Tristan Leperlier, Algérie, les écrivains de la décennie noire (New Texts Out Now)

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Nov 7, 2019 Algeria
Tristan Leperlier, Algérie, les écrivains de la décennie noire (New Texts Out Now)

Tristan Leperlier, Algérie, les écrivains de la décennie noire (New Texts Out Now)

By : Tristan Leperlier

Tristan Leperlier, Algérie, les écrivains de la décennie noire (CRNS Editions, 2018).

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

Tristan Leperlier (TL): I belong to a new generation of French researchers who do not have a biographical link with Algeria. Initially, it was an interest in the Arab world on the one hand, the Francophone world on the other, which led me to the Maghreb. Subsequently, during my master's degree in literature, I discovered powerful writers, many of whom were Algerian. When I began my master’s in political science, I realized how the Maghreb was surprisingly the unpopular region within studies of the Arab world. Under the pretext of "not reproducing the colonial scheme," the reality was that young researchers were not attracted to analyzing a region they thought they knew already—either through Algerian immigrants in France, or from touristic holidays! This is probably one of the reasons for the loss of French expertise on the Maghreb. So, I decided to persevere in this way.

For obvious reasons, the most valued social science works in France were about colonial Algeria or war. So, I wanted to study Algeria independently—as one could do about Germany, for example—with no connection to France. The reality is stubborn; working on Algeria during the civil war, I was forced to work on France, too. The civil war of the 1990s had its intellectual "Battle of Paris" and a quarter of writers were exiled, mostly in France, bringing (at the heart of the crisis) the share of Algerian writers living in the former Metropole to one-third of the entire population, and two-thirds of all their literary publications were published by French publishing houses! And while, for me, the choice of civil war had been dictated by scientific considerations (a political crisis crystallizes the stakes of a literary field, and accelerates its evolution), the memory of obscure acronyms (GIA, FIS…) and horrible news when I was very young gradually returned to my mind. This was the case to such an extent that I realized I was also partly studying the French memory of Algeria and the symbolic place in France for Algerian intellectuals, and more broadly for the Arab-Muslim minority.
... the Algerian literary field had then a triple characteristic: bilingual, transnational, and overpoliticized.

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

TL: This is a classic question: what is politics doing to literary work, and vice versa? This question becomes more intense in times of political crisis. I use a double approach. Firstly, the sociology of intellectuals is all the more legitimate here when this war has sometimes been presented as a "war against intelligence" led by the Islamists. Secondly, there is a literary approach, with the assumption that literature is not affected in a crude way by the war, but according to logics of its own. I thus showed that the Algerian literary field had then a triple characteristic: bilingual, transnational, and overpoliticized.

First of all, it is a bilingual literary field: to what extent has the civil war been a "war of languages," as has often been said, between Arabic and French speakers? I show that it is not the linguistic divide that makes it possible to explain the literary and political positions of writers during the period, but rather the transnational structuring of the literary field. But, if the civil war in the literary field is not essentially a war of languages, it still partly became one in the representations, and even tragically, in the facts.

The transnational aspect of the literary field is strongly reinforced in the civil war because of the exiles. In particular, they pose postcolonial questions about the place of Algerians and, more broadly, Muslims in France, particularly in a context of increasing economic constraints on the French publishing market. I show in detail the French ethnocentric logics imposed on Algerian writers, and also their empowerment and the spaces of freedom created for them with French economic support. In general, France once again became a major stake in the Algerian literary field; at the end of the war, it was with French economic resources, and against the symbolic domination of the writers who had published in France, that the local literary space was rebuilt. Exile is also a particularly important moment in the polemical affirmation of a new Algerian identity integrating its "European" part—especially through the figure of Albert Camus.

Finally, the overpoliticized nature of the field involves the question of the place of writers in a (transnational) intellectual field, where they are challenged by journalists and social scientists as epitomes of the “intellectual” all of them competing for the international monopoly of the discourse on Algeria. In this context, many writers develop an ethos of witness: a witness against the Islamists even though—or rather, especially—when they are in exile in France. From my analysis of many literary works, I have proposed a typology of gestures of political commitment by literature. The first gesture is the “attestation,” a polemical and explicit commitment inscribed in the general political discourses of the time. The second is the “evocation,” a discreet commitment to try to change social representations by giving voice to those who have no voice, the subalterns. The last is the “interrogation,” which, while remaining fundamentally political, questions literature’s capacity for political action.

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

TL: Of course, it is a scholarly book. But I vigorously reduced the thesis from which the book came to make it a contribution to public debates in Algeria, France, and beyond. It is primarily about the role of literature in our societies, and the place of writers in these same societies. Since the civil war, Algerian writers have played an important role in French public debates, particularly on Islam. It is a contribution to the rejection of the political ideology of the “clash of civilizations,” and also to the scientific model of peaceful global hybridization. Finally, it is a contribution to the understanding of postcoloniality—in particular, the implicit hierarchies hidden behind the apparent universality of literature, but also the strategies used by the writers of the “peripheries” and their capacity to empower themselves within this context.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

TL: Due to the specificity of the civil war, I focused on a bilingual literary field, the transnationality of which was largely Algerian-French. I now would like to open up the study from a linguistic and geographical point of view.

This means working more precisely on the margins of the literary field, on the political-literary struggles for the emergence of a literature in Arabic dialect and Tamazight. This raises the question of the definition of "literature" itself, in its European nineteenth-century form which—although widely accepted in the Arab world—neglects the issue of orality.

From a geographical point of view, I would like to gradually extend the study to the whole North African region, and the politico-literary circulation of writers and literatures in the Arab world, in the United States, and in Germany. The German case is particularly interesting in order to understand, by comparison, Franco-Maghreb postcolonial relationships and American-oriented globalization. 

 

Excerpt from the book

Table des matières

Chapitre 1: L’écrivain, parangon de l’intellectuel? 37

Du silence à l’âge d’or: les écrivains algériens face à la libéralisation du régime. 39

Les forces politiques à l’aube d’Octobre. 39

« Octobre » et le « silence des intellectuels ». 44

Un âge d’or des intellectuels. 63

Concurrences politiques et intellectuelles pendant la guerre. 73

Représentation du champ littéraire algérien pendant la décennie noire. 74

Deux rapports à l’Etat. 79

Les facteurs d’opposition dans le champ littéraire. 85

Intellectuels généralistes et intellectuels spécifiques. 90

Rachid Boudjedra, le « Voltaire d’Alger »: formation transnationale d’un intellectuel prophétique. 94

Chapitre 2: Une guerre des langues? 105

Les fondements de l’opposition: Autonomie et internationalité. 107

Islamistes vs communistes: des littératures politiques. 108

Ecrivains et imams: des religions concurrentes. 114

Le facteur déterminant: l’internationalité littéraire. 118

Le facteur déclencheur: les institutions nationales. 120

Entre deux puretés? Tahar Ouettar et Tahar Djaout. 123

Le clivage linguistique. 124

La résistance au clivage linguistique. 131

L’affaire Tahar Ouettar: vers une « guerre des langues ». 137

Une prophétie auto-réalisatrice. 148

« C’est l’intelligence qu’on assassine ». 148

Une bipolarisation. 155

Chapitre 3: Des écrivains témoins? Littérature et engagement politique. 163

Typologie des engagements des écrivains algériens. 165

L’Attestation: témoins d’actualité. 169

Rachid Mimouni: de la littérature à la politique. 169

Yasmina Khadra: Sociologie et autochtonie. 180

Malika Boussouf, Aïssa Khelladi et Maïssa Bey: Journalisme, témoignage et littérature 187

L’Evocation: Témoins de l’invisible. 198

Ahlam Mosteghanemi et Soumya Ammar-Khodja: l’évocation des écrivaines. 199

Assia Djebar: Evoquer les disparus de l’histoire. 208

Camus et le « mythe andalou » de l’Algérie coloniale. 216

L’Interrogation: Témoins du doute. 225

Mohammed Dib: l’engagement d’un moderne. 226

Salim Bachi: les doutes de la fin de guerre. 235 

Chapitre 4: Une France algérienne? Entre marché et autonomie. 243

La fenêtre et le ghetto: les écrivains exilés en France. 244

Violence et opportunité littéraire de l’exil. 244

Des conditions d’accueil favorables? Identifications contradictoires. 250

La littérature algérienne soumise au marché français? Le cas de Timimoun de Rachid Boudjedra. 258

Des œuvres « opportunistes »? 259

Une édition et une réception « ethnocentriques »? 269

Algérie Littérature/Action: construire l’autonomie littéraire entre France et Algérie. 280

Construire un espace autonome et une revue centrale. 280

La difficile exportation de l’autonomie. 286

Fin de la guerre: Avec et contre la France. 293

Politique et géopolitique de la littérature. 294

La construction d’un pôle autonome d’avant-garde en Algérie. 306

[…]

Présentation de l’éditeur

Il y a trente ans, en octobre 1988, le monde arabe connaissait son premier « Printemps » en Algérie, suivi d’une guerre civile d’une rare violence qui saigna le pays, par l’assassinat ou par l’exil, d’une grande partie de son intelligentsia. L’une des premières victimes, le poète et journaliste de langue française Tahar Djaout tomba, en 1993, sous les balles de djihadistes islamistes.

Entre études littéraires et sociologie des intellectuels, ce livre montre les conséquences de cette crise politique sur les écrivains algériens. Cette guerre civile a-t-elle été une guerre des langues, opposant anti-islamistes francophones soutenus par la France, et pro-islamistes arabophones, choc de civilisations qu’un certain discours de l’époque s’est plu à diffuser? Il est vrai que l’ancienne puissance coloniale est redevenue à l’occasion de cette « décennie noire » un espace central pour l’exil, le débat politique, et la reconnaissance littéraire des Algériens. C’est plus largement la place de ces écrivains dans les sociétés algérienne et française qui est interrogée. 

Exceptionnelle par l’ampleur et la diversité de ses sources, cette étude s’adresse aux lecteurs curieux de découvrir une littérature à la fois si proche et lointaine (de langue française ou arabe: Rachid Boudjedra, Mohammed Dib, Assia Djebar, Tahar Ouettar…); et qu’intéressent les enjeux particulièrement actuels de l’engagement politique en période de censure religieuse, de migrations intellectuelles, et d’identités postcoloniales à l’heure de la mondialisation.

[…] 

Introduction (pp. 34-5)

Cette étude montre que les engagements littéraires et politiques des écrivains algériens pendant la guerre civile sont liés à leurs positions dans leur champ littéraire, qui a une triple caractéristique: il est bilingue, transnational, et politisé. Alors que cette guerre est souvent présentée comme une « guerre des langues », c’est en réalité la dimension transnationale du champ qui est particulièrement déterminante: pour cette raison la France, plusieurs décennies après l’indépendance, revient alors au centre des problématiques du champ littéraire algérien. Dans ce contexte, il semble qu’on assiste au chant du cygne de l’écrivain engagé, tant dans les prises de positions intellectuelles qu’au sein de la littérature.

Ce livre suit une progression chronologico-thématique. Les deux premiers chapitres rendent compte des prises de position politiques des écrivains, et montrent que la guerre civile est une véritable crise pour le champ littéraire: c’est même la définition de l’Écrivain qui est attaquée, à la fois engagé, et autonome. La crise d’octobre 1988 et celle provoquée par la guerre civile montrent la concurrence que subissent les écrivains algériens dans le champ intellectuel et dans le champ politique, notamment par les journalistes: leur statut de parangon de l’intellectuel critique qu’ils tenaient notamment de leur position internationale, est paradoxalement remis en cause au moment de la plus forte internationalisation du champ littéraire (chapitre 1). Surtout, l’autonomie du champ littéraire est assaillie par la censure et les violences religieuses: les prises de position politiques des écrivains pendant la période s’expliquent par leur rapport à l’autonomie de la littérature, et par leur rapport à l’international. Ce n’est que dans un deuxième temps que la guerre va être perçue par certains comme une « guerre des langues »: et effectivement, le champ littéraire va se bipolariser (chapitre 2). Les deux chapitres suivants se concentrent sur l’aspect majeur de cette bipolarisation: l’exil et l’internationalisation littéraire d’une partie des écrivains, en particulier en France. À la faveur de la crise politique, l’ancienne puissance coloniale redevient centrale, pour le débat politique national; et comme espace de repli et de consécration littéraire. C’est là que peut se développer une littérature engagée politiquement, marquée par la problématique du « témoignage », et dont nous proposons une typologie (chapitre 3). Mais se pose alors la question de l’autonomie de la littérature face aux pressions économiques du marché français: c’est avec et contre la France que se reconstruit un champ littéraire bilingue en Algérie à la fin de la guerre (chapitre 4). 

[…]

Conclusion (pp. 327-8) 

Etude d’un champ littéraire surpolitisé, bilingue et transnational, ce livre a permis de battre en brèche trois lieux communs de la critique savante ou profane, aux incidences politiques.

Rejeter l’opposition entre littérature et société. En considérant les écrivains algériens comme faisant partie d’un champ littéraire surpolitisé, nous avons réinséré la littérature non seulement dans un champ littéraire, mais également dans un champ du pouvoir et dans un champ intellectuel, et développé pour cela une méthodologie croisée entre études littéraires et sciences sociales, pour prendre en compte la totalité de l’activité littéraire et politique de l’écrivain. Tandis que les études littéraires permettent de rompre avec l’alternative réductrice entre « art pour art » et « littérature engagée », l’approche sociologique permet de mettre à distance l’héroïsation (ou la condamnation) politique des écrivains qui caractérise souvent les études littéraires.

Rejeter le culturalisme en tenant tout ensemble explication et compréhension. En considérant les écrivains algériens comme faisant partie d’un champ littéraire bilingue, nous nous sommes efforcé de rompre avec le monolinguisme méthodologique. Du même coup nous avons rompu avec une approche culturaliste, qui aboutirait à la conclusion délétère du « Choc des civilisations » en Algérie. La langue n’est pas par elle-même un facteur explicatif, mais elle est support de profits spécifiques historiquement situés. Pour autant il ne suffit pas de contribuer à expliquer les causes des oppositions dans la crise: il faut aussi comprendre comment a pu se développer cette représentation de la guerre civile comme guerre culturelle et guerre des langues, et historiciser le processus d’essentialisation des différences, la mutation de tendances (statistiques) en essences.

Reconsidérer les relations postcoloniales. En considérant les écrivains algériens comme faisant partie d’un champ littéraire transnational, nous nous sommes dégagés à la fois du « nationalisme méthodologique », pour replacer l’Algérie dans un contexte international inégalitaire; et d’un ethnocentrisme qui réduirait les problématiques algériennes aux problématiques des grands centres, en particulier français. Ce champ littéraire nationalisé conserve sa temporalité et ses problématiques propres tout en se réappropriant les enjeux des grands pôles internationaux, et renforce même sa nationalisation au moment de, puis en réaction à son internationalisation. Par ailleurs, approche structurale, la théorie du champ est également dynamique, réintroduisant l’histoire. La situation postcoloniale n’est pas une donnée figée, mais demande à être actualisée: la guerre civile remet la France au cœur des problématiques algériennes (et vice versa). La pensée de l’hybridité littéraire et identitaire n’est pas le produit spontané de la postcolonie, mais la conséquence des situations d’exil, et surtout une réaction à l’agenda islamiste en Algérie. Quant à l’ethnocentrisme (voire au racisme) qui caractérise la France postcoloniale, il doit être nuancé: il est d’abord le fait d’un centre à l’égard d’une périphérie; et ne doivent être évacuées ni les pratiques des acteurs dominés, s’appropriant et jouant avec ces contraintes; ni le fait que, malgré l’accroissement des logiques de marché, les écrivains algériens ont pu trouver en France les moyens d’exercice d’une certaine autonomie littéraire.
Oct 16, 2016 Lebanon
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.