Jack Holland, Selling War and Peace: Syria and the Anglosphere (New Texts Out Now)

Jack Holland, Selling War and Peace: Syria and the Anglosphere (New Texts Out Now)

Jack Holland, Selling War and Peace: Syria and the Anglosphere (New Texts Out Now)

By : Jack Holland

Jack Holland, Selling War and Peace: Syria and the Anglosphere (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

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

Jack Holland (JH): I wrote this book, mainly and simply, because atrocities in Syria have been too terrible to ignore. My early work focused on September 11 and the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In particular, I have long been interested in coalition warfare and the alliance of the English-speaking nations, with the US-UK special relationship at its heart, but also made up of other vital states, such as Australia. When the Syrian civil war began to unfold, it was often viewed through the lens of what had taken place in Libya. The question was whether the US-led coalition would intervene militarily to topple Assad. That question—like with the later decision to militarily “degrade and destroy” ISIL—is really important, I think. It speaks to the ethics not only of going to war but also the morality of not doing so. I am fascinated by the debates that make those decisions—on war and peace—possible. And I am fascinated by the propensity of the English-speaking alliance to act in concert, shaping international order and delivering (or not) international justice. 

At its various stages the conflict has been framed through different lenses – human rights, chemical weapons, international terrorism and proxy war ...

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

JH: The book focuses on the intersection of the Syrian civil war, the Anglosphere, and language. 

The “old Anglosphere coalition” can be thought of as three of the world’s most important and reliably interventionist states: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Through modern history, two of these states—the United States and the United Kingdom—have done more to shape world politics than any other states. And, in combination, this “old Anglosphere coalition” continues to act as a guarantor of global security, even in the tumultuous political moment characterized by Trump and Brexit. The political debates that take place across the Anglosphere—as an English-speaking bloc, brought closer together than ever by technology and modern communication—frequently guide and shape the response of the wider international community to the world’s major crises. At present, rightly or wrongly, no other informal grouping of states comes close to the influence and importance of this English-speaking coalition in determining the landscape of international security. Syria has been no exception.

Likewise, the focus on language is important because “language is used to structure, categorise and construct international relations. The actors and events of world politics—its array of states, leaders and terrorist groups—are given meaning and identity through language.” This is crucial because “what it is that the Syrian crisis is remains up for grabs. At its various stages the conflict has been framed through different lenses—human rights, chemical weapons, international terrorism, and proxy war—to different political effects and possibilities. It is these lenses and their respective chronological phases that structure the empirical analysis of the book, in its exploration of the battle to produce and control the dominant discourses filling the crisis in Syria with meaning, which have ultimately helped to determine the fate of Anglosphere foreign policy and the Syrian people.” 

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

JH: I have been researching and writing about United Kingdom, the United States, and Australian foreign policy for fifteen years. My first book, Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11 (Routledge, 2012), analyzed the language used to frame the policies that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latter, in particular, helped to politicize me: I was a vocal opponent of the war and decided to work broadly “in politics” in order to try to prevent future foreign policy calamities. My first book was an attempt to hold Tony Blair, George Bush, and John Howard to account for their words and actions, showing how their language had helped to dupe publics into a military intervention that was against their interests and, most probably, illegal. In particular, my first book showed how these leaders carefully crafted their language to appeal to their distinct national populations. For example, Blair would emphasize global leadership, Bush would speak a lot about freedom, and Howard would highlight the Anglosphere’s shared values.  

My new book both builds on and departs from this work. First, the Syrian civil war has really challenged the non-interventionist impulses engendered by Iraq. Working out that balance of foreign policy—the fundamental question of when and how to intervene, and when to stay out of a conflict—is very important in my new book. I talk a lot about the balance of a broadly liberal desire to effect positive change which is locked in battle with a broadly realist temerity, when it comes to using force. This book, then, considers the normative costs of inaction (non-intervention) as well as action (intervention). Second, in contrast to the first book, my aim here was not to highlight the differences between the three states (the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia). Instead, the book emphasizes how these states act and behave as one. I theorize the Anglosphere as a transnational political space, helping to conceptualize this crucial alliance which sits at the heart of liberal world order.  

Throughout, therefore, one argument drives the book forward: I argue that the outcome of the conflict hinged upon the selling of war and peace within the old Anglosphere coalition. The book analyzes that discursive battle—the contest of ideas, upon which Syria’s fate has depended. 

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

JH: This monograph will be of significant interest to academics, researchers, and students, as well as policy makers, practitioners, and the informed general public. The book speaks to three burgeoning areas. First, the book analyzes the entirety of the Syrian civil war in an innovative four-phase chronology, as the conflict evolved from calls for democracy, through chemical weapon concerns, the rise of ISIL, and the onset of great power proxy war. Second, the book maps and theorizes Anglosphere foreign policy, charting the history and future of the US-UK-Australian military alliance during a key period of political uncertainty, defined by Donald Trump’s presidency and the United Kingdom’s Brexit negotiations. Third, the book develops a post-constructivist framework for the analysis of transnational political debates which determine war and peace in Syria and beyond. This framework emphasizes the hard nature of soft power and the coercion of political opponents through forceful words. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

JH: I have recently completed a monograph with Manchester University Press, titled Fictional Television and American Politics: From 9/11 to Donald Trump. While this book is a lot more fun than one about Syria, it is no less important, as it helps us to understand how American politics and foreign policy functions today, intertwined as it is with the screen—whether in cinemas, people’s living rooms, or the president’s hands. I am pleased that this book is available cheaply in paperback because it will help people to understand what is going on right now in the United States, with COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and the upcoming presidential election.

Apart from that, I have recently published two articles on Trump’s foreign policy, looking at its impact on polarization in US politics and its embedding in a longer history of Jacksonian politics in the United States. See: “The discursive hegemony of Trump’s Jacksonian populism: Race, class, and gender in constructions and contestations of US national identity, 2016-2018,” with Ben Fermor, Politics, online first; and “Security and polarisation in Trump’s America: Securitisation and the domestic politics of threatening others,” Global Affairs, with Ben Fermor, 6:1 (2020) pp. 55-70. 

 

Excerpt from the book

Why Syria?

In October 2014, Islamic State released a video showing Mohammed Emwazi, the notorious ‘Jihadi John’, beheading Alan Henning with a knife. Emwazi grew up in North Kensington in West London and was described by various acquaintances as shy, football mad, a model employee and an IT genius. He first travelled to Syria in 2012, having been radicalised over the previous three years. Henning was a taxi driver from Salford in Manchester, who was on his third convoy, bringing humanitarian aid to Syria. The video showed one Briton killing another, in the most horrific manner, set against the backdrop of the Syrian Desert and British foreign policy. The video explained that the execution was in response to the fact a ‘seven-hour long debate in the British Parliament has culminated in a landslide approval of UK strikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq’. Emwazi insisted that Henning’s ‘blood is on the hands of the British parliament’. 

One year later, on a Wednesday morning in September of 2015, a three-year-old Syrian boy named Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach in Bodrum. His father, Abdullah, had paid people smugglers four thousand euros for the chance to take his family on the voyage to the Greek island of Kos. That voyage would be made in a five-metre long rubber dinghy, which the smugglers abandoned when seas became rough. It soon overturned. Abdullah clung onto his wife and children for as long as he could, but ‘one by one they were washed away by waves’. Abdullah and his family were fleeing the siege of Kobani, in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. ISIL had slowly captured the city, before being repelled by a combination of Kurdish forces, the Free Syrian Army and Coalition airstrikes. Over the course of the previous year, the citizens of Kobani had suffered chemical weapons attacks, as well as widespread torture, mutilation and rape. 

Two months after that Wednesday morning, on a Friday evening in Paris, Moroccan architect Mohamed Amine Benmbarek was dining with his new wife on the terrace of Le Carillon Café. A black Seat car pulled up and a man stepped out, coolly gunning down both. Once done, the gunman crossed the road and shot at people inside Le Petit Cambodge restaurant. A few streets away, Café Bonne Biere and restaurant La Belle Equipe were next.  Eight minutes later, a man took a seat in the Comptoir Voltaire Cafe and placed an order, shortly before blowing himself up. Across town, footballers Bacary Sagna and Patrice Evra hesitated at the Stade de France, as the sound of exploding suicide vests interrupted the match against Germany.  And, at the same time, in the 11th arrondissement, the bodies of young music fans were piling up in the Bataclan Theatre, as three gunmen shot from the balcony. 

It is not easy to make sense of Syria, which is why this book begins with three brief and relatively familiar stories – on radicalisation, refugees and terrorism – before turning to consider the situation on the ground. It is likely that these are stories you have already heard. They are terrible and tragic and difficult to hear let alone imagine. But they are only the most obvious manifestations of the carnage wrought by the Syrian Civil War. And they are only obvious because of perceived proximity and media coverage. Topics such as radicalisation, refugees and terrorism receive disproportionate airtime compared to bloody, complex and enduring civil wars. For every Alan Henning, for every Aylan and Abdullah and for every Mohamed Benmbarek, there are near countless others. But counting is important, even if we can become numb to numbers difficult to comprehend. 

While Alan Henning was a new victim, the act and its perpetrator were already familiar to Anglosphere audiences. Henning’s murder followed that of fellow Brit David Haines and Americans Steven Sotloff and James Foley. One hundred and thirty people died in the Paris Attacks of Friday 13th November 2015, with some three hundred and fifty injured. Eighty of those deaths and two hundred injuries were from the Bataclan alone. The actions of a security guard at the Stade de France, denying would-be bombers access to the stadium, surely saved many others, including potentially President Francois Hollande. Aylan’s death, too, was one of many. In 2015 alone, refugees made approximately half a million voyages across the Mediterranean Sea by boat.  Over three thousand drowned attempting the crossing. This means that more refugees drowned in one year than perished in the events of September 11th, 2001. And, in 2016, things got much worse. But these figures remain fixated on events that ‘we’ have seen by virtue of ‘our’ televisions and newspapers. The most shockingly appalling data emerges from the battlefields that were once flourishing Syrian streets.

The Syrian conflict has created an estimated eight million internally displaced persons and nearly five million international refugees, which together amount to over half of the total Syrian population. The majority of these refugees have found temporary sanctuary in neighbouring countries, such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Worse still, the conflict has generated almost half a million Syrian casualties and around thirteen million people within Syria in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. In November 2015, US Foreign Secretary John Kerry noted that the crisis had been no less than ‘four and a half years of nonstop horror. One Syrian in twenty has been wounded or killed. One in five is a refugee. One in two has been displaced. The average life expectancy dropped by 20 years’. And these statistics continued to worsen, with one estimate, only three months later, reporting that 11.5% of the Syrian population has been killed or wounded in the ongoing civil war. The vast majority of these deaths were caused not by ISIL but by forces loyal to Bashar al Assad. For every Syrian that ISIL killed, Assad’s forces killed seven.

Amnesty International has documented some of the ‘unthinkable atrocities’ of Assad’s government forces, which began with a ‘brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters’ and escalated to include ‘unrelenting aerial bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods’, including the use of infamously inaccurate barrel bombs, which alone killed twelve thousand Syrian civilians between 2012 and 2015. Survivors of barrel bomb attacks reported seeing ‘children without heads, body parts everywhere’ – a vision of ‘hell’. Amnesty argue that ‘reprehensible and continual strikes on residential areas point to a policy of deliberately and systematically targeting civilians in attacks that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity’. While rebels have been guilty of using improvised ‘hell cannons’ that often kill civilians, ‘government forces have been responsible for the large majority of violations and crimes … By relentlessly and deliberately targeting civilians, the Syrian government appears to have adopted a callous policy of collective punishment against the civilian population’.  

Yet, emboldened by UNSC inaction, Assad retains his suitors, meaning that two interwoven and international conflicts have effectively been fought in the decimated cities of Syria. The first conflict is a US-led war on ISIL, designed to reduce the terror threat to the region and western states. Despite widespread human rights abuses, calls for democracy promotion and chemical weapons usage, it was not until the rise of Islamic State in the summer of 2014 that US-led military intervention commenced.  By September 2015, British, French, Canadian and Australian forces joined the United States in bombing ISIL. The second conflict is a great power proxy war, with the US and its allies backing rebel forces in opposition to Russia’s support for the embattled Assad. Russian forces, backed by Iran and Hezbollah, have repeatedly struck rebel and opposition forces fighting Bashar al Assad. The war(s) in Syria then pivot around two principal groups: ISIL and Assad’s government forces. While the former find few supporters, the latter divides the world’s great powers in echoes of the Cold War. Any political solution to the crisis hinges on the question of Assad’s return to power; a desired outcome for Russia but a particularly unwelcome prospect for the US, UK and Australia. 

Summarising the crisis in Syria is difficult. The Syrian Civil War began within the context of the regional Arab Uprisings in Spring 2011. It has divided the UN Security Council and wider international community, brought NATO head-to-head with Russia and developed into a complex, multi-faceted proxy war due to divided international support for government and rebel forces. In Europe, North America and Australasia, Syria has drawn hundreds of fighters sufficiently radicalised to abandon western lives in favour of the battlefields perceived to be at the heart of the global jihad. And, in 2015, the flow of displaced Syrian refugees into neighbouring countries and across Europe reached its zenith, as haunting images of drowned children were plastered across televisions and newspapers. These are good reasons for studying this particular conflict, but they are ones of a Eurocentric nature; an even better reason is that the conflict is decimating the men, women and children of Syria. 

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.