Conference: Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo (5-6 October, London)

Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo

9^th Annual Conference

SOAS Palestine Society and hosted by London Middle East Institute and the Centre for Palestine Studies (SOAS)

5-6 October 2013 (9-5:30 PM; 10-6 PM)

Brunei Lecture Theater, SOAS, London

On 5-6 October 2013, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its ninth annual conference, Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo.

Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, much continues to be written about the structural and subsequent failings of the Accords to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. While conventional views still regard Oslo as a winning formula that only suffered from a lack of implementation, critical analysis of the Oslo process agrees that the Accords only accelerated the Zionist settler colonial project, allowing Israel to lay siege and further expand its grip on Palestinian land, while expelling and destroying the lives of more Palestinians. This conference aims to move beyond this critical consensus and identify the internal failures prior to, and at the moment of, the conception of the Oslo accords, as well as in its aftermath. In doing so, we will attempt to understand how Oslo has transformed Palestinian life and struggle. The conference situates itself within a long history of self-criticism after defeat – a self-criticism aimed at assessing the strategic failures of the movement, and formulating the necessary steps ahead. This is a self-criticism premised on a commitment to the political rebuilding of the Palestinian liberation movement, and the struggle against settler colonialism.

In its embrace of self-criticism, the conference will focus on the ways Palestinian leadership and elites have become embedded in the logic of settler colonialism, embraced neoliberal capitalism, and reproduced social and political accommodation of the Oslo process. However, it also aims to widen our lens, and examine the growing socialisation and reproduction of Oslo logics in Palestinian political and social life, and the ways in which Palestinian resistance against Oslo and Israel, and international solidarity with that resistance, has reproduced the very conditions it seeks to overturn. In particular, we hope to highlight the context and consequences of the re-orientation of the liberation struggle into a legal and rights-based approach; the political, geographical, and social separation of the Palestinian body politic in movement discourse and strategy; the proliferation of an unaccountable “political solution/vision market” and unchecked practices of solidarity; and growing alienation and distancing of Palestinians from others engaged in similar struggles against settler-colonialism.

With this conference, SOAS Palestine Society hopes to build on its long-standing commitment to critically rigorous movement thought and analysis in an emancipatory and committed space.

DAY ONE \| Saturday 5th October 2013

9.00-9.30	Registration and Refreshments
9.30-9.35	Opening remarks – Director, Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS
9.35-10.15	Keynote Address – Overcoming Oslo, Restoring Popular Sovereignty – Karma Nabulsi, University of Oxford
10.15-11.45	Session 1: Situating Palestine 1. Unsettling Exceptionalism: Bringing a Race, Class and Gender Perspective to Palestine – Nahla Abdo, Carleton University 2. The Continuity of Colonial Control Mechanisms in Palestine – Laleh Khalili, School of Oriental and African Studies, London 3. Olso and the Taming of National Liberation Struggles in the Arab World – Gilbert Achcar, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
11.45-12.00	Coffee, Tea and Refreshments
12.00-13.30	Session 2: Subjects of Self-Criticism 1. Histories of Self-Criticism within the Palestinian Liberation Struggle – Abdel-Razzaq Takriti, University of Sheffield 2. Promises not Reached, Dreams Waiting to be Realized: Oslo and its Aftermath – Eileen Kuttab, Birzeit University 3. The Roots of Oslo: Beyond an Ideological Critique – Adam Hanieh, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
13.30-14.15	Lunch
14.15-15.45	Session 3: Oslo and the Fragmentation of the Body Politic 1. The Palestinian Citizens in Israel After Oslo – Nimer Sultany, School of Oriental and African Studies, London 2. Wadi ‘Araba: Precarious Citizenship and Palestinians in Jordan – Mohammad Al-Masri (tbc), Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies 3. On Loss and Renewal in Lebanon – Diana K. Allan (tbc), Cornell University
15.45-16.00	Coffee, Tea and Refreshments
16.00-17.30	Session 4: International Law, the Human Rights Turn, and the Struggle for Palestine 1. International Law as Anti-Colonial Struggle – Hassan Jabareen (tbc), ADALAH: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel 2. Settler Colonialism and International Law in the 21st Century – Darryl Li, Columbia University 3. In the Land of the International: Palestine, Revolution and War – Samera Esmeir, University of California, Berkeley

DAY TWO \| Sunday 6th October 2013

9.30-10.00	Refreshments
10.00-11.40	Session 5: Social Reproduction Under Oslo 1. Water as Political Tool to Encourage or Discourage Settlement – Mark Zeitoun, University of East Anglia 2. Solidity and Fluidity in the Bubble: Housing Development, State-building, and Cultural Reproduction in the Contemporary West Bank – Kareem Rabie, The Graduate Center, City University of New York 3. Breaking the Popular, Securing the Local: Aid and Its Fragmentary States – Lisa Bhungalia, Syracuse University 4. Hooked on Electricity: Colonizing Palestine on the Grid – Omar Jabary Salamanca, Ghent University
11.40-11.55	Coffee, Tea and Refreshments
12.00-13.40	Session 6: Oslo and the Consequences for Resistance 1. International Investigative Commissions in Palestine, Before and After Oslo – Lori Allen, University of Cambridge 2. Contextualizing Contemporary Palestinian Popular Resistance – Ala Al-Azzeh, Rice University 3. Palestine De-Osloized! – Haidar Eid, Al-Aqsa University 4. The Oslo Generation on Exile Politics: Between Solidarity and Leadership – Nour Joudah, Institute for Palestine Studies
13.40-14.25	Lunch
14.30-16.10	Session 7: Integrating Critique and Moving Forward 1. Co-opted Solidarity and the Challenge of Joint Struggle – Sara Kershnar, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network 2. Rebuilding the Movement: From the Popular Committees to the Labor Unions – Jamal Juma, Stop the Wall 3. Organizing in Yarmouk Camp – Youssef Fakhreddine, Ajras Al-Awda, Yarmouk Camp, Syria 4. Don’t Mourn - Organise: Organisation, the struggle against apartheid and the Palestinian Predicament – Steven Friedman, Rhodes University/University of Johannesburg
16.10-16.25	Coffee, Tea and Refreshments
16.25-18.00	Session 8: Roundtable

Tickets

Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED – book in advance!

Prices:

£25 Standard and £20 Concessions (i.e. students, unemployed, pensioners)

To buy your tickets

Online: www.soaspalsoc.org/conference

By cheque: Send cheques payable to SOAS Palestine Society with attached note of email address to:

SOAS Palestine Society, Thornhaugh Street, London, WC1H 0XG

Location

SOAS Brunei Gallery, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square London, WC1H 0XG

Contact

palestineconference@gmail.com