William Lafi Youmans, An Unlikely Audience: Al-Jazeera’s Struggle in America (New Texts Out Now)

William Lafi Youmans, An Unlikely Audience: Al-Jazeera’s Struggle in America (New Texts Out Now)

William Lafi Youmans, An Unlikely Audience: Al-Jazeera’s Struggle in America (New Texts Out Now)

By : William Youmans

William Lafi Youmans, An Unlikely Audience: Al-Jazeera’s Struggle in America. London: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

William Youmans (WY): I was attracted to studying Al Jazeera’s uphill battle to gain American viewers because it was a test of everything I thought about US-Arab relations, the politics of news in the US, the restrictive political economy of television distribution and the dominant patterns of international communication. Given my views on these, I expected it to fail, but this was made interesting by the notion that the Internet opened up space for previously excluded news sources. Could online technologies really expand the public sphere to the extent that a vilified, Arab, Qatar-owned news company could go from a medium non grata to a bona fide competitor in the television-centered American news market?

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

WY: At the book’s core, it tells the decade-long story of Al Jazeera seeking a broad American viewership through three distinct US-facing news outlets: Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera America and AJ+. The first, AJE, is an international channel, and it floundered in the US because the audience for quality global news reporting is small, many opposed AJ’s brand, and cable companies refused it carriage. Then, AJ withdrew AJE from the US after the network bought Current TV and launched an America-only channel, AJAM. The America channel closed after only a few short years marked by exorbitant expenditures and minuscule audiences. It was a total failure. Only the network’s final offshoot, the digital news pioneer AJ+, has found success attracting substantial traction within the news market. It was through social media, not television, however, and it was something of a departure from the traditional AJ style of English language news.

In recounting this story, the book considers the immediate political context, from the war on terror to the Arab spring, and the changing zeitgeist of the Bush and Obama administrations, among other factors. Yet, the book’s primary interest is applying international communication research. This scholarship has progressed through models of variable centricity through the years. The Cold War-era work saw information flows in the world as structured hierarchically. Media imperialism theses, which were inspired by dependency theory and World Systems theory, hypothesized that the advanced industrialized core nations would be dominant producers of news and information, exporting them to the global south. Such a framework could not imagine the idea of even a wealthy global south country, as Qatar is, creating news to be watched by a mass audience in the United States.

Then, globalization research emerged and it portrayed global media flows as de-centered, pluralistic, and hybridized, transnational, or multinational. Since the old hierarchies came to seem less apparent in world media, it would not be at all surprising to find Al Jazeera’s channels in some US households. I was initially interested in using the case of AJ in America to test this possibility and offering an explanation for the limitations of AJ’s “contra-flow” into the imperial core.

However, in my on-site research, I found a fascinating variation in the three entities: the extent to which they reflected where their main US operations were located, Washington, New York and San Francisco, respectively. I took the study in this direction, drawing from a particular line of work on the importance of cities as sites of globalization. From Saskia Sassen to Michael Curtin, who described media capitals as key industrial formations, and Doreen Massey, I was pushed to think more about the power of cities as places where “the global” is composed. The work of Manuel Castells on the network society, along with globalization theorists and those who study online news, tend to overemphasize social spatialization, which follows a longer tradition of western social science’s appreciation of space at the expense of place. My study is fundamentally about the continued power of key places for media, even media on the move (meaning international).

I formulate each city as a distinct “port of entry” with prevalent news industries and socio-political terrains that in turn inflect Al Jazeera’s in-flow into the country. The three AJ news services set up a comparative case study approach. Chapters three and four of the book present how the dominant media-politics rationale of DC influenced AJE’s work since its broadcasting center was based there. In chapter five, I considered how the America channel was built in the mold of the traditional New York television news broadcaster, and it showed in hiring, the use of contracted services, and even in editorial sensibilities. AJ+, the subject of chapter six, was headquartered in San Francisco, an ideal location in multiple respects, from adopting leading tech to exercising editorial independence from the network’s central administrators in Doha. Therefore, how news and information circulates in the world is deeply contingent on principle locations of productive networks.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

WY: It is my first book, and it stands alone from everything else I wrote about the network for other reasons. It is much more theoretically sophisticated than my published articles and book chapters on Al Jazeera. They focused more on the politics and fraught branding of the network in this country, without considering the geographies of production that are at the center of the book. Writing this book forced me to move past the traditional and over-simplistic story of Al Jazeera’s exclusion.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

WY: One reviewer who worked for Al Jazeera America wrote the book would be of more interest to an AJ “Kremlinologist” than a general reader. I was both flattered and concerned. Admittedly, I wrote this book for students and scholars of international communication, and secondly for anyone interested in Al Jazeera, from the many who have written about it to those in its audience who want to learn more about the network. I am hearing from many laypersons that the book is too academic.

In terms of impact, my aim was two-fold. First, the primary interest in asserting how place matters for media production practices is an effort to draw together media geography and international communication lenses, which I hope gives more scholarly attention to location considerations in media globalization strategies. Second, I am hoping to advance research on Al Jazeera beyond the overly simplistic views that each channel is monolithic, contains homogeneous views and is reducible to one identity or ideology.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

WY: I am co-authoring a book with the political theorist Libby Anker about the resurgence of sovereignty in political discourse around the world. It’s still in early development. I am also collaborating on a documentary with a colleague and documentarian about the still-unsolved 1985 murder of a Palestinian-American activist. It is in production at the moment but is a long-term project.

J: Is the book just about Al Jazeera America?

WY: No. I asked that of myself because the common perception is that the book is about just about AJAM. I hope this answer clears it up, though I have my doubts.  

Excerpt from the Conclusion:

In 2012, senior Al Jazeera English (AJE) Correspondent Alan Fisher appeared on C-SPAN to discuss his employer. The host asked him a straightforward question that should have produced a simple answer: “What does Al Jazeera mean?” Fisher took the question as one of translation, and replied that it “means the peninsula. It is essentially that island.” He added that it “sums up exactly the geographic position.” This question about the name was common enough to be included in the FAQ section of a network website. It was the third question listed, no less, after such basic inquires as “What is the Al Jazeera Media Network?” In the answer, it did not mention island, saying instead the name means “‘peninsula.’ ”

This was not the first time the network insisted on the peninsular translation. In the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the flagship Arabic news channel operated out of Washington, DC, under the formal name, “Peninsula productions.” This was inscribed on its offices in its early days. Its reporters seeking vox pop comments from people on the street identified their employer as “Peninsula News.” It was camouflage to avoid the sort of hostile confrontations expected during the “war on terror” decade.

Selecting “peninsula” as the translation of its trademark was certainly evocative. It hinted at its patron. Qatar is a small peninsula that juts out from a more massive one, the Arabian peninsula. This was what Fisher alluded to when he said the name captured the “geographic position.” Why, however, did Fisher mention “island” in his C-SPAN reply? The confusion may be in that “Al Jazeera” directly translates into “the island.” In Arabic, a peninsula is a modified island—sheba al jazeera (شبه الجزيرة), or semi-island. The network’s brand is a shortened reference then, but it raises a question: to which peninsula did it refer, Qatar or the regional, Arabian one?

The Arabian peninsula is the largest in the world, and the central focus of the channel’s ambitions. Qatar directly borders Saudi Arabia, the peninsula’s geographically and politically dominant resident. Its position on the map is fitting as a metaphor for the geopolitical arrangement that Qatar long sought to escape: Saudi Arabia’s regional hegemony. Al Jazeera, after all, grew out of the remnants of a failed Saudi media venture with the BBC. Once the project was nixed, it left a pool of unemployed, well-trained TV news workers and reporters, the eventual core of the groundbreaking Arabic channel’s human resources. As part of its novel, pioneering effort to bring debate and diverse views into Arab regional television, AJ aired dissidents who were effectively shut out of legacy media. This included rarely heard Saudi opposition activists. Al Jazeera also had the temerity to report critically on its behemoth neighbor, which cost the channel advertisers afraid to displease Saudi Arabia, a large, wealthy market. The intention was for Qatar to assert itself in the region, which necessitated moving out of its larger neighbor’s shadow. This regional ambition showed in the name. According to Miles, the chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamir Al Thani explained that the network’s brand was a tribute to Qatar being “an important part of the greater Arabian peninsula.”

Recounting the brand name’s exegesis further justifies the book’s interest in media geography. Even though it was a pan-Arab network, it is impossible to detach the Al Jazeera Media Network’s original raison detre, foundational principals, and development from its basic locationality in Doha, Qatar, the Gulf region and the Middle East at large. Even at it genesis, then, Al Jazeera was deeply imbued with geographic properties. The news network that became famous for reporting critically on the nearby US-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq under the Bush administration was undeniably a product of a Qatari gambit for regional and then global prominence, an intense, multi-actor geopolitical contest. Furthermore, it was only possible due to the geological resource-driven political economy that financed it (based on oil and natural gas). This was all encoded in the name.

Still, the basis for AJ’s origins and Qatar’s motives in supporting the network are at best partially explanatory of what Al Jazeera built for the US market. Yes, Qatar pursued it goals of inflated prestige through an expanding Al Jazeera media empire that set its aspiration upon the United States. The Doha headquarters designed and steered the subsequent global expansion that produced the three outlets reviewed in this book. But, actualizing its US plans was accomplished by integrating industrial wisdom from the places it located within, the three media capitals. What the ports of entry explanation contributes is a framework for thinking geographically and industrially about a media company’s entree into a foreign country. Al Jazeera’s mobility into the United States was negotiated through the three cities’ production contexts and placial characters. In other words, being in the United States made AJ’s outlets more than just simple extensions of the sum of Qatar-specific and institutional factors. Market entry through foreign direct investment fundamentally gave shape to what AJ’s US-facing projects became because it authorized adjustment in and to these places.

Discussing the origin of the brand name in terms of the Gulf region was instructive because of how the infamous logo complicated the network’s US expansion. In furtherance of the media port of entry framework, we can think of how the brand became translated through each subsequent media capital. In Washington, DC, politicos sanctified the brand once it was expedient with the Arab spring in 2011. Al Jazeera America’s brand was a limited attempt at an Americanization actualized through its adoption of the classic model of the sober, straightforward TV news broadcaster. In contrast, AJ+ innovated on the brand in such a way that somewhat obscured the original name and parent company while projecting itself as a next generation digital news start-up in the San Francisco tech mold.

Al Jazeera in US Ports of Entry

While media ports of entry are conduits to larger markets and therefore oriented around facilitating movement, they are self-contained industrial sites, cities, places. Thus, each of the city’s industrial cores that AJ tapped into was also a “bubble.” An AJ employee who worked at several of the company’s services used that exact term to describe how the personnel experienced the places as disconnected islands. As an example, he said that AJE was subject to Washington, DC’s political rationale, which was dominated by Democratic-Republican partisanship. It cued the media-politics industry, framed much of the capital’s political deliberation, and therefore carried more relevance and stake among the larger place of the Beltway than it did with any other city of production; this is especially so vis-à-vis San Francisco, a veritable capital for progressive politics. The city on the bay provided for a much different news-making context than did New York City and Doha, he observed. The bubble-like nature of each service entitled each its placeness in its respective port of entry. Such emplacement is the basis for the sustained clout of place in media globalization, showing how place matters for space of flows dynamics. Yet, as Aristotle’s quotation in the introduction’s epigraph suggests, we inquired into these bubbles because of Al Jazeera’s motion into them, with an eye towards what these places did for their formation and eventual media production. As central as flows are to the emergence of these places, we must accept their relative detachment—making them more like an archipelago than nodes in a technologically fused network. This is to recognize the vibrancy of place against spatializing processes like media globalization and the power of networked technologies.

[Excerpted from An Unlikely Audience: Al Jazeera`s Struggle in America with author permission (c) 2017.] 

 

  

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.