Maziyar Ghiabi, Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (New Texts Out Now)

Maziyar Ghiabi, Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (New Texts Out Now)

Maziyar Ghiabi, Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (New Texts Out Now)

By : Maziyar Ghiabi

Maziyar Ghiabi, Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (London: Cambridge University Press, 2019).* 

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

Maziyar Ghiabi (MG): I wrote this book for several reasons. Firstly, my main concern was to engage in a study of politics and power which went beyond the classical focus on the state as the all-powerful agent of enforcement and intervention in people’s lives. I wanted to explore the praxis of power in the Iranian context as opposed to the discursive, often rhetorical dimension of elite politics to which much attention has so far been paid. Scholarship of contemporary Iran has had an obsession with regard to the role of the state or with that of the “regime,” identifying the exercise of power only and almost exclusively through the category of the state and its associated agents, be it the revolutionary guards (IRGC), the Basij, the security forces, or the internal confrontations among competing factions, the evergreen “hardliners” versus “reformists” clash. 

My intellectual engagement with the state, instead, was ethnographic and inspired by scholars who adopted the means of fieldwork and participant observation to the study of the state. The study of the Iranian state “at distance” produced a form of scholarship that lacked nuance—it simplified the exercise of control, the formulation of policies, the negotiation over praxis—and conceived the state as either a dualistic force animated by hardliners and reformists, or as animated by a monolithic will driven by single personalities (e.g. Khamenei vs Rafsanjani). This approach also missed the fundamental combination of progressive impetus within Iran’s state machinery with those undercurrent drives within the social fabric that had fundamental authoritarian tendencies, what in the book I define as “grassroots authoritarianism.”

This conceptual viewpoint informed my engagement with the research object which I intended to study. In fact, the actual object of investigation is perhaps what sets the book apart from most other works on Iran and the Middle East. Illicit drugs are an omnipresent commodity in Iranian society. It is hard to spend any time in Iran and not come across people consuming drugs of various kinds: opium smoked or eaten by rural workers or traditional families; hashish rolled in cigarettes in working class neighborhoods or weed (marijuana) smoked in rolled paper by urbanites of the middle class; or crystal meth smoked in glass pipes by female students or by homeless vagrants followed by the sedative shot of heroin. More interesting than that was the fact that, by the time I was about to start my project, public institutions had introduced a set of avant-gardist programmes for the provision of welfare and healthcare to drug users. There was something in the drug phenomenon which was ultimately political in nature and which deserved to be studied not from afar, but through grounded means. So, I embarked on the study of drugs politics.

... the coexistence of apparently insoluble traits is effectively how the state and its rhizomatic agents manage disorder.

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

MG: One thing that had always puzzled me in the scholarship on the Islamic Republic is the recurrence of the paradigm of the “paradox." Describing the political, cultural, social realities of contemporary Iran as being “paradoxical” is the rule in many scholarly as well as journalist contributions. Yet, it seems to me that the use of the “paradox” has been an easy escape route which has had the ultimate effect of disengaging from the realities on the ground, the way state formation and social change has taken shape over the last four decades. Tradition versus modernity; theocracy versus republic; conservative values coexisting with secularizing trends; state versus society, and so on… For several years, these have been the key categories through which one read life in Iran.

Instead, in the book, I explored the paradigm of the “oxymoron,” deconstructing the contemporary processes of Iranian politics and society beyond their apparent incongruence and their oft-said exceptionality. In this way, the book looks at Iran’s crisis politics—and its drugs politics in particular—as existing in an oxymoronic dimension, where the coexistence of apparently insoluble traits is effectively how the state and its rhizomatic agents manage disorder.

Given the importance that drugs have played in the lives of Iranians and the way they have affected state-society relations, this book attempts to fill a void and to encourage more critical approaches informed by new topics, new phenomena, and new methodologies. That is why I draw inspiration from the field of political ethnography and anthropology of policy which, in the context of the Middle East, could allow more theoretical and conceptual experimentation in understanding how power is exercised and negotiated, amidst times of crises.

For scholars of illicit drugs, the book is the first providing detailed accounts of how Iran’s drugs problem has evolved and how the state has reacted to the challenges from an ethical, security, and public health perspective. 

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

MG: The Wellcome Trust, which supported my doctoral research at Oxford University, provided also the funding to make the book OPEN ACCESS, including readers inside Iran where qualitative approaches remain marginal if not absent.

Because the book uncovers institutional and grassroots mechanisms that are often obfuscated by the thick layer of fog that surrounds the study of the Islamic Republic as a modern political machinery, it sheds light on understudied institutions such as the Expediency Council and its crisis management mechanisms, the informal and state-led “camps” securitizing the field of drug control, the infrapolitical negotiations in producing policy change, and so on. 

One of its benefits, I hope, is to show how political processes and the rationale of intervention in conditions of “crisis”—such as HIV/AIDS epidemic and soaring drug-related deaths—are informed by a secular governmentality, what I define “profane politics with oxymoronic outcomes.” In a country like Iran where “crisis” has been more or less a permanent condition following the 1979 revolution, these findings should be relevant beyond the fields of drugs politics. 

Besides, there is a growing literature on drugs history and drugs studies across the globe. So far, West Asia and North Africa have been left behind. The place of intoxicant drugs in this part of the world is understudied and yet very significant in understanding cultural changes and the impact of policy on people’s lives. So, the book intends to lay the foundations for all those interested in drugs history as well as in the interdisciplinary field of medical humanities.  

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MG: Since the publication of this book, I have been working on three major projects.

I am now part of the SOAS-based project on Drugs and (Dis)Order. The project looks at how drug economies shape the insurgent borderlands of Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Colombia and how they can contribute to a post-war transition to peace. Moving beyond the comfort zone is rewarding because it enriches my research experiences: the project involves fieldwork supported by local stakeholders working in the three countries’ borderland areas where armed insurgent groups dominate the political economies of illegal commodities and are key agents in peace negotiations. Militias involved in drug trafficking, peasants producing opium and coca, local negotiators and grassroots groups merge in an ecology where the frontiers become central in state formation processes.

My second project is a collaboration with Billie Jeanne Brownlee at the University of Exeter. Since 2011, we have been working on conceptualizing and deconstructing the transregional revolt, civil wars, and displacement crises within and in the aftermath of the so-called “Arab Spring”—an event which we prefer to call “Arab Revolt’” (see our article in Middle East Critique, “Passive, Silent and Revolutionary: the “Arab Spring” revisited”). Here, we tackle the different conceptualizations of time/space in revolutions/revolts formulating a framework to explore the ecology of protests occurring following 2011 in the Arab and Western capitals. To do so we reinterpret the place of mythologies in modern politics, arguing that the emergence of a heightened sectarian discourse is part of the surge of the “cultures of the right” following the debacle of the popular uprising.

Finally, I have not abandoned my drug-related work. My interest is now focused on the cultural place of “addiction” in Iran and the Arab world since the late nineteenth century to the present. I look at the lived experience of consumption, its encounter with changing public codes of conduct and, crucially, ways in which people attempt at recovery from “addiction.” This has led me to carry out some ethnographic fieldwork on new forms of “addictions,” such as those related to the use of digital media. I combine traditional ethnographic note-taking with the use of photography and video-recording to highlight the importance of images in the production of virtual performance among rural communities. There is a whole story that needs to be told, one that could highlight how “addiction” as a diagnostic frame is culturally constructed and defined by historical processes that often go unnoticed. This, in my view, should also enable new scholarship in the broader field of “Middle Eastern Studies,” with new topics, transdisciplinary approaches, and heterodox connections with global studies of health and society.

 

Excerpt from the book 

From Chapter 6: The Anthropological Mutation of Methamphetamines

The ‘Crisis’ of Shisheh and Its Narratives

If one combines the widespread use of antidepressant drugs with the impressive rise in psychoactive, stimulant and energizing drugs, most notably shisheh, the picture inevitably suggests a deep-seated transformation in the societal fabric and cultural order during the post-reformist era. In early 2006, officials started to refer to the widespread availability of psychoactive, industrial drugs (san‘ati) through different channels, including satellite TVs and the internet. They said they had little evidence about where these substances originated from and how they were acquired. Although ecstasy – and generally ATSs – had been available in Iran for almost a decade, its spread had been limited to party scenes in the urban, wealthy capital. The appearance of methamphetamines (under the name of ice, crystal, and most notably, shisheh, meaning ‘glass’ in reference to the glass-like look of meth) proved that the taste for drugs among the public was undergoing exceptional changes, with far reaching implications for policy and politics.

The most common way to use meth is to smoke it in a glass pipe in short sessions of few inhalations. It is an odourless, colourless smoke, which can be consumed in a matter of a few seconds with very little preparation needed. In one of the first articles published about shisheh in the media, a public official warned that people should be careful about those offering shisheh as a daru, a medical remedy, for lack of energy, apathy, depression and, ironically, addiction. By stimulating the user with an extraordinary boost of energy and positive feelings, shisheh provided a rapid and, seemingly, unproblematic solution to people’s problems of joy, motivation and mood. Its status as a new drug prevented it from being the object of anti-narcotics confiscation under the harsh drug laws for trafficking. After all, the official list of illicit substances did not include shisheh before 2010, when the drug laws were updated. Until then the crimes related to its production and distribution were referred to the court of medical crimes, with un-distressing penalties. The limited availability of shisheh initially made it too expensive for the ordinary drug user, while it also engendered a sense of classist desire for a product that was considered ‘high class [kelas-bala]’. As such, shisheh was initially the drug of choice among professionals in Tehran, who in the words of a recovered shisheh user, was used ‘to work more, to make more money’. Yet after its price decreased sensitively, shisheh became popular among all social strata, including students and women, as well as the rural population. By 2010, it was claimed that 70 per cent of drug users were (also) using shisheh and that the price of it had dropped by roughly 400 per cent compared to its first appearance in the domestic market. It was a ‘tsunami’ of shisheh use which took both state officials and the medical community unprepared, prompting some of the people in the field to call for ‘the creation of a national headquarters for the crisis of shisheh’, very much along the lines of the ‘headquartisation’ mentality described in the early post-war period.

This new crisis within the field of drug (ab)use was the outcome of a series of overlapping trends that materialised in the narratives, both official and among ordinary people, about shisheh. The narrative of crisis persisted after 2005 in similar, or perhaps more emphatic, tones. This new substance differed significantly from previously known and used drugs in Iran. In contrast to opium and heroin, which tended ‘to break the spell of time’ and diminish anxiety, stress and pain, making users ultimately nod in their chair or lie on the carpet, methamphetamines generally boost people’s activities and motivate them to move and work, eliminating the need for sleep and food. In a spectrum inclusive of all mind-altering substances, to put it crudely, opiates and meth would be at the antipodes. All drugs and drug use, wrote the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, have to do with ‘speed, modification of speed . . . the times that become superhuman or subhuman’. Shisheh had to do with time, people’s perception of time’s flow; it was the new wonder drug of the century, with its mind-altering speed and physical rush as distinctive emblems of (post)modern consumption. Opiates derive from an agricultural crop, the poppy, whereas methamphetamines are synthetized chemically in laboratories and therefore do not need agricultural land to crop in. Between 2007 and 2010, Iran topped the international table of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine legitimate imports, with quantities far above expected levels according to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB). Pseudoephedrine and ephedrine are both key precursors for meth production, the rest of the chemical elements being readily available in regular stores and supermarkets. With Iran’s anti-narcotic strategy heavily imbalanced towards its borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan, the production of shisheh could occur, with few expedients and precautions, ‘at home’. In fact, it did not take long before small scale laboratories – ante tempore versions of Walter White’s one in Breaking Bad – appeared within borders, inducing the head of the antinarcotic police to declare, ‘today, a master student in chemistry can easily set up a laboratory and, by using the formula and a few pharmaceutical products, he can obtain and produce shisheh’. In 2010, the anti-narcotic police discovered 166 labs, with the number increasing to 416 labs in 2014. The supply reduction operations could not target domestic, private production of meth, because this new industry was organised differently from previous illicit drug businesses and could physically take place everywhere. 

The high demand for meth and the grim status of the job market guaranteed employment in the ‘shisheh industry’. A ‘kitchen’ owner who ran four producing units in Southern Tehran revealed that the prices of shisheh had shrunk steadily because of the high potential of production in Iran. In his rather conventional words, ‘young chemical engineers, who cannot find a job . . . work for the kitchen owner at low prices’, and, he adds, ‘precursors and equipment are readily available in the capital’s main pharmaceutical market at affordable prices’. The shisheh that is produced is sold domestically or in countries such as Thailand under the local name of yaa baa, or Malaysia and Indonesia, where there is high demand for meth. The number of Iranian nationals arrested in international airports in Asia hints clearly at this phenomenon.

Logically, shisheh and the shisheh economy appealed particularly young people, who exploited the initial confusion and lack of legislative norms. At the same time, while opium and heroin had largely remained ‘drugs for men’ (although increasing numbers of women were using them in the early 2000s), shisheh was very popular among women. For instance, the use of shisheh was often reported in beauty salons and hairdressers, allegedly because of its ‘slimming’ virtue. In similar fashion, its consumption was popular among sportsmen, both professional (e.g. football players and wrestlers) and traditional/folkloric (e.g. zurkhaneh). Its consumption appealed to categories of people enchanted with an idea of life as an hedonistic enterprise often governed by the laws of social competition, something that differed ontologically and phenomenologically from Islamising principles. Reports emerged also about the use of shisheh among students to boost academic performance. By making it easy to spend entire nights studying and reviewing, especially among those preparing for the tough university entry examination (konkur), shisheh had gained popularity in high schools and universities. The shrinking age of drug use, too, has been factual testimony of this trend.56 In an editorial published in the state-run newspaper, a satirist announced that, in Iran, ‘the modern people have become post-modern. And this latter, we know, is industrial and poetical’ and he longed for ‘the old good days of the bangis [the hashish smoker]’. Shisheh epitomised the entry into the postmodern world, an epochal, perhaps irreversible, anthropological mutation.

In view of this changing pattern of drug (ab)use, the authorities realised, slowly and half-heartedly, that the policies in place with regard to treatment of injecting drug users – harm reduction as implemented up until then – had no effect on reducing the harm of shisheh. Harm reduction could not target the ‘crisis’ of shisheh, which unwrapped in a publicly visible and intergenerational manner different from previous drug crises. Its blend, in addition, with changing sexual mannerisms among the youth, aggravated the impotence of the state.

 

*Available also in OPEN ACCESS.

 

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.