Lana Tatour, “Citizenship as Domination: Settler Colonialism and the Making of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel” (New Texts Out Now)

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Dec 2, 2019 Palestine-Israel
Lana Tatour, “Citizenship as Domination: Settler Colonialism and the Making of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel” (New Texts Out Now)

Lana Tatour, “Citizenship as Domination: Settler Colonialism and the Making of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel” (New Texts Out Now)

By : Lana Tatour

Lana Tatour, “Citizenship as Domination: Settler Colonialism and the Making of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel,” Arab Studies Journal XXVII no. 2 (2019).

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

Lana Tatour (LT): This article has been in the works for few years. My interest in thinking about the making of Israel’s citizenship regime was born out of my dissertation research on 1948 Palestinians (also known as Palestinian citizens of Israel). While reading the literature on Palestinians in Israel, a common narrative emerged—after the Nakba, 150,000-160,000 Palestinians remained in their homeland. Those Palestinians became citizens. This narrative, however, was too neat. From the story of my grandfather, who became a citizen through naturalization only in the late 1980s, I knew that the story of naturalization of Palestinians was far more complex than is often told. Naturalization was gradual and occurred over the course of more than three decades. Therefore, I became interested in why and how 1948 Palestinians became citizens. At the time of my research, the Israel State Archives was still relatively accessible, and I began looking through archives including the protocols of cabinet meetings, Knesset sessions, and the legislative committee mandated to work on the bill. 

With time, the project began to take shape and my focus shifted from looking at the process of naturalizing Palestinians (there is still much work to be done on this front), to tracing the making of Israel’s citizenship regime. I decided to focus on the period between 1948 and 1952, during which the Knesset enacted the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law. I became specifically interested in what this formative period, in which the constitutional cornerstones of Israel’s citizenship regime came into being, can tell us about Palestinian citizenship in Israel, and about the institution of citizenship in settler-colonial contexts more broadly.

The political context in recent years has drawn attention to the citizenship status of Palestinians in Israel, given the sharp increase in incitement against 1948 Palestinians, and the advancement of plans that would make their citizenship more vulnerable and easily revocable. For many, these acts, along with the recent legislation of the Nation-State Basic Law, signify an erosion in the status and citizenship of Palestinians in Israel. While we cannot deny the assault on Palestinian citizenship, this discourse seems to miss the fragility ingrained in Israel’s racial citizenship regime since its inception. As I show in this article, the vulnerability of the citizenship of Palestinians in Israel is structural and must be understood in relation to the earlier construction of Palestinians as aliens in their homeland. The Israeli state consciously designed the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law to racially privilege Jews. The state based Jewish citizenship on a semi-birthright; the citizenship of Jewish settlers was and is a birthright even if they were not born in Israel. The state perceived Palestinians’ citizenship to be granted as an act of benevolence, not a natural right. This made the existence of the Palestinians in their homeland conditional on the state’s good will.  

An aspiration to challenge the exceptionalism of the Israeli case also informs my approach. Therefore, this article takes a comparative approach to the question of citizenship-making in Israel and situates it within the wider history of citizenship making in Anglophone settler-colonial contexts. I based this decision not only on theoretical considerations, but also on findings from the archives. As the archives show, Israeli leaders explicitly drew on citizenship and immigration laws in Australia, the United States, Canada, and South Africa to shape the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law. Just like in these countries, race determined Israel’s citizenship and immigration laws.
... citizenship functioned—and continues to function—as a mechanism of elimination, a site of subjectivation, and an instrument of race-making.

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

LT: The article explores the relationship between settler colonialism, race, and citizenship, and illuminates how the Israeli state constituted racial subjects, space, and citizenship in intimate ways. The main argument of the article, an argument that guides my wider work, is the need to conceptualize citizenship in settler-colonial contexts in relation to and as an institution of domination. I show how in Israel, citizenship functioned—and continues to function—as a mechanism of elimination, a site of subjectivation, and an instrument of race-making. The state used—and still uses—citizenship to advance the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It denies them the right of return, and advances the production of Jewish settlers as indigenous and Palestinian natives as aliens and invaders. It racially distinguishes between Jews—considered authentic subjects of citizenship—and Palestinians, whose citizenship depends on naturalization.

In advancing this argument, I engage with theoretical literature on citizenship, settler colonialism, Israel, and Palestine. Much of the literature in citizenship studies tends to read citizenship through the analytical frames of inclusion and exclusion, and through a focus on how to make citizenship more inclusionary towards racialized communities and indigenous peoples. This approach also extends to the literature on Palestinians’ citizenship in Israel. Such a focus, however, overlooks the ways in which citizenship is entwined with settler colonialism, and the role citizenship plays in the institutional infrastructure of the settler state and its machinery of domination, dispossession, and subjugation. 

In the case of Palestinians in Israel, we see a strong commitment to citizenship both in scholarly work and in activist circles. Palestinian struggles and politics in Israel focus on the idea of citizenship, and making it more equal, inclusionary, and meaningful. In many respects, the project of transforming Israel from a Jewish state to a state of all its citizens, which the Palestinian national party, Balad, introduced, is a significant example of how normalized and naturalized citizenship is. By turning to the history of citizenship-making in Israel, I try to de-naturalize citizenship as a common-sense concept. Through showing how citizenship works to (re)produce the elimination of indigenous peoples and the erasure of their sovereignty, I seek to prompt a wider questioning of the potential of citizenship to advance decolonization and political emancipation. 

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

LT: As mentioned, this article was born out of my dissertation research, which focused on the resistance of 1948 Palestinians. There, I focus on exploring how the liberal and racial politics of citizenship and human rights shape the subjectivities, resistance, and political projects of Palestinians in Israel. In this article, I shift my focus to the making of Israel’s citizenship regime, looking at how the state constructed and constituted Palestinian and Jewish citizenship in Israel along racial lines and in the service of the settler-colonial project. The reliance on the Israeli colonial archive alone, however, also informs the limits of this project. Wider consideration of the story of citizenship-making in Israel should also consider the efforts of 1948 Palestinians to advance their naturalization and to give meaning to their citizenship.  

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

LT: I hope that students and scholars of Palestine read the article and that it will bring a new perspective for thinking about citizenship in the context of Israel and Palestine. Importantly, I would like the article to be accessible also to activists. I realize that this may require producing a shorter version in Arabic, which I am hoping to do soon. I would be happy to see this article contribute to a scholarly and activist conversation on the possibilities and limits of citizenship as a tool for the struggle of 1948 Palestinians.

Given the interdisciplinary and comparative nature of the work, this article will also be of interest to scholars working on citizenship, settler colonialism, and indigenous studies. This article, in many ways, joins the wider critique indigenous scholars have been developing on the limits of the liberal grammar of rights. 

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

LT: I am currently working on my book manuscript, Ambivalent Resistance: Palestinians in Israel and the Liberal Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights. The book is an investigation into the politics of race, settler colonialism, and indigeneity in the context of Israel–Palestine, focusing on the 1948 Palestinians. In the book, I explore the political activism and resistance of indigenous peoples in response to settler colonialism along the intersectionalities of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. I analyze three cases: Palestinian rights politics in Israel; the Bedouin in the Negev/Naqab and their mobilization of the international indigenous human rights framework; and the Palestinian queer movement and its encounter with the LGBT rights agenda. The book is based on ethnographic and archival research, and it demonstrates that native resistance to settler colonialism has been shaped in relation to—and as a product of—the encounter of native populations with the liberal and racial politics of both human rights and the settler state. I read the institution of citizenship (marked by inclusionary and exclusionary sensibilities) and liberal human rights (functioning as vehicles of empowerment and domination) as ambivalent bases for native resistance. Ultimately, the book seeks to expand our understanding of the limitations of liberal politics of rights and recognition, and to think productively about indigenous political resurgence. It also examines alternative modalities of resistance from the liberal politics that have come to direct indigenous struggles for justice and sovereignty.

 

Excerpt from the article

[…] this article traces the making of the Israeli citizenship regime. It considers how the question of citizenship has been intimately tied to geopolitical considerations of territory and sovereignty, as well as to processes of subjectivation. The article focuses on the period between 1948 and 1952, the period in which the 1950 Law of Return, which governs Jewish entitlement to citizenship, and the 1952 Citizenship Law, which governs the status of ’48 Palestinians, were enacted. I am interested in what this formative period, in which the constitutional cornerstones of Israel’s citizenship regime came into being, can tell us about Palestinian citizenship in Israel and about the institution of citizenship in settler colonial contexts more broadly. 

We are often told that Israel’s citizenship regime, which guarantees Jewish preference in access to citizenship, is rooted in Israel’s unique position as the state of the Jewish people. The story of citizenship-making in Israel is by no means exceptional, however. New archival evidence presented in this article reveals that Israeli leaders consciously drew on citizenship and immigration laws in Australia, the United States, Canada, and South Africa to shape the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law. Therefore, this article situates the making of the Israeli citizenship regime in the broader history of citizenship-making in Anglophone settler-colonial contexts, focusing on the relationship between settler-colonial domination, race, and citizenship. It shows that in Israel, as in other settler polities, citizenship has figured as an institution of domination, functioning as a mechanism of elimination, a site of subjectivation, and an instrument of race making. What ties these different modalities of domination together is the argument that the Israeli state constituted racial subjects, space, and citizenship in relation to each other in intimate ways. Citizenship transformed space from Arab/Palestinian to Jewish, rendered settlers indigenous, and produced Palestinian natives as alien. The racialization of the territory as Jewish was intertwined with the production of new legal and political subjects. While the Israeli citizenship regime viewed Jewish settlers as natural, authentic subjects of citizenship who were therefore entitled to automatic semi-birthright citizenship, it perceived Palestinian citizenship as a benevolent act by the state. The Israeli state thus designed its citizenship regime to function as the legal embodiment of wider processes of settler indigenization and native de-indigenization, in which “settlers and their polity appear to be proper to the land” and natives become foreign invaders.

When it comes to ’48 Palestinians, citizenship has become the commonsense way of conceptualizing them in both scholarly work and activist circles. State, academic, and public discourse continue to describe ’48 Palestinians as Israeli Arabs, Arab citizens of Israel, and Palestinian citizens of Israel. These phrases, in both their conservative and progressive iterations, do not merely describe the legal status of ’48 Palestinians. They connote an identity to which Israeli citizenship is inherent. This focus reflects a wider acceptance of the liberal notion that citizenship is key to political membership and subjectivity and to the fulfillment of political, civil, and social rights. Citizenship is measured against its inclusionary ideal. Accordingly, the citizenship of Palestinians in Israel—like the citizenship of other indigenous and racialized populations—has been conceptualized in terms of its lack or incompleteness. Thus, many scholars and commentators describe this citizenship as a partial, hollow, and empty category—a citizenship devoid of substance. Others characterize it as a fragile and vulnerable citizenship, a second-class citizenship, an inferior citizenship, or a differentiated citizenship.  

A wider epistemological assumption underpins these understandings: that the inherent goal of citizenship—its intrinsic purpose—is to safeguard rights, ensure equality, and promote inclusion. In this reading of citizenship, exclusion is an anomaly. It is the failure of citizenship. Citizenship is viewed as a journey, a movement from “nonpolitical society to political society.” It involves, as Danielle Allen points out, “metaphors of ‘lines’ that can be crossed and horizontal notions of ‘inside and outside.’” Even when the literature demonstrates how histories of gendered, racial, and class-based exclusions are constitutive of the making of modern citizenship, accounts still code these histories as a story of the transition of excluded populations from the outside to the inside, from exclusion to inclusion. This telos illustrates how citizenship functions as “both a normative and empirical concept.” Consequently, we see failures of citizenship addressed through a normative quest to develop a more substantive, meaningful, and inclusionary vision of citizenship (a multicultural notion of citizenship is one prominent example of this endeavor; another is sexual citizenship). Thus, citizenship per se is not problematized, only its deficiency. It is (re)produced and normalized as a virtue to be nourished and expanded, something we ought to realize, transform, and imbue with meaning. Despite the limits of citizenship, citizenship discourse calls upon us to hold onto its potential, not only out of necessity or because it guarantees us, in Arendtian terms, the right to have rights and protection from statelessness, but also out of a genuine belief in citizenship as an institution. And yet, it continues to fail us. 

The failure of citizenship to deliver on its promise stresses the need for a radical rethinking of the very nature of citizenship in the context of settler colonialism. To apprehend the limits of citizenship and to understand its discontents, we need “to raise the issue of history.” As Gurminder Bhambra points out, citizenship “is not only to be understood in terms of abstract categories of membership and rights but also in terms of the historical narratives that frame its initial conceptualizations.” Turning to the history of citizenship making in settler-colonial contexts, including in Israel, indicates that citizenship is not failing. It is doing what it was created to do: normalize domination, naturalize settler sovereignty, classify populations, produce difference, and exclude, racialize, and eliminate indigenous peoples. 

[…]

Much like the story of settler colonialism, the story of citizenship in settler-colonial contexts is also primarily one of domination. Settler colonialism—including the Zionist project—is, as Patrick Wolfe argues, a structure guided by the logic of elimination. It is a project of erasure and replacement: “Negatively, it strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base.” Citizenship, therefore, did not emerge as an autonomous or neutral institution, or as an institution antagonistic to settler colonialism. Rather, it is an institution that emerged out of domination, facilitating the elimination and dispossession of indigenous peoples. After all, as Elizabeth Elbourne writes, indigenous “citizenship exists because of past [and present] colonial conquest.” Its evolution in modern settler states has been predicated on the epistemological and historical exclusion of indigenous peoples and on their ongoing dispossession. More than an equalizing force, citizenship has been an institution constitutive of and conducive to the production of administrative categories of difference, racial hierarchies, and inequitable regimes of rights. As Audra Simpson contends, citizenship has been key to the “process of rationalizing dispossession,” working to enshrine and normalize the settlers’ right to colonize, dispossess, and dominate indigenous peoples, while producing indigenous peoples as subjects incapable of sovereignty and property rights. 

Indigenous peoples in Anglophone settler-colonial states have always been suspicious of citizenship, warning that “citizenship could serve the political function of reproducing practices of colonization.” As Vine Deloria, a Native American intellectual and activist, pointedly remarked: “There was never a time when the white man said he was trying to help the Indian get into the mainstream of American life that he did not also demand that the Indian give up land.” This suspicion is not unsubstantiated. As history shows, during the nineteenth century, and for much of the twentieth century, settler-colonial citizenship was characterized by unconcealed modes of domination. It blatantly embodied the eliminatory racial logics of settler colonialism and advanced the genocide of indigenous peoples. In Canada, Australia, and the United States, for example, citizenship and enfranchisement were tied to a civilizational assimilative mission. Indigenous peoples often had to relinquish their indigenous status or prove that they were sufficiently civil and cultured in order to be enfranchised and gain freedom of movement. Enfranchisement, settler states believed, would advance the elimination of indigenous peoples through their absorption into settler society and into whiteness. 

In Israel, citizenship as elimination took a different form. There, the racial logics of the Zionist settler project rendered assimilation irrelevant. Zionism, as Wolfe argues, “rigorously refused, as it continues to refuse, any suggestion of Native assimilation . . . Zionism constitutes a more exclusive exercise of the settler logic of elimination than we encounter in the Australian and US examples.” In Israel, as I show, citizenship has functioned as an instrument of ethnic cleansing, a way of seeking to deny Palestinians the right to return to their land. As discussions in the Israeli cabinet make clear, the decision to extend citizenship was motivated by a desire to solidify the demographic outcomes of the Nakba (the expulsion and displacement of seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians in 1948) by denying the possibility of citizenship to as many Palestinians as possible. At the same time, for the Palestinians who did remain under Israeli control, the possibility of obtaining citizenship and residence status was a matter of survival. Without it, they faced the threat of being deported by the state to neighbouring countries.
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.

[…]

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

[…]

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

[…]

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