Narges Bajoghli, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (New Texts Out Now)

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Sep 4, 2019 Iran
Narges Bajoghli, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (New Texts Out Now)

Narges Bajoghli, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (New Texts Out Now)

By : Narges Bajoghli

Narges Bajoghli, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford University Press, 2019).

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

Narges Bajoghli (NB): In 2007, a former founder of Ansar-e Hizballah in Iran and the leading figure in the violent suppression of student activists at the University of Tehran, Masoud Dehnamaki, became a film director. His first feature narrative film, The Outcasts, was set during the Iran-Iraq war. War films are the biggest genre of films in Iran, strongly backed by different sectors of the state; in recent years, however, ticket sales for war films had tanked—until The Outcasts, which broke all box office record sales in Iran. With the commercial success of his film, Dehnamaki spoke and wrote a lot about the need to train a new generation of pro-regime paramilitary filmmakers in how to make more entertaining films with “the right message.” He was planning on setting up film workshops to teach this new generation.

I had just left Iran after a few years of living, studying, and working there. Until that point, I had focused on women’s and student movements for some time and I thought I would continue down that path, until I read some pieces by Laura Nader, Lila Abu-Lughod, and others about the need to study power; it really shifted my focus. They wrote about how anthropologists study marginalized communities or activist communities that they feel some form of solidarity with, and how, although we end up with a more nuanced understanding of those communities, our knowledge about the power that they are up against remains two-dimensional. We cannot effectively fight against oppressive power structures and ideas if we do not understand power and those who occupy positions of power beyond caricatures. 

This resonated deeply with me. Much of the scholarly literature on the Islamic Republic’s political structure just did not capture the complex realities on the ground. With Dehnamaki’s new film and plans on training more Basij filmmakers, I knew I had to shift my focus. I wanted to understand how the state utilized media to communicate its founding ideology to new generations. This, of course, is not an issue unique to Iran or the Islamic Republic. In the Iranian case, however, much of the funding and resources for the state’s media production now come from the Revolutionary Guard, thus my interest in studying them, specifically, as cultural producers.
... the book engages with questions of media, militaries, and revolutionary states.

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

NB: At its core, the book engages with questions of media, militaries, and revolutionary states. Specifically, it is placed within three areas of scholarships: the anthropology of media, anthropology of the state, and post-revolutionary Iran. 

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

NB: I consciously wrote this book to not just be for an academic audience. Iran remains deeply misunderstood, both within academia and beyond, and it has led to four decades of destructive policies. My aim for this book is for it to be read in the social sciences, Middle East studies, and media studies, and by students looking to understand Iran, power, and the complex ways media production unfold. But I also want this book to be read by intelligent and curious readers who want to understand Iranian politics in all of its complexities. I am really thankful for my editor at Stanford University Press, Kate Wahl, and for mentor and colleague, Sherine Hamdy, who encouraged me to push through academic jargon and write Iran Reframed in an intelligent, yet accessible way. 

The title of the book refers not only to the ways that the Islamic Republic is reframing its message for younger audiences, but also to what we, as scholars and analysts, learn about Iran when we shift our frame of analysis to the point of view of those who are supporters of the Islamic Republic. If scholarly and public culture analysis thus far has failed to understand the supporters of the Islamic Republic in all of their complexities, what can be gained if we take a different approach to contemporary power in Iran, one that insists, as anthropology demands, on an actual curiosity about the positions and worldviews of the supporters of the Islamic Republic, on their terms?

The result is a book that looks deeply at issues of socio-economic class, social and cultural capital, belonging, and generational change. These are issues often overlooked when the predominant lens in studies on post-revolutionary Iran is a preoccupation with Islam at the expense of other social phenomena. One of my main findings is that contestation in the Islamic Republic is not just between “the regime and the people,” or “the old generation versus the youth.” Instead, contestation in Iran today involves conflicts over the very boundary of what is and is not part of the regime; what is and is not counted as part of the “correct” revolutionary narrative; and what should and should not count as political or cultural. The struggles over these boundaries and how they should be policed comes into focus once the study of Iran is reframed. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

NB: I am currently working on two projects. The first is America Held Hostage, which will be a documentary film as well as an academic book. It is not a story of the hostage crisis itself, but rather, a story of how news came to dominate our every-waking moment in the United States. America Held Hostage tells the story of how ABC News created the paradigm for "news-as-entertainment" that was the precursor to our twenty-four-hour cable cycle. In an attempt to beat its competitors, ABC News executives decided in 1979 that they needed a worthy news story to hook Americans in on a nightly basis. When Iranian revolutionary students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979, taking hostages, they had just the story “with legs” they were waiting for. Ted Koppel's Nightline, the first nightly news magazine show, was born, setting the stage for what would become America's framework for reporting on Iran and the Middle East. "Iran has become more than simply a crisis. It is an obsession," Koppel said in one broadcast.

The book will take a deeper dive into the way that covering the hostage crisis and the subsequent Iran-Iraq war redefined American news and also began a process of racializing Iran/Islam/Muslims in such a way as to make room for what policy makers and media personalities at the time referred to as “the new cold war.” 

The other project, The Stench of War, is a book project that looks at the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). I have been working on the issue of chemical warfare use in the Middle East since 2005. I directed The Skin That Burns, a documentary film about survivors of chemical war in Iran, as well as oral history projects on survivors of chemical weapons (archived at the Tehran Peace Museum). The academic book project that is under way arises out of this work, and will add to it archival research on chemical weapons manufacturing, more ethnographic work in Iraqi Kurdistan, and media analysis of coverage of the events. 

J: How did you conduct the research for your book? 

NB: Conducting research for Iran Reframed took a long time, for two reasons. Firstly, I did not want to just conduct interviews, but I was looking to do long-term participant-observation in regime media studios and with pro-regime media makers. I knew that interviews with state elites would render only formulaic responses, and I wanted to go deeper than that. That required building relationships of trust over time, which leads to my second reason: building that kind of rapport where I could do long-term ethnographic research was particularly difficult in this project because I was trying to gain access into circles in which I had no personal connections, and circles that were formally opposed to people like me—i.e., an Iranian American with family who had fought for the revolution but were anti-Islamic Republic and eventually forced into exile. Beyond that, as a woman, I was also trying to gain access to circles that were predominantly populated by men. Although regime media centers do employ women, they do not work in film production, but rather conduct oral histories and write books. 

In preparation for conducting this fieldwork, I also trained as a documentary filmmaker at NYU in addition to my theoretical and methodological training as an anthropologist. Studying media production required that I also know how to produce films and media in practice. And beyond that, by being trained in production, I could volunteer on film sets in Iran, sit in on production meetings with filmmakers, and thus make participant observation a more fluid process in spaces I otherwise stood out in like a sore thumb. 

My previous work with survivors of chemical warfare in Iran opened up a lot of doors for me for this project. The doctors and survivors (mainly veterans of the war) I had worked with on that issue over a period of four years made introductions to their friends in regime media circles and vouched for me. Without those personal connections, this project would not have been possible. But, in a twist that I have now come to expect as the norm, the US government made me jump through more hoops to conduct this research than I ever had to in Iran. Because of the extensive sanctions regime against Iran and the fact that I was (at the time) conducting research with “specially designated individuals”—today, the Revolutionary Guard and its institutions have all been formally designated as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” by the US government—I had to first convince my university’s lawyers  that I was legally allowed to conduct this research (the US Treasury Department keeps rules about researchers working in sanctioned countries vague, leading to university administrators pressuring scholars not to pursue the research for fear of reprisal from the US government). Eventually, after months of back and forth, my university spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring an outside firm to file an OFAC license for me to be able to do the research. This reality of being a researcher seen as a national security threat in both Iran and the United States is something I have written about (forthcoming in Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East).


Excerpt from the book

From the introduction

“This youngest generation in our country doesn’t understand our revolutionary language anymore,” Reza Hosseini told his colleagues. “We’re wasting our time with the media we make.”

At 45, Mr. Hosseini had retired from active duty in Iran’s preeminent military organization, the Revolutionary Guard, and now worked as a writer, director, and producer of pro-regime content. In front of him sat seven high-level officials of the Revolutionary Guard who oversee media production in the country. They met on a regular basis in a plain conference room of a regime publishing house in central Tehran. A long oval table was surrounded with office chairs covered in their original protective plastic, which had blackened from use over the years. Although the room was tucked away from the pollution and heavy traffic outside, the incessant honking of horns was still audible. A powerful air purifier made little difference, because the sharp smell of exhaust seeped into the room. The tea service on the table was growing cold, and sweets, like the tea, were left untouched. The men--still in their black and grey winter coats despite the blast of heat from the heater--sat silently, each staring off into space.

It had been just over three years since the 2009 Green Movement uprising--the biggest mass demonstrations in Iran after the 1979 Revolution. Since 2009, the Islamic Republic’s cultural producers had held numerous meetings in which they contemplated what had inspired so many young Iranians to come out onto the streets and protest the government. The demonstrators decried perceived voter fraud during the presidential elections in which the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was declared the victor just hours after the polls had closed.2Protestors believed that Ahmadinejad’s Interior Ministry, with possible tacit support from the Supreme Leader’s Office, had committed voter fraud to ensure that the highly popular reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, would not win. What began with “Where is my vote?” turned into shouts of “Down with the dictator!” The slogans of the 2009 protests were eerily similar to--indeed many were facsimiles of--the slogans the men in the Revolutionary Guard remember shouting as young men against the Shah in 1979. How could young people on the streets in 2009 be mimicking their revolutionary slogans, but using them this time against their own revolution?

Mr. Hosseini broke the silence, as usual. “These kids don’t care about the revolutionary stories we’ve told them the past thirty years, and it’s our own fault. We can’t blame them. We haven’t properly communicated our stories to them. We need to bring them back to our side by telling better stories.” Having grown up in Abadan, home to the largest oil refinery in the Middle East before the revolution, Mr. Hosseini prided himself on having had an upbringing surrounded by Americans, Brits, and Iranians from all walks of life. He didn’t classify people into “us” (khodi) and “them” (gheyr-e khodi), like many of his colleagues did when describing different social factions in Iran. Mr. Hosseini made it a point to have close friendships with those who disagreed with him and the system he supported.

In these meetings, Mr. Hosseini was usually quick to argue that the Islamic Republic should be more flexible with young Iranians. “We keep pushing them away by making their lifestyle choices suspect and illegal. So what if they like to have spiked hair that reaches the sky and to wear skinny jeans? That doesn’t matter, but we’ve turned these things into political issues.”

Mr. Hosseini is typical of the first generation of Revolutionary Guard members. Having volunteered as a young man to fight in the war with Iraq that followed the revolution, he honed his skills on the battlefields of the twentieth century’s longest conventional war. There, he and his fellow soldiers demonstrated their willingness to defend their country and their revolution to death. Today, he and some of his comrades from the war constitute the top echelons of the Revolutionary Guard.

“The protestors are not to blame,” he said, again fixing his look to the corner of the room, his arms crossed on his chest, leaning back on his chair. His own wife and children had joined the protestors in 2009. After a silence, he continued, “We’re the ones that need to adapt to the realities of our country.”

Mohammad Ahmadi, a prominent film producer who directed one of the most notable pro-regime film collectives in the country, nodded in agreement and chimed in, “I talk about this all the time with my filmmakers. We’ve lost the youth in our country. We need to face this reality.” 

“But we can’t give in to their demands! What do we become then, if we do that?” interjected Asghar Haghighi, a fifty-year-old general in the Revolutionary Guard. “We have to teach them the right way. Just because they demand something doesn’t mean we have to give in to them. Do you do that when you discipline your own kids? No! So we shouldn’t do that with the country’s youth either!”

“Look, Asghar,” Mr. Ahmadi said, turning his attention to his senior colleague, “if we don’t become more flexible, we lose the entire system. The future is theirs because of their sheer numbers. They outnumber us. And not only that, if we don’t become more flexible, we could turn into Syria.”

“It’s true,” Mr. Hosseini interjected, suddenly becoming animated and sitting upright in his chair. “Our system has problems; which system doesn’t? But we can’t have our young people going into the arms of any opposition just because they dislike us. That’s exactly what happened in Syria and look at the civil war that’s begun there.”

Later that day, Mr. Hosseini gave me a ride back from the meeting. Furrowing his brow, he said, “Maybe we were right in suppressing the Green Movement. If we hadn’t, maybe we would’ve had the same situation here as in Syria.” It was hard for him to voice those words. He and his close friends in the Revolutionary Guard had voted for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate. And more than that, they despised the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

His fear of Iran “turning into Syria” revealed a difficult truth that all my interlocutors in the Revolutionary Guard eventually voiced to me as the Syrian civil war turned bloodier and more complex. Syria became a metaphor for what Iran’s military elite sought to avoid at all costs. Yet they also viewed Syria as the stage on which the wider regional and global wars for influence and power played out, and in which they were heavily involved.

For Mr. Hosseini and his colleagues, the international meddling in the Syrian war also resembled the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). Though long forgotten in most parts of the world, the Iran-Iraq War continues to reverberate in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran just over a year after the success of the 1979 Iranian revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The bloody war, characterized by trench warfare and chemical weapons, dragged on for eight years. Though this was ostensibly a war between two nation states, most Arab countries supported Iraq, and regional and international powers played the two countries against one another. As Morteza Sarhangi, a prominent regime journalist and writer, said to me, voicing the official stance of the Iranian state, “This war was actually World War III. Over two dozen countries were involved in the war. Western powers wanted to see our two countries destroy each other so they could have influence in the Middle East and over our oil and resources.”

For Iran’s young soldiers, mostly volunteers in the pro-regime Basij paramilitary militia and the Revolutionary Guard, the war was not only their coming-of-age story but also the prism through which they viewed international relations. Mr. Hosseini and his colleagues understood all too well what it meant to be pawns in larger geopolitical power plays. 

The next month, at a meeting with the same men, Mr. Hosseini said to his colleagues, “We can’t have young people go into the arms of the opposition just because they want change. They need to know that we’re not their enemy. But the Green Movement and our response in 2009 made them feel we’re against them.”

“Exactly!” Mr. Ahmadi jumped in excitedly. “We’ve distanced ourselves from young people and that’s the real danger. God forbid one day Daesh (ISIS) or another group attacks Iran. Will our young people rise up and defend the country the same way our generation did with Iraq? If we keep distancing ourselves in this way, the answer will be no.”

Alireza Shirazi, an executive in the state-run television network and a former officer of the Revolutionary Guard, agreed with Mr. Hosseini and Mr. Ahmadi, “We need to make sure young people don’t feel dismissed by us. That’s why managing our media correctly is so important.” He leaned in with his elbows on the glass table and continued, “You all know our hands are tied at state television. We can’t produce different media because of our restrictions. So it’s up to the rest of you to create media that will draw young people closer.”

“The first step is to stop producing the propaganda of the past three decades,” Mr. Hosseini said. “We need to communicate in a language young people will understand.”

_____________________________


This article is part of the new Jadaliyya Iran Page launch. To inaugurate the Iran Page, its co-editors are pleased to present the following articles, interviews, and resources:

Articles

"Jadaliyya Launches New Iran Page" by Iran Page Editors

"Covering Race and Rebellion" by Naveed Mansoori

"The Systemic Problem of 'Iran Expertise' in Washington" by Negar Razavi

Media Roundup

Extended Iran Media Roundup

New Texts Out Now (NEWTON) Interviews

Houri Berberian, Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds

Nile Green, The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca

Narges Bajoghli, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, Revolution and its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran

Golbarg Rekabtalaei, Iranian Cosmopolitanism: A Cinematic History

Peyman Vahabzadeh, A Rebel’s Journey: Mostafa Sho‘aiyan and Revolutionary Theory in Iran

Resources

Engaging Books Series: Cambridge University Press Selections on Cosmopolitanism and Political Reform in Iran

Jadaliyya Talks: Arash Davari and Sina Rahmani on "Divorce, Iran-America Style"

"Essential Readings: Post-Revolutionary Iran" by Arang Keshavarzian

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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.