Afshin Marashi, Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (New Texts Out Now)

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Jun 9, 2020 Iran
Afshin Marashi, Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (New Texts Out Now)

Afshin Marashi, Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (New Texts Out Now)

By : Afshin Marashi

Afshin Marashi, Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (University of Texas Press, 2020).

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

Afshin Marashi (AM): So much of our understanding of Iran is filtered through the lens of political binaries formed in the twentieth century. After many years of reading, learning, and thinking about Iran’s modern history, I wanted to write a book that captures the myriad, multiple, and varied possibilities that were available to Iranian modernity. The early twentieth century, in particular, was a period when so much was unresolved and up for grabs, and yet our historiography very often reads the present into the past. I wanted to write a book that recovers some of the alternative forms of modernity and nationalism—roads taken and roads not taken—that were also part of Iran’s history.
It is a book that has had a long history of its own and is the culmination of more than a decade of work.

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

AM: Exile and the Nation is a natural evolution from my first monograph, Nationalizing Iran. Like my first book, the focus here is to historicize the origins of modern Iranian nationalism, especially as it relates to the ubiquitous theme of the revival of antiquity in twentieth-century Iran. In writing the first book, one of the conclusions that I came to was that the Zoroastrian community of India, the Parsis, played an important role in shaping the pre-Islamic revival in twentieth-century Iran. The Parsi community is, of course, one of the world’s historic diaspora communities, having largely emigrated from Iran following the Islamic conquest in the medieval period, and settled in western India over the course of the subsequent millennium. I realized that the Parsi community’s efforts to reconnect with their “ancestral homeland,” beginning in the nineteenth century, was a very important—but still under-acknowledged—part of the history of Iranian nationalism. 

My primary focus in the first book was more narrowly on state-led projects of nation-building and the influence of Eurocentric paradigms of thought in shaping modern Iranian national consciousness. It became clearer to me that there were many more diffuse channels of culture that were intersecting to produce the pre-Islamic revival inside Iran, and that an important strand of that culture made its way from India, and specifically via the Parsi community in Bombay. I realized that there was much more that needed to be worked out than what I had explored in the first book. So, I thought I would return to this topic to write a more in-depth monograph. Most of the work that I have done since the publication of my first book has touched on one element or another of this history, but the publication of Exile and the Nation develops it into a single work. It is a book that has had a long history of its own and is the culmination of more than a decade of work.

J: What is the book’s central argument?

AM: In the most essential sense, the book argues that modern Iranian nationalism is not simply a product of European cultural and intellectual influence, and its history cannot simply be traced to the “orientalist laboratory” of nineteenth-century scholarship. Instead, the book argues that modern Iranian nationalism is also a by-product of a remarkably complex and fertile exchange of influences that took shape in the Indian Ocean world of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, the “cultural traffic” between the societies that bordered the Indian Ocean world had entered into a new and more dynamic phase. Much of this was enabled by the history of technology—as well as empire and capitalism—that now greatly facilitates the circulation of not only commodities, but also of peoples, books, and ideas. 

In this sense, Exile and the Nation has greatly benefitted from the growth of fields such as global history, Indian Ocean studies, connected history, as well as the study of diaspora and transnationalism that have taken shape over the past decade or more. The work of Nile Green, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Mohamad Tavakoli, and Monica Ringer have in particular informed the history of the Parsi-Iranian exchange on which the book focuses. 

So, the book tells the story of the reciprocal intellectual engagement between Parsis and Iranians, especially during the 1920s and 1930s. It explains how this engagement took place in the context of an Indian Ocean world where an earlier “Persianate” cultural paradigm was waning and being challenged by new paradigms of culture and politics. One of the ideas that gained currency in this context was a reappraisal of Iran’s classical Zoroastrian heritage. I should add, however, that the book is not a triumphalist intellectual history of liberal cosmopolitanism and cultural exchange in the Indian Ocean. It is a story about the tensions and contradictions involved in the Parsi-Iranian exchange, and perhaps the inability of the Parsis and Iranians to ultimately understand each other. The newly empowered Zoroastrian heritage that grew from this exchange was put to use in multiple ways, and for different types of political projects. As the book argues, the political outcomes that grew from the Parsi-Iranian exchange were unexpected, contradictory, and increasingly complicated by the politics leading to WWII.

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

AM: One of the book’s main conceptual goals is to contribute towards a broader rethinking of the area studies paradigm of scholarship, especially as it relates to the field of Iranian studies. The area studies paradigm still has a great deal of institutional inertia, but it can obscure as much as it illuminates. The Parsi-Iranian exchange is a perfect example of a topic that would have fallen between the cracks of the conventionally conceived Middle East studies and South Asian studies fields of a decade or two ago. I remember as a graduate student when Mohamad Tavakoli famously described texts produced between Iran and India as “homeless texts” since they did not fit neatly into established assumptions of either field. There has been a great deal of effort in recent years to break down the intellectual silos separating the traditional area studies, and to look for the “connected histories” between them. Our colleagues in the early modern field have pioneered this, but I would argue that the modern period still has room to grow in this respect. I would, however, hesitate to call this type of scholarship “global history” because I think the achievement of the traditionally conceived area studies was to emphasize a depth of historical, cultural, and linguistic knowledge, which global history does not always emphasize. I think the challenge of a new “critical area studies” paradigm is to retain a depth of knowledge about specific culture zones, even as we expand the frontiers, or breadth, of our geographic research areas. I hope that Exile and the Nation can contribute to these conceptual discussions, and maybe serve as an example of this type of research.  

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

AM: I am especially eager to have scholars from multiple area fields read the book, especially scholars in Iranian studies, Middle East studies, and South Asian studies. I also hope that the book finds an audience among those in the fields of Indian Ocean studies and transnationalism. I think there is something important in the history of the Parsi-Iranian exchange that will be relevant to those specializing in these fields.  

I am also eager to have the Iranian and Zoroastrian diaspora communities read the book. The theme of migration, exile, diaspora, and displacement is very much a part of the contemporary experience of Iranians and Zoroastrians. So the book tells a story that will be very familiar to Iranian and Zoroastrian readers, as they read about their diasporic forebears of the early twentieth century. There is a colorful cast of characters in this history that I have tried my best to bring to life, and I have tried to tell this story with compassion and empathy. 

Finally, I should add that I hope this book can find an audience among Persian-language readers inside Iran. Even though I am from a generation of Iranian-American scholars who use English as their primary language, I aspire to have the book find its way into Persian, perhaps not unlike the way some of the books that I write about in Exile and the Nation “travelled” between languages and landscapes to find their way inside Iran’s print marketplace. For Iranian readers, I hope the book might contribute towards reassessments of Iran’s history, and participate in ongoing discussions of the possibilities that were (and are) available for Iran’s politics. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

AM: Most immediately, I am planning to produce an edited volume on the Parsi-Iranian exchange. There is still a great deal of work to be done on this topic, and I am hoping an edited volume will bring together the research of others who are similarly engaged in this history. 

In terms of longer-term projects, I am considering a more general history of Iran in the interwar period. There has been a substantial amount of scholarship produced over the last two decades focusing on the Reza Shah period. Much of this work, however, remains specialized and scattered. It might be time to synthesize this scholarship into a more general and accessible work, especially as we approach the Pahlavi state’s centennial in 2025. If I am fortunate to have the time, these are some of the projects that I hope to work on.

 

Excerpt from the book

Introduction

[…] Like the Parsis, the shifting political terrain of the first few decades of the twentieth century came to shape — with some urgency — the way that Iranians also came to perceive their rediscovered cousins from the distant shore. As Iran’s nation-building project began to unfold, first in the years following the 1905 Constitutional Revolution, and subsequently with the rise of Reza Shah and the Pahlavi state of the 1920s and 1930s, debates surrounding Iran’s cultural, religious, and literary heritage were at the forefront of efforts to reconsider, redefine, and, in the words of Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, to “refashion,” the cultural definition of the Iranian nation. The Iranian encounter with the Parsis was an important element of the debates during this period, and for many Iranian nationalist intellectuals, the Parsis came to represent a direct link to a living tradition of Iran’s pre-Islamic classical past. As Iranians increasingly came to imagine a culture of neo-classicism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the seventh century displacement and resettlement of the Parsi community in the sub-continent was understood as insulating these émigré Iranians from the cultural effects of Arabization and Islamization that had transformed Iran following the Arab-Muslim conquest. 

Purdavud’s journey to India, and the broader possibility of renewed contact and connection with the Parsi community was therefore perceived by many Iranian nationalists as something more than an exercise of cultural tourism made possible by the newfound comforts of steam-powered sea travel. The new Iranian engagement with the Parsis was instead perceived as a rediscovery of Iran’s classical past, and as inspiration for a renaissance of a putatively lost — and now found — authenticity that had been preserved by the Parsis in India, and which could now serve as a blueprint for the political project of Iran’s twentieth century history of nation-building and cultural nationalization. This Iranian encounter with the Parsis was therefore inspiring, but at the same time also unsettling. To paraphrase Raymond Schwab, while it is possible to document the intellectual consequences of Iran’s own oriental renaissance, “...what we cannot reproduce is the great shock with which a whole buried world arose to unsettle the foremost minds of an age.” The creative inspiration accompanying the initial Iranian rediscovery of the Parsis was also coupled by an equally powerful mood of anxiety that grew from the stark realization of contemporary Iran’s own relative decay in comparison to the progress and prosperity that their now perceived Parsi cousins had achieved during their long sojourn in India. Both of these emotions were engendered by the renewed contact between Parsis and Iranians. Ultimately, it was precisely this dialectic between mimesis and alterity, between recognition and difference, that both captured and troubled the imagination of Iranian intellectuals like Ebrahim Purdavud and the others discussed in this book.

For Iranian nationalist intellectuals and activists who were seeking strategies to reform Iranian culture in order to overcome what they perceived as a long period of cultural degeneration, economic impoverishment, and political weakness, this discovery of the Parsi community in western India can be read as one of those examples of “the intervention of enchanted agency” that was conjured from the increased circulation of peoples and printed materials in what Nile Green has described as the “religious economy” of the Indian Ocean world. From the point of view of Iranian nationalist intellectuals, their aspirations for bold transformations inside Iran were shaped, not only by purely theoretical, fictive, and phantasmagorical utopias of modernity, but also by the very real, more immediate, and directly tangible heterotopias that Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has defined, following Michel Foucault, as “alternative real spaces” through and against which the Iranian present came to compare, conceive, and ultimately construct versions of its possible future. While the term heterotopia has most often been used to analyze the epistemic genealogy of the European encounter with the colonial world, the concept can also be useful in understanding the nature of the Parsi-Iranian encounter. The Iranian discovery of the Parsis was one of these heterotopic encounters engendered by the circulation of peoples and ideas within the Indian Ocean world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As Green has argued, an intellectual history of the Indian Ocean world can be built most fruitfully within a framework that recognizes the cultural-philosophical effects engendered by these “waves of heterotopia” produced by the manifold encounters set in motion by industrialized travel and the proliferation of vernacular print technology. 

The simultaneously inspired, yet troubled, enchantments that were engendered by these stark trans-oceanic encounters — like the ones produced by the Parsi-Iranian exchange — would not, however, stay contained within the imagination of adventurous and impressionable travelers, but came to have very real implications as the source for twentieth century political projects in the societies that bordered this oceanic zone. In the Iranian case, the encounter with the Parsi community produced profound implications for how intellectuals and nationalists came to imagine an Iranian modernity rooted in a rediscovered, reconceived, and reconstructed culture of Indo-Iranian neo-classicism. This imagination was neither spectral, nor illusory, but was instead vividly apparent through the now animated example of western India’s Parsi community. The impressive prosperity that the great Parsi merchant families and industrial barons had achieved in India, as well as the general respect afforded by dominant British imperial standards to the Bombay community’s modern educated and professionalized middle classes, made this Parsi model of Iranian regeneration an especially attractive one for early twentieth century Iranians debating the best strategy for their own path to modernity. 

For both Parsis and Iranians, therefore, the acceleration of their mutual engagement within this culturally fertile oceanic ecumene of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, produced simultaneous heterotopic visions that, while bearing some correspondence with one another, were by no means mutually equivalent. For Parsis, their newly romanticized longings for an ancestral Iran was imagined as a territorial displacement from an original homeland; for Iranians, their enchantment with the Parsis was conceived in terms of recovering faint cultural remnants resulting from a temporal displacement from a lost antiquity. Both of these interconnected — and ultimately unrealized — Parsi and Iranian imaginings unfolded across the cultural landscape of the Indo-Iranian world during the long nineteenth century; both ultimately came to realize their most potent consequences in the respective political histories of Iran and India during the twentieth century. […]

Conclusion

[…] As the chapters in this book have also illustrated, these contrasting appropriations of the Zoroastrian heritage meant that Parsis and Iranians were most often speaking through, past, and beyond each other, even as they were building new networks of contact, connection, and mutual exchange. The infinitely mutable cultural and political nature of nationalism enabled these starkly contrasting versions of the national idea to grow from the common heritage shared by Parsis and Iranians. The grounding of the cultural basis of nationalism in esoteric doctrines associated with faith traditions only further enabled the inherently ambiguous nature of the Zoroastrian tradition to be appropriated in multiple and varied political forms. By the end of Purdavud’s life, the political trajectory of the Iranian pre-Islamic revival had changed from the possibilities of a utopian modernity that he had imagined as a young man travelling between Beirut, Berlin, and Bombay, to become the conservative politics of official Pahlavi nationalism characterizing the late 1960s.  

In the decade following his death, the intellectual project of Pahlavi nationalism was ultimately swept away by yet newer configurations of culture, politics, and ideology. While today the romanticized culture of Iranian neo-classicism that Purdavud had helped to construct retains important traces inside Iran, it is more fully represented in the exilic cultures of Iran’s diaspora communities that are today scattered across the many metropoles of our now globalized ecumene. Like the doctrine of Nietzschean eternal recurrence, or perhaps like notions of time characteristic of Isma‘ili cosmology, the legacy of twentieth century Pahlavi nationalism has therefore not disappeared, but has followed — curiously and perhaps appropriately — the precedent of its medieval Parsi precursors to become a new iteration of a displaced Iranian culture, separated from its original ‘homeland’ and, also like its Parsi precursors, become a culture that has grown roots in new and more hospitable landscapes outside of its place of origin. These diasporic homelands where the legacies of twentieth century Pahlavi nationalism continue to thrive can today be found in new global metropoles such as Los Angeles and London, or Toronto and Tel Aviv. While tracing the evolution of this analogous history lies outside the immediate framework of this discussion, the desires, anxieties, and potential historical trajectories of this more recent displacement — like the history investigated in this book — has its own cultural and political imagination that also deserves consideration.
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.