Tsolin Nalbantian, Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own (New Texts Out Now)

Tsolin Nalbantian, Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own (New Texts Out Now)

Tsolin Nalbantian, Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own (New Texts Out Now)

By : Tsolin Nalbantian

Tsolin Nalbantian, Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). 

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

Tsolin Nalbantian (TS): This book grew out of many conversations I had with friends and colleagues about Armenians in Lebanon while living in Beirut. These conversations initially were not geared towards something scholarly: they were about the contemporary situation of Armenians in Syria and Lebanon, the Armenian populated neighborhoods of Beirut, or even something as “everyday” as Armenian food. As I was gathering and conducting research on the Armenian community at the time, I could not help but notice that although Armenians were often a subject of conversation (if not curiosity), they were not really present in histories of Lebanon. Part of this was a question of access to language and sources, but it is also due to the treatment and understanding of Armenians as essentially a refugee or victim population. Yet, in my research I was hardly finding that that was the case. Or if it was the case, it did not adequately represent the actual lives of the Armenian inhabitants in Lebanon. They certainly did not limit their self-understandings to tragedy or temporary residents of the country. In fact, I kept finding evidence that Armenians used the sectarian system of Lebanon and Cold War tensions for their own means.

This is not a history of loss or simple rebirth, perspectives omnipresent in writings on modern Armenian history.

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

TS: Despite the genocide, Armenians have known thriving political, sociocultural, ideological, and ecclesiastical centers in the twentieth century. Armenians Beyond Diaspora: Making Lebanon Their Own focuses on precisely such a center: Lebanon. This is not a history of loss or simple rebirth, perspectives omnipresent in writings on modern Armenian history. Rather, this is a history of power. I focus on how Armenians experienced the everyday in early postcolonial, Cold War Lebanon, making it their own, and how they manipulated and managed loss and renewal. I pursue this inquiry by closely analyzing Armenian language newspapers published in Beirut. Often ideologically opposed, these papers reflected the issues of interest of the day. Armenians in Lebanon re-situated themselves and re-imagined their place in that Middle Eastern country and in the world more broadly during a sensitive, transitional time of change, i.e. the early post-colonial period. 

Armenians Beyond Diaspora is not principally concerned with demonstrating how something “Armenian” was created. Rather, it shows how Armenians in Lebanon experienced politics every day, and what those experiences can teach us about interlinked national and global events. By examining changing aspects of belonging, and by exploring how these concepts travel over time and space, the book simultaneously challenges the supremacy of the nation-state and the role of state power in regional and Cold War histories. It also fills the lacuna of works on Lebanon between its Ottoman Period and the Lebanese Civil War. This in turn aids in the understanding of how Lebanon’s inhabitants experienced the sectarian system, the eventual long-term breakdown of civil society, and contests the representation of Lebanon as a state on the constant brink of collapse.

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

TS: The book is a heavily reworked dissertation. It also builds on several published pieces including “Articulating Power through the Parochial” (Mashriq & Mahjar) and “Going Beyond Overlooked Populations in Lebanese Historiography: The Armenian Case” (History Compass).

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

TS: The natural target audience of the monograph Armenians Beyond Diaspora comprises social and cultural historians of Lebanon, the greater Levant, and the Middle East and scholars of the region more broadly. By engaging with the years prior to the Lebanese Civil War, it invites its scholars and those focusing on similar civil strife to consider, also, how members of the population used the pre-conflict social and political environment in struggles for power. This work also answers the call by anthropologists and specialists in diaspora and minority studies for layered understandings of everyday life in Lebanon. I also expect Armenians Beyond Diaspora to appeal to scholars of the Cold War and international history. Finally, I believe this study has contemporary socio-political relevance beyond academia. Providing historical context for activists and policymakers in the region who work on minority and diaspora issues, it will improve their understanding of marginalized people living in the contemporary Middle East. This is especially critical given the concern for the fall in the number of ethnic and religious minorities in the region. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

TS: My current research, including the co-edited volume Practicing Sectarianism with Lara Deeb and Nadya Sbaiti, raises new questions about both what constitutes valid historical records and the ethnographic terrain and how that is determined in the first place. Combining methodological inquiry with empirical work, its lessons are relevant for studying other, especially Middle Eastern, sectarian contexts. My own chapter explores how from the 1930s, the Armenian Church in Lebanon expanded its power to incorporate Armenian communities outside of the Middle East. Armenians in Lebanon used sectarianism to increase their power in membership and financial revenue in Lebanon and beyond. 

I am also coediting, with Talar Chahinian and Sosse Kasbarian, Diaspora and ‘Stateless Power’: Social Discipline and Identity Formation. This volume explores the nexus of diaspora and stateless power in the making of Armenian communities outside the “homeland” in as far flung sites of the Armenian diaspora as Istanbul, Aleppo, Beirut, Jerusalem, Paris, and Los Angeles, among others. 

Finally, I am embarking on a larger project that reconsiders the modern histories of Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and parts of the Gulf through the everyday lives of their Armenian inhabitants. No one has written a history of Armenians in the region outside of linking the presence of the population—and not the activity(s)—as an acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide. I am still interested in following this story as every time I dig deeper, I feel that the while Armenian Genocide does indeed situate Armenians in the region, it does nothing to explore their lives, interactions, and engagements as local inhabitants. 

J: By trying to situate you work “beyond” Diaspora or “beyond” the Armenian Genocide, are you not still defining your work through these structures or fields of study? 

TS: That is one way to look at it. I certainly acknowledge the contributions of both fields, and for sure my work sits upon their shoulders. But it is more that I am cautioning against using either as a myopic lens to view Armenians. Both academic and non-academic works often use “diaspora” and the Armenian Genocide in references to Armenians. But that is usually where the conversation ends. These two terms steer our understandings of Armenians to bounded spaces that prevent us from engaging with the actual lives and activities of those Armenians. In addition, they often stop us from considering Armenians as local actors, thus fashioning them as separate and even “failing to belong.” This, even though it is our (skewed) understanding that constructs them as such in the first place. So, in an attempt to contextualize, these two reference points unfortunately limit scholarship. I do not think this is the intention of authors and researchers. But unfortunately, it has become the convention. Now, this has been made all the more complicated by the almost visceral fight for the Genocide recognition. But my concern is that these fields block from view the everyday lives and struggles for power in which Armenians engaged. I also hope this challenges a consequence of these traditional readings of Armenians, that they need to be treated distinctly and therefore studied separately from the environment in which they live and thrive. 

 

Excerpt from the book

In 1952, Catholicos Karekin I (Hovsepian) passed away. As the highest figure in the Armenian Apostolic Church of the Cilician See, headquartered in Antelias, near Beirut, he headed one of the most powerful, and independent, ecclesiastic units in the Orthodox Armenian world. For four years, Karekin’s seat remained vacant. The Cilician See repeatedly postponed electing the next catholicos. Internal disagreements irked it, and it did not wish to aggravate relations with the Echmiadzin See. Headquartered in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), that capital see was independent from and equal to the Cilician See, which saw it as Moscow’s long arm. Finally, in early 1956, Antelias decided to go through with the catholicos election. The run-up to that event was dramatic. On 3 February, Vasken I (born Levon Garabed Baljian, 1908–1994), the catholicos of the Echmiadzin See, visited Lebanon in a rather undisguised attempt to influence the election outcome. To no avail: On 20 February, the Cilician See’s bishops chose as new catholicos an outspoken critic of communism and the USSR, Zareh I (born Simon Payaslian). He did not lose time to condemn what he considered ‘organised attempts by Soviet authorities to use the Echmiadzin See as an instrument to control the Armenian communities of the Diaspora’. In effect, his election officially positioned the Cilician See against the Echmiadzin See, the ASSR and the USSR.  Chaos ensued. In Beirut, supporters and opponents of Zareh clashed. Pro-Western Lebanese President Camille Chamoun (1900–1987; r. 1952–1958), who had taken a vivid interest in the election and met with all parties concerned, ordered government troops to secure Armenian neighbourhoods in Beirut. A month later, the ach, a solid gold mould of the right arm of St Gregory who is credited with converting the pagan Armenians to Christianity in 301, along with a few other relics were stolen from the Cilician See’s monastery complex in Antelias: an act universally seen as an attempt to embarrass the Cilician See and to torpedo Zareh’s ordination. In September, Zareh was ordained anyway. And the following year, the relic was ‘found’ in Jordanian-ruled East Jerusalem and returned in triumph to Beirut.

The present chapter tells the story of the 1956 catholicos election as a site of contestation by Cold War powers and their state and non-state allies and proxies in the Middle East. Lebanon, staunchly pro-Western and pro- American under Chamoun, was not the only state directly involved in that election, indeed. So were Egypt and Jordan, among other Middle Eastern states and the Soviet Union, principally through Catholicos Vasken. The United States and key European states like France and Britain also made appearances in the story. Even so, it was the Armenians who were this story’s main protagonists – that is, Armenians of different, if not diametrically opposed political convictions. As the last chapter showed, during the 1946–1949 ASSR repatriation initiative, leftists wielded considerable power in the Armenian community of Beirut and beyond; and the repatriation initiative further boosted their influence at that juncture. But a decade later, in 1956, things had changed. Ironically, the very success of the leftist repatriation drive, i.e. the emigration to the ASSR, depleted the leftist presence in the repatriation ‘donor’ countries. As a consequence, from the late 1940s the rightist Dashnak Party became more preponderant, certainly in Beirut. What is more, the Cold War was much more heated by the mid-1950s than it had been in the mid-1940s, when it just about began. 

In sum, then, the 1956 election allows us to look at the Cold War in the Middle East not from the top down, through the eyes of Washington or Moscow (or Lebanon’s or Egypt’s state authorities, for that matter) during flashpoints like the 1958 US intervention in Lebanon or the US and Soviet reactions to the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt in 1956. Rather, in this election, Armenians made use of Cold War tensions to designate a leader of the Armenian church who was seen to suit the community’s interests. That story also expands historians’ understanding of Lebanon’s Armenians: from refugees and outsiders in national politics to true participants, whose own internal politics, moreover, were also of interest to Lebanon’s authorities, and who by now felt free to invade and use public spaces beyond their own neighbourhoods to make political statements. 

In what follows, I tell that story while keeping an eye on three analytical aspects. One is the overlap between the global Cold War and regional Middle Eastern inter-state competition. Another is the mutual use, if not exploitation, of state actors and Armenian actors. And a third is the fascinating duality of states’ approaches to the Armenian issue: both nation-state-bound and transnational. States sought to assert their sovereignty vis-à-vis ecclesiastical Armenian matters that happened on their territory; thus, the Lebanese state, and in particular Chamoun, was involved politically and symbolically in the 1956 catholicos election. But states also tried to use Armenian issues and religious Armenian bodies, whose authority was non-secular and whose reach was not quite bound by nation-state borders (to say the least), to affect third countries’ politics; the foremost example in the present case was the Soviet attempt to meddle in the 1956 election in the person of Vasken, the catholicos of the Echmiadzin See, which was headquartered in the ASSR. 

In taking this approach to the 1956 election, this chapter, as with the other chapters of this book, addresses lacunae in the secondary literature on Armenians in the Middle East and especially Lebanon, and reflects on the light their case can shine on larger topics. Power struggles, political differences and alignments among Armenians have long been ignored in the historiography of modern Lebanon, which has described the Armenian population as a coherent community. The Cold-War-related nature of inner- Armenian events and their place within the broader history of Lebanon and the Middle East has been accordingly ignored. The 1956 catholicos election is absent not only from overview accounts such as Kamal Salibi’s A House of Many Mansions and Fawwaz Traboulsi’s History of Modern Lebanon, but also from monographs like Caroline Attié’s Struggle in the Levant: Lebanon in the 1950s. As for Armenian historiography, texts like Simon Payaslian’s ‘The Institutionalisation of the Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia in Antelias’, by identifying the election of 1956 as the ‘most significant event in modern Armenian Church history’, describes the event simply as an internal Armenian issue, disregarding the Cold War context and the involvement of multiple states.

On 7 February, Aztag announced that the Cilician See’s next catholicos would be elected on 14 February. It likewise reported that Catholicos Vasken of the Echmiadzin See would take part in the election, a move welcomed by an, albeit-surprised, acting head of the Cilician See, Archbishop Khoren Paroyan. This was the first time that the Soviet government had allowed the catholicos of the Echmiadzin See to leave the USSR; indeed, his visit to Lebanon as a whole was sponsored by Moscow and occurred as part of the USSR’s broader Cold War policies. As Vasken’s jurisdiction did not extend to the Armenian populations of Lebanon, or to many Armenians in the Middle East for that matter, his visit to Beirut was seen by many in Beirut as directly connected to, and triggered by, the election at the Cilician See – and therefore as a political issue. More generally, Vasken was part of the Soviet Union’s political infrastructure. His movements were monitored; his very election and his sermons were sanctioned by the USSR; and in 1956, he flew from Yerevan to Beirut not directly but via extended stops in Moscow and Paris, where he met with Soviet government officials.

At the same time, Vasken’s visit, even though at Moscow’s behest, can also be seen as an attempt to extend his power to areas outside the USSR. (He had himself barely arrived in the Soviet Union by the time he visited Beirut. Elected catholicos in 1955, he had lived before, and been born in, Romania, where he had risen through the ranks of the ecclesiastical hierarchy loyal to the Echmiadzin See.) The overlapping dual motivation for Vasken’s visit – both his own ecclesiastical motivations, as well as his own and Moscow’s political ones – showed up in his address to the Armenian Lebanese press and, through the Soviet news agency TASS, to the ASSR’s population. ‘To the acting-Catholicos Archbishop Khoren: because of our love of our church and because we have the foresight to protect and affirm its unity, we have decided to participate personally in the election and anointment of the Catholicos of the Cilician See’. This statement violated the principle that Armenian sees operate independently from each other, and that one is not supposed to directly interfere in the internal affairs of the other.

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.