Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, In a Pure Muslim Land. Shiʿism between Pakistan and the Middle East (New Texts Out Now)

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, In a Pure Muslim Land. Shiʿism between Pakistan and the Middle East (New Texts Out Now)

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, In a Pure Muslim Land. Shiʿism between Pakistan and the Middle East (New Texts Out Now)

By : Simon Wolfgang Fuchs

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, In a Pure Muslim Land. Shiʿism between Pakistan and the Middle East, Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks Series, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019). 

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

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs (SWF): When I traveled to Pakistan for the first time in the summer of 2011, I was stunned by what I saw in Islamabad. The center of Pakistan’s capital was covered with posters depicting Sayyid ‘Arif Husayn al-Husayni, the most important Shi‘i leader of the 1980s and a strong supporter of the Iranian Revolution. Seemingly every lamp post commemorated the anniversary of al-Husayni’s assassination on 5 August 1988. This bold showing of Shi‘i influence and self-confidence stood in sharp contrast to what I had read and heard about the fate of this minority group in Pakistan. News coverage back then was (and still is) dominated by narrations of sectarian violence directed against Shi‘ia, who make up fifteen to twenty percent of the country’s overall population. Yet, no visitor can escape the ubiquity of Shi‘i symbols and slogans, be it in the countryside of Punjab and Sindh or in urban centers, such as Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Karachi. This visibility was not reflected in existing scholarship, which had so far displayed no real interest in the intellectual production of Pakistan’s Shi‘is. The literature had largely ignored questions of transnational connections or how religious authority played out in the South Asian “periphery,” far removed from the traditional “centers” of Shi‘i scholarship and learning in Iran and Iraq. Consequently, I became intrigued and embarked on this project in order to explore Pakistan as a veritable Shi‘i center in its own right, which is at the same time very much in conversation with the Middle East. 

... the book is also concerned with the transnational manifestations of Shi‘i religious authority in Pakistan.

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

SWF: Originally, I had planned to stay away from two issues. First, I did not intend to wade into the messy late colonial context before the partition of the Subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Second, I was also keen to avoid the fraught and, frankly, overemphasized topic of sectarianism. During my preliminary research it quickly became clear, however, that I could not tell a convincing story with these two glaring holes in it. To be sure, I did not regret this change of plan for long: the 1920s and 1930s are a highly intriguing period of religious change, even more so because I came across the Urdu annual proceedings of the All India Shia Conference. This organization assembled the modern-educated and politically-minded strata of South Asian Shi‘ia. Their increasingly strained relationship with India’s leading Shi‘i ‘ulama based in the city of Lucknow gave rise to surprisingly modernist interpretation of Shi‘i Islam, which I discuss in the first chapter of the book.  

Similarly, I initially very much underestimated the complexity and creativity of sectarian Sunni thought in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In order to counter the Iranian threat, these actors deliberately tried to adopt and modify Shi‘i rituals and even turned the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, the sahaba, into figures that resembled and transcended the Shi‘i Imams. Beyond these aspects, the book is also concerned with the transnational manifestations of Shi‘i religious authority in Pakistan. This phenomenon is by definition a mediated form of influence because all the leading Grand Ayatollahs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries resided beyond Pakistan’s borders. I show how this distance has opened up unexpected spaces for local religious scholars and popular preachers, who profess loyalty to the “Sources of Emulation” while also subtly reworking their Persian or Arabic messages. Such appeals to luminaries in Iran and Iraq play a decisive role for internal, heated Shi‘i debates about the need (or lack thereof) for reforming rituals and theology, too.  

In general, my thinking about Pakistan has been shaped not only by excellent new literature on transnational aspects of Shi‘ism and anthropological accounts, but also by recent studies that foreground the importance of Pakistan as a political idea. Taking seriously the long-term ideological implications of the plan to create a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India, a “Muslim Zion” in Faisal Devji’s parlance, explains to a large extent how different actors are seeking to exclude each other from deliberating about the form this laboratory of Islam should be taking. Paying attention to what is at stake on the ground, I would argue, also helps us to put to rest the often-repeated argument about sectarianism in Pakistan being primarily a foreign import from Saudi Arabia.

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

SWF: Originally, I was trained in Islamic studies and political science with a focus on the Middle East. Yet, somewhat unbeknownst to myself, already my first book took me into a direction that transcended the limiting and arbitrary confines of area studies. In Proper Signposts for the Camp. The Reception of Classical Authorities in the Ǧihādī Manual al-ʻUmda fī Iʻdād al-ʻUdda (Würzburg: Ergon, 2011), I looked at how an influential Egyptian ideologue employed the Islamic scholarly tradition while writing in Peshawar, Pakistan, during the time of the Afghan jihad. Traveling ideas and their reframing in various local contexts and languages have continued to fascinate me, which is palpable in In a Pure Muslim Land

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

SWF: My biggest hope, of course, would be for the book to stimulate debate in Pakistan itself, where questions of belonging, “correct” beliefs, and sectarian animosities are no mere academic conversations. Yet, there are simple but effective geopolitical hurdles such a task has to face. Given the tensions over Kashmir that erupted last year, the South Asian edition of the book, published by Speaking Tiger from Delhi, cannot cross the border at present. For this reason, we are currently in conversation with a publisher in Pakistan to prepare an Urdu translation, too. Beyond these immediate concerns, I would very much hope that the book reaches an audience beyond the (fantastic) community of colleagues specializing in South Asian Islam. For some reason, Pakistan often drops out from conversations on global Islam or major debates within the field of Middle East and Islamic studies. Bringing the country back in and kindling more interest for its importance and global intellectual connections is part of the impact that I would be hoping for. 

J: If you could add an additional chapter to In a Pure Muslim Land, what would it be about? 

SWF: I was fortunate to draw on a rich source base for this project. For example, Urdu periodicals, which I gathered in public and private libraries in six countries, gave me illuminating insights into the thinking of various Shi‘i individuals and the specific “camps” they adhered to. In contrast to learned monographs written by religious scholars, these monthlies or bi-weeklies do not smooth over differences of opinion in terms of politics, law, or theology. The material gives you a good sense for the uncertainty and confusion of the present, too. Yet, every time when you enter a Shi‘i bookstore in Pakistan or browse Shi‘i YouTube channels, you realize that the genre which outstrips everything else are printed and recorded Shi‘i mourning sessions, the majalis. To be sure, I analyzed a good amount of these but this is no task any single scholar can ever hope to do justice to. The sheer number of influential preachers and sermons, many of them laced with complicated poetry and challenging allusions, is just overwhelming. I would have loved to put this majalis literature center stage in at least one chapter and to apply an analytical lens to it. Perhaps this calls for an entirely new project, however, which should ideally be a collaborative one. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

SWF: Currently, I am preparing my next monograph for Princeton University Press, which is supposed to be a global history of the Iranian Revolution. I am especially interested in how this crucial event in modern history was read and understood by Sunni Islamists and leftist groups from North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In relying on Pakistani travelogues, Afghan pamphlets, and accounts in Tunisian periodicals, for instance, I am trying to recover the importance of the early 1980s. Beyond this immediate impact, I am also interested in the longer-term intellectual repercussions of the Revolution for thinking about political Islam or social justice. Related to this overarching goal, I am working on a journal article that discusses the relationship which Abu ‘l-A‘la Mawdudi’s Jama‘at-i Islami had with revolutionary Iran while also preparing, along with my colleague Layli Uddin (King’s College London), a workshop on “Islamic Socialism in the Global South,” to be held at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) in September. 

 

Excerpt from the book

From Chapter 5: Khomeini’s Perplexed Pakistani Men. Importing and Debating the Iranian Revolution since 1979

Raising the Banner of Wilaya in Present-Day Pakistan: Sayyid Javad Naqvi

It has become apparent that Sayyid ʿArif Husayn al-Husayni remained reluctant to even mention the loaded term vilayat-i faqih in any of his speeches and interviews. He was active on various propaganda fronts and promoted select aspects of the revolutionary package against his opponents. In the midst of these struggles he must either have preferred a cautionary approach or deemed the rule of a jurist irrelevant for Pakistan’s Shiʿis, given their minority situation. The last ʿalim I am about to discuss in this chapter does not feel deterred by any such constraints. Rather, Sayyid Javad Naqvi adopted the concept of the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent as the central building block of his thought, rendering it an axis around which nearly all his public announcements revolve. In doing so, his well-crafted omnipresence conveys the impression of a man on the rise. His posters, which usually advertise events at his seminary, dominate the Shiʿi areas of Pakistan’s cities. He has opened bookstores in Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi that exclusively distribute his works and has embarked on an aggressive distribution campaign to other Shiʿi outlets as well. In August 2012, I witnessed how the tiny Shiʿi bookshop Imamiyyah Kutubkhanah in Skardu received a free delivery of Naqvi’s latest imprint. The dispatch from Lahore contained so many volumes that the owner visibly had trouble storing all these beautifully bound copies. Naqvi’s use of the Internet and social media in terms of both variety of content and production quality dwarfs the efforts of every other Shiʿi ʿalim in Pakistan. One possible explanation for the palpable qualitative shift in rhetoric from the height of revolutionary fervor in the 1980s to present-day Lahore must have to do with Naqvi’s uniquely Iran-centered career that distinguishes him from both members of the old guard like Safdar Husayn Najafi and the following generation of which Sayyid ʿArif Husayn al-Husayni is a representative. Unlike them, Naqvi spent nearly his entire adult life in Iran.

Born in Pakistan’s Punjab province, he graduated from a high school in Islamabad in 1979 and was immediately thrown into the revolutionary frenzy of the period. In an interview Sayyid Javad Naqvi described impatiently sitting next to his brother as he attempted to tune in to the BBC reporting on Iran to get an update on the latest developments. Naqvi remembers these months as a time when even Sunni ʿulama publicly praised Khomeini and put him on a level with the four Rightly Guided Caliphs (kih imam bah khilafat-i rashidah rasidah ast). That crucial summer, Naqvi embarked on a short trip to Pakistan’s revolutionary neighbor and later enrolled in a Shiʿi seminary in Islamabad for the initial stages of his religious training. In 1983, he proceeded to Qum, where he first studied and later taught in the city’s institutions of higher learning. After his return to Pakistan in 2009, he established his own seminary in the outskirts of Lahore; it became fully operational in 2010. In a way the seminary’s name, Jamiʿat al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqa, already points to Naqvi’s goal for his native country: on the one hand, he cleverly exploits the fact that this Qurʾanic quote carries nonsectarian connotations because it brings to mind the journal of the same name published by the early hero of Pan-Islam, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. The term al-ʿurwa al-wuthqa also recalls an influential fiqh work with the same name by Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Yazdi (d. 1919), who is credited with clearly defining the notion of aʿlamiyya and the obligatory character of taqlid. More important, however, Naqvi repeatedly emphasizes that for him “the most firm bond” is nothing less than ʿAli’s wilaya as the Imam, which ties in with his hope that the model of vilayat-I faqih should spread over the entire globe. […]

Naqvi is unique among his Pakistani peers in his interest in the domestic affairs of Iran, which form a constant part of his lectures. He was very outspoken against the Green Movement, for example, which he condemned as a foreign conspiracy. In commenting on the 2013 Iranian presidential elections, Naqvi explained in a speech that the votes for the ultimately successful presidential candidate Hasan Ruhani should be understood as a display of faith in the system of vilayat-i faqih because the voters gave preference to the only clerical candidate running for the office. Naqvi also used this opportunity in front of his predominantly young audience to denounce Ruhani’s potential but by then already-disqualified contender, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (d. 2017). For Naqvi, this clerical veteran of Iranian politics was nothing more than a power-hungry individual who did not have the slightest reverence for Shiʿism, Islam, or the Guardianship of the Jurisprudent. His only conviction was that of being a staunch nationalist (Iran parast) who due to his realpolitik leanings deserved the title “Ayatollah Churchill.” But Muhammad Khatami, the former reformist president, was identified as the most substantial threat the Islamic Republic had faced since 1979. In Naqvi’s view, the “liberal” Khatami gave precedence to personal freedom over religion (din) and did not even intervene when speeches were made against the marajiʿ or Imam Husayn himself on the campus of Tehran University. Naqvi acts in these and many more instances of domestic commentary as a faithful supporter of Iran’s leader Khamenei and constantly warns against threats—to Iran, not to Pakistan—that stem from the country’s internal and external opponents. 

Naqvi’s dominant topic, however, is the need to teach Pakistani society the true meaning of wilaya. In contrast to the reformists discussed in chapter 2, this ʿalim is in no way opposed to acknowledging the cosmological dimensions of vilayat-i takvini. Rather, in extolling the exalted role of the Imams, Naqvi gains room, in turn, to claim (political) authority for the religious scholars during the Hidden Imam’s Occultation. In this context, Naqvi is much more outspoken than al-Husayni when attacking the popular preachers. These people are for him nothing more than “illiterates sitting on the pulpits” who conceal the true ramification of wilaya as the cornerstone of religious thought: “If you want to know about Imamate then don’t go and ask those who don’t even know if Imamate in Arabic is written with ‘Alif’ or ‘Ain.’” These Shiʿi preachers were part of a broader South Asian problem, namely the prevalence of Sufi ideas, which led the Shiʿis to conceptualize their Imams as analogous to a pir. They were regarded as mere holy personalities whose support is sought in prayer, but they were not granted any authority (ikhtiyar) over the lives of the believers. This was a fundamental misunderstanding of their role, Naqvi emphasized, since God had delegated to them the government over his creation. This right to rule, in turn, flowed from the Imams to their chosen delegates, the ʿulama. Since Khomeini had unearthed “the buried wilaya” and established it in Iran, commands emanating from the country’s leader took on a mandatory nature for every human being. Yet Pakistan’s Shiʿis had no conception of wilayaas a system that also exposed the serious deficiencies of their political activism since 1947. They had always come to terms with the ruling, corrupt political forces, as long as these parties would permit them to celebrate their rituals in public. Pakistan’s Shiʿis implored the authorities to stop sectarian killings instead of being bold enough to advance their rightful claim of acting as the country’s protector. Even Mufti Jaʿfar Husayn’s efforts with the TNFJ were nothing more than a first step in the direction of forming a true Shiʿi identity. The Tahrik’s focus had been helpful in convincing the community that they indeed had a fiqh on their own. Javad Naqvi wholeheartedly lauded this preliminary achievement. He made it clear, however, that the true significance of Shiʿi law was that it contained particular approaches toward government and the political system as a whole, all based on wilaya. If this comprehensive system was not implemented, the Shiʿis should “under no circumstances” ally themselves with any other form of government. 

Naqvi does not see any practical constraints for his minority sect that would prevent them from aspiring to the leadership of Pakistan. For him, the Lebanese group Hezbollah had shown the way. In Lebanon, the Shiʿis were neither a numerical majority nor in control of the government, but their self-confident attitude and courageous advancement of the system of vilayat-i faqih had endowed them with a dominating role (imama) in their local context. Sunnis and Christians too had to accept this. Unfortunately, however, Pakistanis could never count on Iran for real support in their struggle. The golden opportunity for exporting the revolution in the early 1980s was missed due to the war Iran fought with Iraq. Blunders by Iranian officials who had the wrong mindset (tafakkur-i ghalat) and displayed only a lukewarm commitment to exporting the revolution added to this failure. 

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.