Ayça Çubukçu, For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq (New Texts Out Now)

Ayça Çubukçu, For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq (New Texts Out Now)

Ayça Çubukçu, For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq (New Texts Out Now)

By : Ayça Çubukçu

Ayça Çubukçu, For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

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

Ayça Çubukçu (AC): The idea for this book first came to me in 2003, when I became involved in New York City and Istanbul—and then in Brussels, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Paris, Mumbai, Athens, and elsewhere—with the global antiwar movement mobilizing against the war the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies were waging to “liberate” Iraq. That summer, I was invited to join a transnational network of antiwar activists who aimed to constitute a global civil society tribunal to put the United States and its allies on trial for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This endeavor—later named the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI)—took place over two years in some twenty cities around the world and culminated with a final session in Istanbul. There, the novelist Arundhati Roy eventually served as the spokesperson of the tribunal’s “Jury of Conscience,” and Professor Richard Falk as the spokesperson of its “Panel of Advocates.”

When invited to join this transnational network of antiwar activists, I was a doctoral student in anthropology at Columbia University and initially felt theoretically and politically ambivalent about the idea of participating in such a tribunal. After a few months of reflection, however, I was convinced that the network was so diverse in its approach to the politics of human rights and international law and so committed to practicing an anti-imperialist kind of transnational solidarity that I decided to participate in it both as an activist and an ethnographer to see, and to some extent help shape, how it would unfold in action. The desire to document and reflect on the praxis of this transnational network of antiwar activists, its cosmopolitan and internationalist imagination, its contentious approach to global justice, law, and politics, and its dilemmas, disagreements, and dangers made me write this book.

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

AC: For the Love of Humanity provides an ethnographically grounded, critical analysis of the politics of human rights, international law, and cosmopolitanism in the early twenty first century. It probes the paradoxes, perplexities, as well as the potentials of the WTI’s praxis in order to clarify some of the political, legal, and philosophical problems posed by the “liberation” of Iraq by the United States and allies. It offers an analysis of how and why liberal ideals of human rights and international law become entangled with the violence of imperial practices.

WTI activists confronted many dilemmas during intense years of political debate and consequent action, which they negotiated in the context of a comparable politics of human rights and international law concurrently enacted by institutions that did not (unlike themselves) wave the flag of anti-imperialism. For this reason, the book also examines the practices of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Iraqi High Tribunal in the context of Iraq’s occupation. Engaging in this comparative analysis allows me to present a stronger argument for the pressing need to re-evaluate, ever more critically, the relationship between law and violence, empire and human rights, cosmopolitan authority, and political autonomy.

Thinking alongside key jurists, theorists, and critics of global democracy, in the book, I situate disagreements among WTI activists philosophically, politically, and historically, and demonstrate how they exemplify the impasses of a transnational politics of human rights with anti-imperialist commitments. It would be difficult to place For the Love of Humanity within a particular discipline. It is a transdisciplinary piece of scholarship, working through the intersection of social, legal, and political theory.

The ambition of this work has been to understand how, why—and with what perverse effects—politics gets articulated in the name and language of humanity, its rights, and its laws in the twenty first century.

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

AC: My scholarship has been driven by the desire to understand legal and political acts performed in the name of humanity. It has sought to offer a textured and nuanced understanding of what “humanity” means in particular political and historical contexts. I have also tried to understand how and why “humanity” articulates well with both imperialist and anti-imperialist undertakings.

In “The Responsibility to Protect: Libya and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity,” for instance, I examined the theme of humanity when addressing the Responsibility to Protect doctrine by engaging with cosmopolitan proposals for its violent application to Libya in 2011. What emerged there were telling difficulties that afflict attempts to differentiate acts of “foreign intervention” from acts of “transnational solidarity.” In my article, “On the Exception of Hannah Arendt,” too, I approach the problem of humanity thorough a deconstructive reading of Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem and her confrontation with the legal concept of crimes against humanity.

But most explicitly, in an article published last year, “Thinking Against Humanity,” I examine how two contemporaries, Malcolm X and Hannah Arendt, engaged with humanity when challenging liberal formulations of human rights. In this piece, I argue that the establishment of hierarchies amongst subjects with different entitlements to enjoy the human prerogative has been facilitated by their categorical inclusion in the order of humanity—specifically, within an evolutionary framework that recognizes their potential to become proper humans.

So my book, For the Love of Humanity, forms part of a larger research trajectory which examines the politics of humanity by addressing the complications that arise in attempts to define, critique, and practice various strands of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. The ambition of this work has been to understand how, why—and with what perverse effects—politics gets articulated in the name and language of humanity, its rights, and its laws in the twenty first century.

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

AC: Of course, I would like the book to be read both by activists and scholars, especially those who are attempting to think critically about human rights, international law, transnational solidarity, and the challenges of anti-imperialism today. I hope the book occasions further debate in these fields.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

AC: At the moment, I am formulating a second book project, which will explore the question of violence much more explicitly than my previous work.

On an ongoing basis, at the London School of Economics where I teach, I lead a research group on Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Solidarity where we address these themes through talks, panels, and lectures. I also work as a co-editor of the Humanity Journal, the LSE International Studies Series at Cambridge University Press, and Jadaliyya’s Turkey Page—all which are long-term, collective, and intellectually formative projects.

 

Excerpt from the Introduction:

It was June 27, 2005, about seven o'clock in the morning. From the roof terrace of the Armada Hotel, overlooking the Golden Horn and the Blue Mosque of Istanbul, I could observe satellite-broadcasting trucks lining the street below. Soon, the World Tribunal on Iraq was to hold a press conference to present its judgment and declaration. At that very moment, the text of the declaration (drafted in English) was passing from the hands of one translator to the next. The novelist Arundhati Roy, spokesperson of the tribunal's Jury of Conscience, would, in a few hours, lead the way into the hotel's conference room, accompanied by thunderous applause and slogans echoing in multiple languages. Two hundred journalists, international and local observers, and dozens of cameras and recorders had packed the room beyond limits. Several of these journalists would see their names just below the headlines of their newspapers the next morning, as "the news" would break in large and bold letters on the front page: "Tribunal of Conscience Declared Its Judgment: Bush and Blair, Guilty."

The story I tell in For the Love of Humanity is based on two years of fieldwork with the transnational network of antiwar activists who created the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) from the autumn of 2003 through the summer of 2005 in some twenty cities around the world. I was a "participant observer" during the conceptualization and practical formation of the WTI, committed as an activist and anthropologist at once. The antiwar activists I worked with—hundreds of them living continents apart—were lawyers, journalists, scholars, NGO workers, students, musicians, translators, scientists, editors, artists, filmmakers, writers, teachers, and the unemployed. They belonged to three different generations and spoke in English—and in Turkish, Arabic, Danish, French, Flemish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Swedish—with each other.

In the absence of official institutions of justice willing or able to perform this task, the World Tribunal on Iraq established a transnational platform where the war on Iraq could be publicly judged. The WTI's ultimate session in Istanbul became a global public event, receiving considerable media attention throughout the Middle East and "alternative media" coverage worldwide. Its proceedings were later published as two separate books in Turkish and in English, while a number of documentaries preserve for the record other public hearings produced by the tribunal over its two-year existence.

Within the tradition of "civil society tribunals," the World Tribunal on Iraq was unprecedented in its global scale, scope, structure, and sophistication. Founded with the principal purpose "to tell and disseminate the truth about the Iraq war" and to create an alternative historical record of Iraq's occupation, including the worldwide resistance to it, the WTI was produced through a decentralized, nonhierarchical network of transcontinental cooperation. In this important respect, namely its organizational form, the WTI was exceptional within the tradition of civil society tribunals.

Before Istanbul, the WTI network had conducted numerous sessions around the world and registered untold violations committed by the occupying forces in Iraq. While diverse in process and procedure, hearings associated with the WTI were organized in Barcelona, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Genoa, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Mumbai, New York, Rome, Seoul, Stockholm, and several cities in Japan. In this way, the WTI constructed a globally networked stage where the consequences of Iraq's occupation were demonstrated. During the tribunal, countless testimonies were offered by eyewitnesses to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, by international lawyers arguing that the war on Iraq was illegal, and by many journalists, scholars, and activists who all documented, contested, and often protested the reasons and consequences of Iraq's occupation.

I was particularly active during the many months of preparation for the World Tribunal on Iraq's early session in New York City (May 2004) and for its final session in Istanbul (June 2005). Participating in the conduct of multiple tribunal hearings and meetings in six different cities—Brussels, Paris, Kyoto, Mumbai, New York, and Istanbul—allowed me to analyze the commitments and tensions animating the WTI's laborious cosmopolitics. It is on the basis of this intimate engagement with the WTI that I offer critical reflections on the tribunal's (and my own) praxis of transnational solidarity over two crucial years.

The World Tribunal on Iraq activists confronted many dilemmas during those intense years of political debate and action, which they negotiated in the context of a comparable politics of human rights and international law concurrently enacted by institutions that did not (unlike themselves) wave the flag of anti-imperialism. To address this predicament, I examine as well Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Iraqi High Tribunal in the context of Iraq's occupation. Engaging in this wider analysis allows me to present a stronger argument for our pressing need to reevaluate, ever more critically, the relationship between law and violence, empire and human rights, cosmopolitan authority and political autonomy. To this end, I demonstrate how and why a potent critique of the politics of human rights and international law must rethink the legal distribution of violence globally and reconsider the proper commitments of internationalism, including its dedication to political autonomy.

The World Tribunal on Iraq remains a seminal exercise in transnational solidarity and political philosophy. So I convey the complexities attending its praxis, including the tribunal's global form of organization as an open network that functioned horizontally. Thinking alongside key jurists, theorists, and critics of global democracy, I situate disagreements among WTI activists philosophically, politically, and historically and demonstrate how they exemplify well the impasses of a transnational politics of human rights with anti-imperialist commitments. These impasses are particularly difficult to resolve when they concern the virtues of self-determination—that is, the problem of autonomy—in relation to the violent universalism of an international law that attempts to govern humanity with the promise of peace and justice.

Methodologically, I enact a model of scholarship that combines ethnographic work on global political action with close readings in political theory. The WTI's praxis was provocative on several counts. I approach the global constitution of the WTI by hundreds of persons and organizations embedded in national and local antiwar movements as fertile ground to explore the paradoxical politics of human rights and international law at the turn of the twenty-first century. The context is the thorny geography of cosmopolitics, on whose grounds, wars, occupations, and antiwar movements alike are waged through the language of human rights and international law, in the name of freedom, liberation, and democracy.

I explore situations where the language of human rights and international law is particularly able to bear what political theorist Nancy Fraser defines as "discourses of abnormal justice." According to Fraser, discourses of abnormal justice reflect the destabilization of a prior hegemonic grammar, whereby the what, the who, and the how of justice become subject, at once, to substantive debate. To date, there is hardly a more revealing global case of "abnormal justice"—a legitimation crisis, in the lexicon of Jürgen Habermas—than that evidenced by the occupation of Iraq. In that moment of crisis recognized and augmented by forces of antioccupation resistance worldwide, particularly in Iraq, WTI organizers produced public debate on the what, the who, the how, as well as, I add, the why of justice. On a globally networked stage, the World Tribunal on Iraq placed the grammar of global justice at stake.

Through a detailed analysis of the WTI, I interrogate cosmopolitan politics occasioned by the occupation of Iraq to examine the antinomies of this politics for establishing a theoretically grounded understanding of its lasting dilemmas and persistent dangers. In particular, I demonstrate how and why ideals of human rights and international law become entangled with the violence of imperial practices. The growing hegemony of a cosmopolitanism that can endorse the use of violence by many means—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria to offer a few examples—because it is dedicated to the idea of peace, renders the paradoxes I pursue all the more relevant as they continue to inflect and inform global politics.

While in most of the book I focus on cases of disagreement within the WTI network, I hereby aim to reveal how they reflect competing understandings of justice, legitimacy, and authority imagined in response to the occupation of Iraq. But also, along the lines of Richard Falk—jurist of international law, theorist of cosmopolitan democracy, and spokesperson of the Panel of Advocates at the WTI's final session in Istanbul—I consider the translingual, transgenerational, transcontinental, transformative travail that was the WTI as "an experiment from the perspective of achieving global democracy." If the result of this experimental demonstration is an agonistic, yet dialogical polyphony, this, I suggest, is a symptom of a crisis afflicting what Carl Schmitt called "the nomos of the earth," the principle of legitimacy orienting the world. More specifically, the cosmopolitical dilemmas I examine expose, left and right, a limit afflicting the democratic idea since its inception: the limit between the universality of principles posed within the horizon of humanity and the particularity of autonomies of decision constituted in the form of popular sovereignty.

Consequential for the inquiry offered throughout this book is the decision to posit on a single plane of consideration the cosmopolitics of the WTI network and the cosmopolitan principles that affirmed the constitution of a democratic Iraq before or after the fact of its occupation. I thereby highlight revealing commonalities between the two sides of the war of legitimacy over Iraq's occupation: those who proposed and those who opposed it. I remain convinced that implicit commonalities and convergences between adversarial camps are as telling as explicit disagreements and divergences.

As foreseen by Jacques Derrida in an interview reflecting on the World Tribunal on Iraq, the debates I narrate were underwritten by a crisis in which WTI activists were not "able to avoid talking about sovereignty, about the crisis of sovereignty." I suspect this crisis is not unrelated to a core question that orients the thoughts to follow: why do we care about justice, about the freedom and the happiness, the life and the death of each other, here and there? An answer offered by the World Tribunal on Iraq could be: for the love of humanity.

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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.