Conflict and conflagration are not unique to the Middle East. Rare is the region where, at some point in history, disparate peoples have not clashed and killed. Attempts to assert primacy, when unsuccessful, have often led to periods of retrenching. When successful, postures of victory are precarious, subject to the transient recuperation of the vanquished.

Predictions of all sorts preceded the June War of 1967, some by the governments themselves, others by newspapermen and academics, many containing a substantial burden of error, others possessing an impressive degree of accuracy and insight. Analysts making these judgments read daily news accounts, noted official government statements, assessed rumors and intelligence leaks, observed levels of military activity, and then tried to estimate whether, when, and with what consequences war might occur.

This paper describes the political life of Jews in Tunisia and Morocco in the early 1970s. The findings reported are part of a comparative study of Jews in Tunisia and Morocco and Arabs in Israel.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the role of the traditional leader as one source of legitimization of modernization in a preindustrial society. Although of significance in its own right, the role of the traditional leader becomes the more potent when linked with that of the marginal person. This expanded conceptual framework is applied to the analysis of the Iranian situation in which the mutual reinforcement of traditional leadership and marginality appears to explain a certain type of directed social change.

The Democratic Republic of the Sudan was among the first of nonsovereign territories in Africa to obtain its independence from European political control. Formerly under the joint sovereignty of Britain and Egypt it became independent on January 1, 1956. Since its declaration of independence, Sudan has experienced three major self-proclaimed revolutions, and the format of government has twice changed between parliamentary democracy and military regimes. As of this writing, the current government under General Jaʻafar el-Numayri has been in power longer than any of its predecessors. General Numayri's success in ending the sixteen-year-old civil war between north and south has bolstered his position as head of state. Consequently, this success and at least three other factors have induced the world to pay considerable attention to Sudan.