Our first issue of 2024 marks an important development for Middle East Critique, for I am retiring after 30 years as editor of this journal. I do so with full confidence that this journal will continue to provide the same—and much needed–critical perspectives on Middle East politics and societies under the guidance of its new editor, Matteo Capasso, whom I first met in the fall of 2010, when he was enrolled in my survey class on Middle East politics, a course required for first-year Master of Arts degree students. I subsequently became the advisor for his MA thesis, a critical examination of the late Muammar Ghaddafi’s political ideas. The originality and quality of his MA thesis—in English—was a major factor earning him admission into the doctoral program—with a full fellowship–in the School of Government and International Relations at Durham University in the UK.
During his years at Durham, Matteo Capasso started working with me on this journal, beginning at the bottom, as an unpaid volunteer logging in submissions and searching for appropriate reviewers. He gradually learned the art of editing, that is, turning papers, often written by scholars whose native language was not English, into elegant prose that enhanced interesting and thought-provoking arguments, always solidly grounded in field research. And he also carried out his own research on Libya, leading to original articles that appeared in this journal, as well as other ones. His doctoral dissertation was revised and published by Syracuse University Press in 2022 as Everyday Politics in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, a book I highly recommend to our readers.
As this issue goes to press, it has been just over three months since Israel launched its genocidal all-out war on the Gaza Strip, a silver of territory, stretching for a mere 41 kilometers along the Mediterranean Sea coast between Israel on the north and Egypt on the south; it is very narrow, ranging from 6 to 12 kilometers wide. Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza is in retaliation for an attack (October 7, 2023) into the border region of southern Israel by hundreds of armed men trained by Gaza’s governing Hamas political party. 1,200 Israelis were killed in that surprise attack; an estimated 200 other Israelis were taken into Gaza as hostages. How ought we characterize the Hamas attack? Gaza’s official international status since June 1967 has been that of a non-sovereign territory occupied by Israel. It is not an independent country but has been under Israeli military jurisdiction for the past 56 years. In 2005, after the Hamas political party won elections in Gaza, Israel imposed a total air, land and sea blockade on Gaza; any persons wishing to enter or leave Gaza had o obtain official Israeli permission; all goods entering Gaza also needed Israeli permission after undergoing an official Israeli inspection. At times, people feel the need to break from jail.
Some insight for understanding the historical and international background of the current situation in Gaza (and in the larger Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory known as the West Bank) is provided in our first article in this issue by Abed Kanaaneh, which deals with the Lebanese party, Hezbollah, formed as a resistance group to Israel’s invasion and Hamas, including during the current crisis. While this article, ‘The Hegemony of Resistance: Hezbollah and the Forging of a National-Popular Will in Lebanon’, was written before the current Hamas-Israel conflict, it remains very relevant to understand the commitment to Palestinian Liberation that Hezbollah has shown in the past months, and decades.
Middle East Critique, from its inception, always has seen its mission as publishing intellectually rigorous articles based on field research in all disciplines pertaining to the Middle East, and our next six articles are stimulating examples of this philosophy. In ‘Weaponizing Democratization: Street Battles and Transformation in Post-Revolutionary Egypt’, Sarah Hynek examines resistance to state oppression in the aftermath of the military’s suppression of the brief democratic spring following the 2011 Revolution. Next, co-authors Charlotte Lysa and Maya Janmyr examine the efforts of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) to establish an office in Saudi Arabia: ‘UNHCR’s Expansion to the GCC States: Establishing a UNHCR Presence in Saudi Arabia 1987–1993’.
Since the 1979 Revolution in Iran, that country and Saudi Arabia have been not just political rivals but also religious ones, as Iran is an overwhelming Shi’i Islamic state while Saudi Arabia is a predominantly Sunni Islamic one. Jeremy Dieudonne examines this dimension of their rivalry in ‘Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Power Struggle over ‘Muslimness’: Reification, Securitization, and Identification’. The next two articles examine economic issues in three different countries. Joint authors Vittorio Caligiuri, Giampaolo Conte and Gaetano Sabatini examine the relationship between debt and class formation in Tunisia over a century: ‘Debt Economy and Class Transformation in Tunisia: A Critical Comparative Analysis (1860s-1970s)’. In ‘The Theory of Uneven and Combined Development and the Sociopolitical Transformations in Syria and Libya’, joint authors Faruk Yalvaç and Hikmet Mengüaslan compare and contrast the experiences of Libya and Syria. Then we have another important article to understand the current events in Palestine, ‘The Lasting Impact of Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ on the Question of Palestine’ by co-authors Ibrahim Frahat & Basem Ezbidi. Given the US support for Israel’s punitive and ceaseless bombing of Gaza since October 7, resulting in the death of 23,000 Palestinians, an estimated 70% of whom have been women and children, and the destruction of entire residential neighborhoods, the analysis and data in this article are particularly relevant.
In our final article for this Spring issue, Rahaf Aldoughli examines why articles about sectarianism in the Middle East do not address gender in ‘Missing Gender: Conceptual Limitations in the Debate on “Sectarianism” in the Middle East’. Enjoy all of these eight stimulating articles.
Editor, Emeritus
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Disclosure statement
The authors declare there is no Complete of Interest at this study.