Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (New Texts Out Now)

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Jun 12, 2020 Palestine
Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (New Texts Out Now)

Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (New Texts Out Now)

By : Greg Burris

Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019).*

*Book two in the Insubordinate Spaces series edited by George Lipsitz.

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

Greg Burris (GB): Early on in Azza El-Hassan’s documentary Kings and Extras, the director interviews several women on the streets of Ramallah and asks their opinion about the lost Palestinian film archive. One of them responds with a reprimand: “Now is not the time to be thinking about cinema.” I have heard these sentiments expressed by a host of people from a variety of backgrounds. In hyper-political situations like that of Palestine, culture—including film and media—is often written off as being unimportant or secondary to the urgent issues of settler-colonialist oppression. The Palestinian Idea is my attempt to answer this common objection. To put my central contention in the most succinct terms possible, culture—including film and media—has a utopian dimension. It is one of the key places where our revolutionary dreams already inhabit the present. This is even true—or even especially true—in a context as urgent and violent as that of contemporary Palestine.
Those of us who are interested in Palestinian cinema are no longer burdened by the need to simply document its existence.

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

GB: The Palestinian Idea looks at a range of media forms and objects—from the simple light bulb to social media. However, my primary examples come from the cinema, and I include detailed analyses of several films, including Annemarie Jacir’s first two features Salt of This Sea and When I Saw You and Mais Darwazah’s documentary My Love Awaits Me by the Sea. Palestinian cinema has recently hit something of a stride, but for many years, the literature on it has struggled to keep up. I am happy this situation is changing, and The Palestinian Idea joins a growing canon of books on Palestinian cinema that includes volumes by authors like Kay Dickinson, Terri Ginsberg, Kamran Rastegar, and Nadia Yaqub. Those of us who are interested in Palestinian cinema are no longer burdened by the need to simply document its existence. At long last, we can finally get on with the business of giving these films the serious analysis, evaluation, and theoretical attention they deserve.

The book’s theoretical backbone—the notion of “the Palestinian Idea”—is based on my readings of three very different writers: Edward Said, French philosopher Jacques Rancière, and Black radical theorist Cedric Robinson. Together, these three authors form an incredibly powerful cocktail, and my approach to Palestinian liberation is grounded in their work. Armed with these writers’ insights, the book uses Palestinian film and media to explore a range of issues. These include questions about trauma, identity, time, surveillance, visibility, resistance, race, and transnational solidarity.

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

GB: In a certain sense, with The Palestinian Idea, I have come full circle. My very first publication was a little piece I wrote about Turkish-Israeli relations for Middle East Quarterly, a Zionist rag founded by Daniel Pipes. I was just twenty years old at the time and incredibly naïve in my politics. While I am not especially proud of this publication, I am proud of the direction my path has since taken.

It was not my original intention to write a book about Palestine. My publications immediately leading up to this book dealt more with Black studies. My last major essays to appear before The Palestinian Idea included a piece for CineAction about post-racial color blindness in Hollywood and an essay for Cinema Journal about film representations of the chaining and gagging of Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. While these earlier works did not address Palestine, they did serve as important political and theoretical precursors to my book, for it was through the insights of Black studies—and specifically through my interactions with my former professor Cedric Robinson—that I began to feel that I had something new and important to contribute to the study of Palestine.

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

GB: I think academic studies of Palestine are often wedded to rather traditional frameworks. As a result, I do not think film, media, and culture are properly appreciated except insofar as they can be instrumentalized as clear weapons in the Palestinian struggle. The importance that culture can play not just in fighting Zionist propaganda but in nurturing Palestinian dreams and visions is often neglected. Of course, I am not the first person to voice this concern, and others like Ghassan Hage, Ted Swedenburg, and Helga Tawil-Souri have also addressed this issue in their own ways. However, the point still needs to be made. Here, I am reminded of Edward Said’s comradely critique of Noam Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle in which he commended Chomsky for his command of the facts but nevertheless reminded him that the facts alone are never enough. One has to occasionally go underground and explore the level of theory, ontology, and epistemology.

A second audience I had in mind includes those interested in film, media, and cultural studies more generally. When Said’s The Question of Palestine appeared in 1979, Palestine could hardly be mentioned in the Anglophone academy without drawing sneers. In this respect, serious advances have been made over the past several decades. However, the fight continues, and it is my hope that The Palestinian Idea contributes to the ongoing struggle to put Palestine on the broader cultural studies map. Film, media, and cultural studies offer us tremendous tools and resources to employ in our analyses of Palestine. But such intellectual borrowings should never be a one-way street. Palestine also has important things to say to the more general field, and it should not be pigeonholed and claustrophobically confined only to the very specific context of the Israeli occupation. As Said once remarked, “Such a noble and passionate struggle cannot be confined to a lobby, and it must not be allowed to be put into an extreme nationalist, philosophically small-minded ghetto.” Thus, I do not think The Palestinian Idea is only relevant to people who study Palestine. I think the book contains arguments that pertain even to people whose work does not encompass Palestine.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

GB: I currently have a number of projects in the pipeline, including a book about Elia Suleiman and several essays exploring the intersection of radical politics and the horror genre. Regarding the latter topic I have already contributed a review of the Tunisian horror film Dachra to the website of Film International.

However, my major writing project at this time has its origins in an abandoned chapter from The Palestinian Idea. In an earlier draft of the manuscript, I had started sketching the outlines of a chapter that would have explored the relationship between Palestinian liberation and the work of Israeli documentarian Avi Mograbi. Perhaps it is because of my own background as a white dissident from conservative East Texas, but I feel a certain affinity for anti-Zionist Israelis, and I think they are in a rather difficult position. Their place reminds me of the description that James Baldwin once offered for white radicals in the United States.: “anathema to the White and distrusted by the Black.” I am interested in how their activities disrupt or disturb Zionism’s racial regime and to what degree their actions are shaped by the movement for Palestinian liberation.

Eventually, I realized that this chapter was simply out of place, and I put it on the backburner. What had initially been planned as a single chapter, however, has since expanded into a book project. My goal is not simply to show that Israel is a white supremacist state. Instead, I am trying to point out the cracks in that racial façade—whether it is through the activities of Israel’s various non-white communities or the cultural work of anti-Zionist Ashkenazis. I am still several years away from completing this project, but some of my initial work on Israel’s community of African asylum-seekers will soon be appearing in a few different outlets. 

J: Can you tell us about the image on the book’s front cover? What is its significance?

GB: I am very proud of this beautiful image. I even like to joke that this is one book that people should definitely judge by its cover. This image is a still from Mais Darwazah’s documentary My Love Awaits Me by the Sea, a film which I discuss in detail in chapter four. It is a picture of a Palestinian youth from ‘Akka engaged in one of that city’s long-observed pastimes: jumping from ‘Akka’s ancient stone walls and into the Mediterranean Sea. It might seem like an unusual choice for a book about Palestine. Instead of the images we more often associate with Palestine—the pictures of apartheid walls, falling bombs, or oppressive checkpoints—I chose a potentially utopian image. Like Darwazah’s documentary, my book is an attempt to point us to the emancipatory hope that remains beyond Zionism’s reach. There are no promises here. As Stuart Hall would have said, there are no guarantees. One might safely land in the glittering waters below, but one might also crash onto the rocks. Nevertheless, hope persists, and Zionism does not yet have the final say. Despite a century of ethnic cleansing, the future remains open. In Palestine, oppression is real, but so is liberation. 

 

Excerpt from the book  

Chapter One, “The Palestinian Idea” (pages 11-15)

Hebron: ground zero of Israeli apartheid. While Jewish settlements are usually constructed on the hills outside Palestinian cities and villages, in Hebron settlers dwell within the heart of the city itself. In 1968, a group of Zionist settlers posing as Swiss tourists rented a room in a Hebron hotel and simply refused to leave. Under orders from Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the settlers were later relocated to the city’s outskirts, but over the years, more have arrived to take their place, occupying many Palestinian homes, shops, and buildings. In the month of Ramadan 1994, one of these settlers—a Brooklyn-born physician named Baruch Goldstein—walked into central Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque during Friday morning prayers with a Galil assault rifle and opened fire, killing 29 worshipers andwounding more than 125 others. When Goldstein paused to load a fifth magazine into his weapon, someone in the mosque took advantage of the lull in the killing and managed to hit him with a fire extinguisher, thereby bringing the massacre to an end. Today, Goldstein’s grave has become something of a shrine in the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. His tombstone is engraved with an inscription: “He gave his soul for the sake of the people of Israel, the Torah, and the Land. His hands are clean and his heart good.”

When I visited Hebron (in Arabic, al-Khalil) in the summer of 2012, I was given a tour of the Ibrahimi Mosque by a local contact. Located on top of the subterranean chambers that are said to hold the remains of Abraham, the site has been partitioned into separate sections for Jewish and Muslim visitors, and to enter one must first go through numerous checkpoints. Once inside the mosque, my guide pointed out a large fire extinguisher sitting on the floor. It is so heavy that it cannot be easily carried and must instead be rolled on wheels. Following Goldstein’s rampage, the Israeli authorities apparently replaced the handheld fire extinguisher with this oversize one. In doing so, they took away the object that had stopped Goldstein from killing even more people. Thus, in responding to Jewish terrorism, the Israeli state perversely punished the Palestinians.

The most visible evidence of this cruel Israeli reaction can be found on Shuhada Street. Historically, this was one of Hebron’s busiest downtown avenues, but after Goldstein’s massacre, it was closed to Palestinian traffic. What was once a busy thoroughfare has since become something of a ghost town, and any Palestinians whose homes or shops happened to be located on it have had their windows barred and their doors welded shut. Today, parts of ShuhadaStreet are actually segregated for pedestrians with a physical partition: one side for Jews, another side—a much smaller side—for Arabs. In the parlance of Israeli soldiers, the street has been made “sterile.”

It may seem farfetched to imagine Shuhada Street becoming a staging ground for utopia. Yet in 2013 that is what happened. In March of that year, a group of Palestinians in Hebron organized a demonstration timed to coincide with Barack Obama’s first presidential visit to Israel. Carrying banners and Palestinian flags, they crossed into a forbidden zone, boldly walking into the section of Shuhada Street designated for Jews only. On their faces were masks of Obama and Martin Luther King Jr., in their hands were portraits of Rosa Parks and the former slave Frederick Douglass, and on their shirts were four English words: “I have a dream.”

By resurrecting the imagery and iconography of the U.S. Black Freedom Movement, these Palestinian activists were drawing new constellations of counterhegemonic protest and forging creative links of transnational solidarity across space and time. Using megaphones to fill the air with the music of Civil Rights anthems such as “Woke Up This Morning” and “We Shall Overcome,” they violated the soundscape of the occupation and performed an act of what Gaye Theresa Johnson calls “spatial entitlement”—an attempt by oppressed peoples to reclaim usurped spaces with their bodies, voices, and imaginations. Thus, for a few fleeting moments, these demonstrators effectively turned a segregated street into a desegregated stage and transformed a sterilized place into an insubordinate space. They temporarily interrupted the status quo and transgressed the rules and regulations of the Zionist order. As a result, they were swiftly descended on by Jewish settlers and apprehended by uniformed members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). As if to reenact a scene from Birmingham or Selma, the settlers ripped the banners and flags out of the protesters’ fingers, and the soldiers placed handcuffs around their wrists. With the masks still on their faces, the demonstrators were loaded onto trucks and quickly taken out of sight. It was as if Martin Luther King had been resurrected only to be arrested yet again.

The protest was thus brought to a halt almost as soon as it had begun. In this way, an effort was made by the Israeli authorities to contain the disruption, to restore the ruling regime of racial hierarchy, and to sew up the tear that the demonstrators had ripped in the symbolic universe. In an attempt to even further paper up apartheid’s cracks, some members of Hebron’s settler community took to social media to denounce the march. For instance, the prominent settler-activist David Wilder—a U.S.-born colonist who regularly leads Zionist tours of the city with a gun strapped to his hip—went into the streets to confront the protesters. He later described the scene on his personal blog, calling it balagan, the Hebrew word for a disturbance or a mess. In addition, two leading members of Hebron’s settler community penned an official letter to the IDF in which they likened the demonstration to a “terrorist activity.” Singling out the Palestinian activist Issa Amro by name, they urged the Israeli authorities to “take all actions necessary to put an end to these provocations and incitement.” This letter was later cited in an indictment against Amro when the IDF brought charges against him in September 2016.

But while the protesters themselves could be forcibly removed from the scene, the images they left behind could not be so easily erased. In open defiance of a ban by the Palestinian Authority (PA) on the transmission of any images from protests in Hebron for the duration of Obama’s visit, photographs of the demonstration were immediately published on the Internet and circulated via social media. Prerecorded videos in which demonstrators such as Badia Dwaik talked about the links between the Palestinian struggle and the Black protests of an earlier era were posted on YouTube. Rather than simply annexing the Civil Rights legacy, the demonstrators were giving it new meaning, using media to interpellate the dead and to let the Black heroes of yesteryear speak beyond the grave. Like apparitions from another dimension, these images demonstrate that another world is possible, a world without divisions determined by ethnicity or religion, a world without apartheid walls, security fences, or segregated streets. They show that the unthinkable can be made thinkable and that the impossible can be made possible.

[…]

While the images generated by movements of protest may indeed draw our attention to the existence of both oppression and an underlying discontent, this capacity alone should not necessarily be taken as a measure of radicality. Frustration with the way things are is far too common a phenomenon to be confused with emancipation. The point should not be just to dismantle old systems of oppression but to generate alternative, liberatory visions. As Robin D. G. Kelley puts it, the best forms of protest, rebellion, and resistance “do not simply produce statistics and narratives of oppression; rather, the best ones do what great poetry always does: transport us to another place, [. . . and] enable us to imagine a new society.” It is therefore my contention that the radicality of a piece of art, a protest image, or a film or media object consists in its ability to create a portal into the impossible and challenge the very coordinates of reality itself; it consists in its ability to magnify the fissures and hidden recesses of the social order around us and open a window into another world.

This, then, is the central question with which this book seeks to grapple: in the context of Palestine, how do we catch a glimpse of this other place, this world that is concealed somewhere within our own world? To put it in philosophical terms, how does utopia erupt from dystopia, the New from the Old, and the future from the present? Or, better yet, how does equality emerge from inequality? Using a variety of theoretical lenses and an array of film and media objects, this book seeks to explore this question in relation to Palestine. Each chapter argues that despite appearances, Palestine is not only an unrelenting nightmare of oppression and defeat. There is beauty in the darkness, and contrary to popular belief, equality does exist in Palestine, already in the here and now. More precisely, equality is already being enacted and mediated in Palestine, and it is this scandalous affirmation—this assertion of equality amidst inequality—that I call “the Palestinian Idea.”
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.