Waleed F. Mahdi, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (New Texts Out Now)

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Sep 18, 2020 Egypt
Waleed F. Mahdi, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (New Texts Out Now)

Waleed F. Mahdi, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (New Texts Out Now)

By : Waleed F. Mahdi

Waleed F. Mahdi, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (Syracuse University Press, 2020).

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

Waleed Mahdi (WM): This book critiques the mutual forms of exclusion and alienation that many Arab Americans face not only in the United States but also in the Arab world. When visiting Arab countries or coming back to the United States, I find myself constantly confined to rigid national definitions of belonging that do not often recognize how my various identities as Yemeni, Arab, Muslim, and American are mutually inclusive. The sense of alienation that I have experienced in travels and while growing up in both Arabic and American cultures strips Arab Americans like me of our third space, one that does not have to be completely rooted in either Arabic or American cultures, and one that does not present Arab Americans as either aliens to our American culture or traitors to our Arabic heritage. And this rigidity is institutionalized, whether through racial profiling and policing of Arab and Muslim communities in the United States, or through confining and torturing Arab American dissidents in the Arab world.

The book examines how such US-Arab mutual forms of exclusion operate through film by exploring misrepresentations of Arab Americans in both Hollywood since the 1970s, and Egyptian cinemas since the 1990s. While Hollywood films have presented Arabs in the United States as a national security threat or as a foreign policy issue, I argue that Egyptian films have also presented polarizing images of Egyptian Americans as either glorified Arabs or denigrated Americans within a limiting post-colonial critique of the United States that prescribes national allegiance to their Egyptian homeland. The book also examines post-September11 efforts in the two industries and in emerging Arab American films to reflect nuanced images that push back against the national narrations of Arab American in American and Egyptian mainstream cinemas.
What defines Arab Americans, in this case, becomes less about how others define them and more about how Arab American individuals define themselves.

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

MH: The book asks several questions. What are the discourses shaping the mutual construction of Arab-American Otherness in US and Arab collective memories? What is the role of American and Arab filmmakers in perpetuating images of inclusion and exclusion? Is it possible to renarrate the Arab-American story beyond the imperatives of suspicion and patriotism? What does it mean to develop a complex sense of Arab American identity in film? The book engages with these questions by exploring Hollywood, Egyptian, and Arab-American cinemas and comparing the politics and portrayals of Arab Americans in each―how and why they vary, and what is at stake in their circulation.

The book also theorizes Arab-American cultural citizenship, which I define as an ever-changing amalgamation of thoughts, attitudes, and positions that results from Arab Americans’ cross-cultural and multi-dimensional positionality. This understanding challenges hegemonic and homogenous understandings of Arab Americans, whether in the United States or the Arab world. What defines Arab Americans, in this case, becomes less about how others define them and more about how Arab-American individuals define themselves. It is a chance to de-center nationalism and render it less important while acknowledging that nationalism is not irrelevant in today’s globalized yet heavily policed borders and populist agendas.  

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

MH: Throughout my previous research, I had initially been interested in exclusively exploring the representations of Arab Americans in Hollywood, but I soon realized the limitations of my framework. For example, important studies on Arab-American identity and anti-Arab sentiment have proliferated since September 11, which have examined how Arab Americans have been treated as “ambiguous insiders” in the United States, to echo Nadine Naber’s term. Arab-American complex communities are presented as a monolith; they are racialized as white but are treated as a people of color, they are racialized through religion (Islam) rather than biology, and their structures of identification that often stress religion are often dismissed by the US racial-ethnic structures of identification. My new book adds another layer by considering how Arab Americans wrestle with being simultaneously embraced and alienated in both American and Arabic narrations of belonging.  

Therefore, the book argues that Arab-American Otherness cannot strictly be viewed as a mere by-product of US orientalist and racialized histories, but as an outcome of the polarized cultural imaginations of “Self” and “Other” that exist in both US and Arab state nationalist narratives. The book’s comparative framework unsettles the “national” as a theoretical category of analysis as it seeks out alternatives for deeper understanding of the Arab American image at the crossroads of US and Arab sociocultural and geopolitical encounters. Thus, the comparative framework presents an intervention in the field of Arab-American studies by simultaneously critiquing and transcending the nationalist rhetoric of cultural producers that mediate sensational narratives of Arab-American Otherness to American and Arab audiences.

The book also contributes to the field of Arab-American studies by identifying post-September 11 filmic efforts in Hollywood and Egyptian cinemas, as well as the filmmaking of Arab Americans themselves, that challenge restrictive representations of Arab Americans in American and Arabic mainstream cinemas. To move beyond the nationalist cultural politics that have divided Hollywood and Egyptian filmmakers and denied Arab Americans their own distinct space, I focus on films that offer representations with alternative narratives of Arab-American belonging through Arab American characters who are complex, realistic, and fluid. 

J: Why did you choose Egyptian cinema as representative of Arab cinemas?

MH: I am not arguing that Egyptian cinema is necessarily representative of Arab cinemas, which have experienced tremendous growth and deserve further research. As we speak, Egyptian cinema faces several obstacles undercutting the quantity and quality of its production and the level of its reception, especially regarding films with critical edge. Egyptian filmmakers must grapple with licensing bureaucracy, state censorship, celebrity wage hikes, production monopoly, and copyright piracy. The country’s sociopolitical conditions and the annual Ramadan competition for television shows and dramas present additional pressures for the cinema’s growth.

Egyptian cinema is still a mainstream medium that retains a powerful role in making the most money, producing the most films, and attracting the most viewers. Egyptian cinema has been dubbed “Hollywood of the Nile” due to its filmmaking history, which stretches back to the silent cinema era. The popularity of the Egyptian dialect in the Arab world makes Egyptian films more accessible to Arabic-speaking audiences. Equally important, the nature of Egyptian cinema’s postcoloniality in producing counter-Hollywood portrayals is so analytically compelling because it draws from Egypt’s critical role in the development and collision of Arab nationalism, political Islam, and state nationalism.

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

MH: The book addresses multiple readers. Learners of media and popular culture, especially film, will find its engagement with national and diasporic cinemas a useful methodological model in pursuing post-nationalist inquiries. Researchers of identity politics will benefit from its comparative framework, which could translate into future topic-specific comparative readings of nation, family, class, gender, sexuality, race, and disability. Academics and students in American studies, Middle Eastern studies, and film studies seeking models of transnational inquiries could find the book a useful tool. The book provides a learning material to undergraduate and graduate students in cultural studies, area studies, ethnic studies, and other interdisciplinary fields that entertain issues related to comparative literature, postcoloniality, race, migration, diaspora, and transnationalism.

The book also contributes to growing interest among Arab American scholars in transcending US-based scholarship in their conceptualizations of the Arab American subjectivity. I hope the book will bolster the call for scholarly interventions in the field that apply a transnational and comparative lens to other cultural forms, including, to name a few, television (news, shows, programs), music (hip hop, pop, blues), performance (theater, dance, gaming, sport), design (fashion, décor), visual art (painting, cartoon, graffiti), and alternative media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube). 

I very much hope that the book will also connect with Arab and Muslim American filmmakers, actors, writers, and contributors to art and popular culture, as they navigate the fine line between pursuing individual successes and responding their community expectations. I finally hope that the book will connect with general readership looking for an Arab and Muslim-American critique of how nationalist sentiments shape and circulate American and Arabic popular cultures and learn about the possibilities of challenging them. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MH: I am currently co-authoring a book with Nate Greenberg that examines the Arab support for American deployment of soft power in the “war on terror” era. I am also developing plans for another book that explores Yemeni and Yemeni American creative expressions of agency at the interplay of September 11 and Arab Spring moments. 

 

Excerpt from the book (from the introduction) 

Please note that this excerpt does not feature citations and footnotes that may be available in the original work.

Two moments collided and produced this work. The first is personal, the second is political. The personal moment draws from my experience as an Arab American of Yemeni background constantly wrestling with American, Yemeni, Arab, and Muslim narratives of belonging and citizenship. In my travels I have encountered conflicting public attitudes and government policies preconfigured to define me and confine my identity within a specific national, ethnic, or even religious frame. During trips to Malaysia, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Yemen over the past few years, people would often question me about US foreign policy toward Arabs and Muslims. The impetus for such questions, in most cases, was not so much interest in my scholarship but rather a desire to read my responses through the prism of allegiance. My interlocutors sought to package me as either an American or a Yemeni—identities implicitly presumed to be incompatible. The “Yemen place of birth” line in my American passport presents a special challenge for government officials in many of these countries as they are forced to treat me at once both as a Yemeni and as an American.

In the meantime, my return to the United States in the aftermath of every overseas trip has involved an additional layer of security, whether before boarding in Tokyo, London, Dubai, Doha, and Amman, or when landing at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The “SSSS” designation on my boarding passes, which stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection, speaks of an institutional anxiety around my ethnic background and conflates it with a potential act of terrorism. This anxiety stretches across the globe via a US mandate of national security, which locates individuals like me at the periphery of American citizenship. That mandate grows out of a post-9/11 paranoia that continues to shape the experiences of first-generation immigrants and Americans of Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds. The transnational nature of my personal encounters made me curious to explore meanings of Arab American citizenship and belonging in a globalized but fractured world. But it was a political moment that solidified my interest in examining these issues. 

September 11, 2012, marked not only the eleventh anniversary of the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001, but also served as a violent testimony to the failure of a decade-long, US-led “war on terror.” Motivated by a mixed sense of frustration and anger, hundreds of Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis, and Tunisians—to name only protesters in Arab revolutionary spaces—swarmed US embassies to decry a sensational film titled Innocence of Muslims (2012), written and produced by US-based and Egyptian-born Coptic Christian, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (also known as Mark Basseley Youssef). The film’s satirical, if not cynical, imagery advanced conceptions of the prophet of Islam that were perverse and sadistic. Violating Muslims’ taboo against the pictorial depiction of the prophet, not to mention vilifying his spiritual message, the work rendered the United States a breeding ground for anti-Islam narratives. The film’s charged content, along with its decontextualized circulation through social media, left no room for recognition of the American actors, who categorically condemned it and denied their previous knowledge of the director’s true intentions. It was easy to label the film as an American product and embed it in a post-9/11 Islamist critique of the United States as a neocolonial religious entity bent on what President George W. Bush once called a “crusade” against, as what many Muslims would say, Islam. Protests against the film and, more broadly, against its perceived endorsement by the United States, turned violent and opened doors for extremists to dominate the scene. Crucially, these extremists were now positioned to transform earlier grievances against a poorly composed Islamophobic film into a sociopolitical statement of a Muslim identity in crisis.

The significance of this moment is threefold. First, it embodied the state of insecurity following the peaceful calls for change celebrated as the “Arab Spring” in Western media, and the emergence of extremist groups like al-Qaeda and Daesh (the Arabic name for ISIS) as de facto geopolitical alternatives in unstable states. Second, it raised questions about the transnational modes surrounding these alternatives, whether in terms of their ability to produce high-quality propaganda materials, employ alternative media to recruit Western-raised Muslims, or generate Islamophobic reactions across Europe and the United States. Third, the moment spoke of the power of film, however poor and underfunded, to spur transnational cultural politics; equally important, it underlined how an independent work by an Egyptian immigrant could circulate globally out of context to become symbolic of America’s Islamophobia. It is this instrumentality of film imagery specifically and its relation to identity and representation that is this book’s critical site of inquiry.

The confluence of my personal struggle to navigate East-West efforts to gauge my allegiance and my realization of the importance of film in visualizing difference and producing changes beyond the screen forced me to ask several questions. What are the discourses shaping the mutual construction of Arab American Otherness in US and Arab collective memories? What is the role of cultural producers in perpetuating images of inclusion and exclusion? How is the interstitial experience of my Arab American community codified in the two spheres? Is it possible to renarrate the Arab American story beyond the imperatives of suspicion and patriotism? What does it mean to develop a complex sense of Arab American identity in film? In order to make sense of these questions, this book explores both the construction of Arab American subjectivity in US and Egyptian cinemas and the role of Arab American filmmakers in the process.

Arab Americans in Film directly engages with the questions raised above by examining how Arab American belonging is constructed, defined, and redefined in a transnational context, i.e., US and Arab realms of cinematic imagination. The book explores the representation of Arab Americans in Hollywood, Egyptian, and even Arab American filmmaking, comparing the politics of portrayals in each. It unsettles the “national” as a theoretical category of analysis as it seeks out alternatives for deeper understanding of the Arab American image at the crossroads of US and Arab sociocultural and geopolitical encounters. This comparative framework, therefore, presents an intervention in the field of Arab American Studies by simultaneously critiquing and transcending the nationalist rhetoric of cultural producers that mediate sensational narratives of Arab American Otherness to American and Arab audiences.
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.