Editor’s Note

The current issue of The Middle East Journal offers a range of rather different articles dealing with aspects of the region, some of them much in the news these days, and all relevant to current policy debates.

Toby Matthiesen of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) offers us a case study of a modern opposition group that has resorted to terror in the past through his history of the Saudi Shi‘ite group known as Hizbullah al-Hijaz. It contains considerable background and detail not previously available in English to general readers.

Stacey Philbrick Yadav looks at two countries where Islamist political movements have been particularly active: Lebanon with Hizbullah and Yemen with the important Islah Party, in order to determine “what Islamists want” and how such parties function in political life.

Ilan Peleg and Paul Scham address the current attempts to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by focusing on the lessons to be learned from previous episodes in the long struggle for peace.

Yesim Arat offers us a case study: the revision of the Turkish Civil Code to enlarge women’s rights, and an examination of the interplay between Islamic politics and Turkish secularism.

Nimah Mazaheri offers us a detailed examination of Iraq’s experience with sanctions during the 1990s as an object lesson in the problems involved in using international sanctions to influence domestic political events.

This quarter, instead of the usual book review article featuring several books on a related theme, we lead the Book Review section with a feature review by Kenneth Stein of Neil Caplan’s book, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories.

Turning to in-house news, Adam Mendelson, the Journal’s Managing Editor since 2006, is moving on in search of other worlds to conquer. Adam, who served as Assistant Editor before becoming Managing Editor, has had one of the most complex jobs in the Middle East Institute, being responsible not only for the Journal as the “traffic cop” who steers articles and sections through the editorial process, but also as the primary editor of the MEI Bulletin, our newsletter for members, and other MEI publications. Yet he has expanded the job’s duties considerably: he was primarily responsible for the emergence of our electronic edition, and with Book Review Editor John Calabrese, established our increasingly diverse online series of publications, viewable at http://www.mei.edu . He has done a superb job and every reader owes him thanks.

As Adam’s replacement, please welcome Aaron Reese, who has been serving as our Circulation Assistant. Aaron is about to complete his Master of Arts in Arab Studies degree from Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

And, if you have not yet visited, I again urge you to check out our online resources at http://www.mei.edu , and my MEI Editor’s Blog at http://mideasti.blogspot.com .