feudalism.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... The New Mamluks: Egyptian Society and Modern Feudalism. By Amira El-Azhary Sonbol. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000. 292 pp. $49.95 (paper, $19.95). Expressing dissatisfaction with the way Egypt is studied--and pointing...

The Orientalist Poster.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... The Orientalist Poster. By Abderrahman Slaoui. Text and coordination by Abdelaziz Ghazzi. Casablanca: Editions Malika, 1998. 143 pp. $59.50 (distributed by Palgrave). For over twenty years, the term "orientalist" has been an insult in the...

The Political and Social Philosophy of Ze'ev Jabotinsky: Selected Writings.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... The Political and Social Philosophy of Ze'ev Jabotinsky: Selected Writings. Edited by Mordechai Sarig. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1999. 162 pp. $47.50. ($24.50, paper) Probably no Zionist leader has been so vilified as Ze'ev (Vladimir)...

Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran. By Ervand Abrahamian. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 279 pp. $16.95 (paper). Abrahamian, one of the most creative scholars of modern Iran, focuses on a...

A Very Political Economy: Peacebuilding and Foreign Aid in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... A Very Political Economy: Peacebuilding and Foreign Aid in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By Rex Brynen. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2000. 287 pp. $19.95 (paper). The Palestinian Authority (PA) has complained bitterly about a lack...

The View from Nebo: How Archaeology is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East.(Review)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2001... The View from Nebo: How Archeology is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East. By Amy Dockser Marcus. Boston: Little Brown, 2000. 284 pp. $25.95. Dockser, the Wall Street Journal's correspondent in Israel in 1991-98, spares us yet...

Is anyone afraid of Israel?
March 22, 2001... Israel's deputy chief of the general staff, Moshe Ya'alon, recently argued that the so-called Aqsa intifada that began in September 2000 should be seen as direct resumption of Israel's War of Independence in 1948-49. Then, as now, he explained,...

Prosecuting terrorism in New York.(Terrorism)
March 22, 2001... My topic concerns the international terrorism prosecutions of the Southern District of New York United States Attorney's Office (USAO) and New York's Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF); I also wish to say a little about my perspective on the very...

Muslims on the silver screen.
March 22, 2001... Does Hollywood dehumanize Muslims and Arabs? Many writers and organizations think so. They assert that racial and ethnic stereotyping that has been otherwise abandoned by the cinema continues to apply to these groups. Columnist Jay Stone, for...

Gamal Mubarak, president of Egypt?
March 22, 2001... Who will succeed Egypt's President Husni Mubarak? Under what circumstances? And what effect will the succession have on Egypt's international relations, particularly its relations with the United States? No one appears to have good answers to...

Is Syria losing control of Lebanon?
March 22, 2001... The growing willingness of Lebanese to challenge Syrian hegemony openly is undermining the world's sole remaining satellite state. Since April, thousands of university students throughout the country have participated in dozens of major protests...

The importance of Cyprus.
March 22, 2001... Four countries lie at the fringes of Europe, on the borders of the eastern Mediterranean--Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and Israel--and all of them face a similar strategic predicament. Although located near the West and themselves Western in many...

Misunderstanding Arab nationalism.
March 22, 2001... The December 2000 issue of the Middle East Quarterly featured an article by Efraim Karsh, "Why the Middle East Is So Volatile," followed by responses from Graham Fuller, Martin Kramer, and David Wurmser. Mr. Karsh here has a...

Usama bin Ladin as America's "most serious" threat.(Terrorism)
March 22, 2001... In his annual report to Congress, Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet told the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 7, 2001 that the "highest priority" threat facing the United States today is...

Trying Usama bin Ladin 'in absentia'.(Terrorism)
March 22, 2001... In the trial United States of America v. Usama Bin Laden, et al. that began on February 5, 2001 in New York, government witnesses made much important information available about the nature of Bin Laden's terrorist operations. Here is a small...

Virtual Zionism.
March 22, 2001... WASHINGTON--January 19, 2001 (news services). Marking the end of Zionism's "territorial phase," the Barak government today announced the launching of Virtual Israel to replace the now-moribund physical Israel. In a ceremony at the White House,...