Mandy Turner, ed., From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of “Peace” (New Texts Out Now)

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Jun 24, 2019 Palestine-Israel
Mandy Turner, ed., From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of “Peace” (New Texts Out Now)

Mandy Turner, ed., From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of “Peace” (New Texts Out Now)

By : Mandy Turner

Mandy Turner (ed.), From the River to the Sea: Palestine and Israel in the Shadow of “Peace” (Rowman and Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2019).

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

Mandy Turner (MT): The ideas behind it emerged in 2013 in response to the flood of books, newspaper articles, and journal special issues being published on the twentieth-year anniversary of the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, otherwise known as the Oslo Accords, between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Pretty much all of these publications focused on assessing why the two-state solution had (so far) not been achieved, how the peace process had failed, and why Palestinians were still no closer to achieving self-determination. 

Many of these assessments were important and useful, but I was interested in something else. I wanted to know how the “peace” and the supposedly “interim” framework had shaped the lives of the different communities of people involved, and what had been their coping strategies and political responses to it. Because this required a more anthropological focus, I drew together expert scholars who had a deep knowledge of the communities and issues I wanted to explore. I was aiming, as much as possible, to get a full and clear view of what had been happening “between the river and the sea” during a purported period of “peace.”
...different forms of expropriation and control emerged under the cover of this peace framework...

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

MT: The book analyzes the combined effects of the ongoing impact of Israeli settler colonial policies and practices, as well as the policies and practices introduced after the Oslo Accords. The chapters show how Israel’s expropriation and repression of Palestinians accelerated during this purported period of “peace,” and how different forms of expropriation and control emerged under the cover of this peace framework which were less visible and more stable. For instance, the chapter by Raja Khalidi shows how the Paris Economic Protocol (PEP), the economic part of the Oslo Accords, not only allowed Israel to continue to de-develop the OPT economy, but also regularized and legitimized these strategies through an internationally-accepted economic agreement. He reveals how the conventional wisdom, which understands the OPT economy as experiencing impressive levels of economic growth, in fact masks its structural deformation over the past twenty-five years, as well as the resource extraction by, and dependency on, Israel. But one of the worst aspects of all this, Khalidi concludes, is that the PLO accepted the PEP as a legitimate policy framework, and so are complicit in the development model distorting the OPT economy. He shows how this came about historically (at the end of the Cold War, and with the dominance of neoliberal economic frameworks) and through political economy processes (the profit and rent-seeking imperatives of Palestinian private capital, and the dominance of the World Bank in the development of economic frameworks in the OPT). He thus provides a rich analysis of how the situation turned out the way it did. The other chapters follow similar methods of enquiry.

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

MT: I am a conflict and peace scholar researching thematically on the politics of international intervention. What is interesting about the Israeli-Palestinian case is that it requires us to consider broader debates on how to conceptualize the international system and the nature of power, how we should understand international intervention, and what kinds of actors/ideas are involved in developing an alternative future. 

I have always found it odd that the discipline of International Relations fetishes sovereignty as constituting the main principle of the international system and so any contravention needs explanation. This is because the empirical record shows that intervention is a constant practice in the imposition and policing of international order—and I am not just talking about military "boots on the ground." Sanctions, financial assistance for preferred elites, and development and governance aid are other strategies of intervention used to control, manipulate and coerce. Of course, these are more subtle methods, but they are no less effective than direct military force. In fact, more subtle methods are perhaps more effective. The modern international system should be understood as constituting a global colonial matrix of control policed by various strategies of intervention, of which formal colonialism was only one historical instance.

I felt that western donor practices in the OPT since 1993, which were purportedly to help create the conditions for a two-state solution through the implementation of a variety of peacebuilding strategies, were an important example to explore. My research has tried to understand these policies and strategies—how they impact on the ground, particularly in terms of the form of political economy they are helping to implant; how they interact, coexist, and consolidate Israel’s strategies and practices of settler colonialism and counterinsurgency; if and how different sets of Palestinian political and economic elites have co-opted, adapted, or rejected these policies; and what western donors say they are doing but what they are actually doing in a context of settler colonialism and the global alliances that dominate in this case. 

This edited book allowed me to continue to explore these themes through working with researchers who had the in-depth knowledge and expertise to uncover the conundrums, contradictions, and hypocrisies in the history of the conflict and “peace” in Israel/Palestine.

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

MT: We (meaning the contributors and I) deliberately kept our contributions light on theory because we wanted these histories to reach beyond the academy. So, I hope that anyone interested in understanding the situation that currently exists in Israel/Palestine will read it. 

However, I am under no illusion that more research and more words will change the current situation. The promise of peace has become increasingly hollow, negotiations have collapsed, sovereign statehood for Palestinians has been denied, and exchanges have become ever more bitter—perhaps even returning to the level of acrimony that dominated the decades before peace talks began in the early 1990s. Indeed, given the recent policy directions under the presidency of Donald J. Trump, it appears that the United States is insistent on forcing a victor’s peace, and it is using its power and might to do so. 

What we need in such a context is a transformation in international public perception and opinion that, in turn, fuels an increase in solidarity actions and movements in support of Palestinian rights. We hope this book helps by offering documentation and analysis of the experiences and responses of the people who have been affected by the festering wound created by this conflict. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I have just finished co-editing a special issue of the journal Conflict, Security and Development entitled: ““The West” and “the Rest” in International Intervention: Eurocentrism and the Competition for Order,” which will be published later this year. This brought together regional studies experts and scholars of intervention to interrogate the frequently made Eurocentric assertions by politicians and academics that Western states and non-Western states are fundamentally different in terms of their aims and methods of intervention—with the former regarded as legitimate, and the latter regarded as illegitimate. Unsurprisingly, we found that this was not the case, and the reality was far more complex and interesting.    

I am now working on a monograph based on my 2014 Review of International Studies article, provisionally entitled “Optical Illusions, Webs of Deceit: Peacebuilding as Counterinsurgency in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” 

J: Why did you call the book “From the River to the Sea”? 

MT: The whole project was conceived of with this title and most of the contributors refer to the phrase “from the river to the sea”. It is a descriptive term that encompasses both modern-day Israel inside the "green line" and the occupied Palestinian territory, and has also been used by both the Zionist movement/Israel and Palestinian groups to stake their claim to the land. 

The use of this phrase by Marc Lamont Hill, Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education at Temple University, at the United Nations in November 2018, drew the ire of those seeking to silence criticism of Israel’s actions in the OPT. These kinds of attacks are becoming more frequent. It is commonplace, as a researcher of this conflict, to be accused of “bias”—like Lamont Hill was—as if somehow the study of society and social life can be “scientific” and “neutral.” It has been a guiding principle throughout my intellectual life that research can be objective but it cannot be neutral—so there is a common thread that underpins this edited book, i.e., how the past twenty-five years has witnessed the imposition of a victor’s peace for Israel and has denied rights (both national and human) to Palestinians, under the guise of a “peace process.” For all the contributors to this book, these facts are undeniable. Unfortunately, though, these facts are not enough because there is a broader battle over narratives–and this is going to get worse before it gets any better. 

 

Excerpt from the Book 

With chapter contributions from Luigi Achilli, Diana Buttu, Tariq Dana, Toufic Haddad, Jamil Hilal, Cherine Hussein, Raja Khalidi, Yonatan Mendel, Mansour Nasasra, and Mandy Turner

To receive a thirty per cent discount on the book add the code LEX30AUTH19 when ordering, until 31 March 2020, on this website.

Excerpts from the introduction

“We stand here. Sit here. Remain here. Immortal here. And we have only one goal:
 to be.”

— Mahmoud Darwish, A State of Siege (2002) in The Butterfly’s Burden, translated by Fady Joudah

One month after the signing of the 1993 Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP) between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the London Review of Books published a scathing critique by leading Palestinian academic, Edward Said. Entitled “The Morning After,” Said attacked the agreement as “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles.” While many participated in the euphoria surrounding Israel’s recognition of the PLO, relished the anticipation of an end to 26 years of occupation and six years of Intifada, and welcomed that famous handshake on the White House lawn between PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat, and Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, Said’s words seemed harsh. But now, 25 years later, they have proven to have been prophetic. Far from bringing peace, the DOP—and the geographical, economic, and political framework that was its result (herein referred to as the Oslo framework)—has failed to halt Israel’s vice-like grip over Palestinian natural resources and Palestinian lives. Rather, it gave breathing space for Israel to deepen its colonization and statebuilding practices over the whole of Mandate Palestine, but this time under the guise of a peace process endorsed, supported, and funded by the international community. 

Dozens of books and articles have been written on whether this was Israel’s original intention, and that the DOP should actually be understood as the most recent and successful attempt to implement the Allon Plan—a strategy proposed in 1967 by Israeli minister of labor, Yigal Allon, to annex East Jerusalem and most of the Jordan Valley, but leave the heavily populated areas of the West Bank under Arab control (with either Palestinian or Jordanian leadership). Others argue that the DOP offered a genuine window of opportunity for a two-state solution, but that this was slammed shut by the assassination of Rabin in November 1995 at the hands of a Jewish-Israeli ultra-nationalist opposed to peace with Palestinians. That the PLO participated in what was clearly a problematic process which left all the important issues to final status negotiations can be explained by a number of factors. However, the most important one was quite simply because the PLO was bankrupt and isolated after the withdrawal of financial and political assistance from the Gulf States due to its support for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But whatever the reasons for why Israel and the PLO signed the DOP, one thing is clear: that its impacts and implications have been far ranging and transformative: spatially, politically, and economically. 

Spatial practices were imposed that again divided Palestinians from each other: Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were cut off from Palestinians in Israel and East Jerusalem, and eventually from each other. And after 25 years of physical restrictions on movement in the OPT, imposed and policed through the closure regime, which was designed to expand and protect Israeli settlements (that have continued to grow exponentially), the West Bank has become internally fragmented. Politically, the creation of the Palestinian Authority as an institution of limited self-rule for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, splintered the nationalist movement. Thereafter the official focus of liberation lay on the territories occupied since 1967 whereas the PLO had been established to represent all of the Palestinian people—from those in the OPT, to those inside Israel, to those in the shatat (diaspora) including refugees. While the PLO remains the negotiating partner to the peace process as well as the internationally-recognized representative of the Palestinian people at the diplomatic level, the terms “the PA” and “the PLO” are often used interchangeably and there is confusion over their separate functions particularly because of their interconnectedness, the fact that Fatah dominates both, and that there has been a de facto shift in political power toward the Palestinian Authority. The marginalization of Palestinians inside Israel and in the shatat from the Palestinian nationalist movement is particularly embodied in this shift.

These spatial and political practices, that were designed to divide and rule, created the context for different forms of economy to emerge: the fragmented West Bank economy with small pockets of prosperity surrounded by a sea of marginalized communities; the disintegrating East Jerusalem economy isolated from the rest of the West Bank and marginalized within the Israeli economy; and the Gazan economy under siege and blockade reduced to being completely dependent on donor aid for survival. Inside Israel, the Palestinian-Arab economy continued to be subjected to contradictory processes that both marginalized it and integrated it within the wider Israeli economy largely to its detriment. There were also impacts in the social sphere, particularly through Israel’s law restricting family reunification (i.e., that prevents Palestinians from East Jerusalem or Israel from living with spouses from the West Bank or Gaza inside Israel or East Jerusalem), and through restrictions on movement. And it is in response to these different contexts that distinct and divergent responses were crafted to the restrictions and problems that were faced—often in innovative and unexpected ways. Familial, community, economic, and political relations have sometimes been sufficiently robust in continuing to knit Palestinian communities together thus leading to new forms of (re-)integration. 

Israel, on the other hand, has experienced exceptional levels of economic growth prompted by policies that internationalized its economy coupled with the expansion of trade with large parts of the world through the establishment of relations made possible by the DOP and the peace process, and compounded by a wave of immigration in the 1990s from the former Soviet Union. Such neoliberal capitalist policies were, as they have been in other parts of the world, accompanied by a rapid increase in inequality that has disproportionately impacted communities along communal lines—the worse affected being (in order): Palestinians-Arab citizens of Israel, the Haredim, and the Mizrahim. And while the OPT is highly dependent economically on Israel, the converse is not true. Some commentators argue that the economic impact on Israel is to be found in the costs of maintaining the occupation through state subsidies for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the military costs of defending them. But there are, of course, a multitude of ways that Israel profits from its colonization and occupation, such as through access to natural resources in the OPT, i.e., water and fertile land, and through its leading role as an exporter of “homeland security” products and weapons. The massive scale of land expropriations from Palestinians, upon which the Israeli state itself was built in the immediate years following 1948, continued in the West Bank and Gaza after 1967, thus indicating the continuity in the mechanisms used by Israel to expand its control over the whole of Mandate Palestine. Politically, Israel has shifted to the right in the past few decades—a process that has put settlers and their supporters deep within the government, with concomitant impacts in terms of policies. Many of the settlements (particularly large ones such as Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, and those surrounding Jerusalem) are now largely not regarded by Jewish-Israelis to be problematic or illegal. Indeed, so many Jewish-Israelis now know someone (colleague, relative, friend) who lives in a settlement, that the “green line” has been virtually erased in their collective mind-set. Meanwhile, the Israeli state has continued with its strategy of conflict management and counterinsurgency (rather than conflict resolution, as promised by the peace process) against Palestinians with overwhelming support from Jewish-Israelis. 

…

The communities selected for analysis include: Palestinians in the West Bank; Palestinians in East Jerusalem; Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; Palestinians in Israel; Palestinian refugees in Jordan; and Jewish-Israelis. The development of these communities from that initially widely acclaimed peace accord until 2018 is traced through the different chapters—and each reveals how the Oslo framework instituted certain processes of both separation and unification.

…

[T]he in-depth analyses of the selected communities have been supplemented with chapters that analyze the economy of the OPT; the development of Palestinian nationalism historically through the PLO and more recently; the emergence of the Palestinian Authority and how the main Palestinian political factions responded to the DOP; the rationale, policies, and impact of the Western donors and the aid regime; and activists proposing an alternative strategy to that offered by the partition framework imposed by the DOP and the two-state solution. 

…

As shown by the chapters in this book, the DOP and the Oslo framework have instigated new experiences or further compounded old processes of oppression, marginalization, fragmentation, and dispossession for Palestinian communities. But what these analyses also show is that the responses of the different communities to these processes have also created the foundations for new forms of political expression, mobilization, and interaction. 

…

Despite stringent and extensive actions by Israel to control and oppress Palestinians—ranging from counterinsurgency techniques such as military violence, administrative detention, assassinations, and house demolitions; to more bureaucratic methods such as controls on movement, travel, and citizenship rights—it is clear that Palestinians, as encapsulated by Mahmoud Darwish’s poem which is the epigraph to this introduction, continue to “stand here. Sit here. Remain here.” As, indeed, do Jewish-Israelis. The key question thus remains: how to liberate Palestine from the violence of Israeli settler colonialism and to build a future based on the defeat and eradication of the inequality and oppression that this system has created.  

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Mandy Turner By :
Mandy Turner

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.

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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’.

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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.

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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.