Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (New Texts Out Now)

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (New Texts Out Now)

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (New Texts Out Now)

By : Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press, 2020).

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

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini (NG & NP): While working on our previous book, The Human Right to Dominate, we repeatedly encountered Israel’s accusation that Palestinians use human shields as a warfare strategy in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s argument was straightforward: Since Palestinian armed groups deploy civilians as human shields, placing them in front of legitimate military targets, Israel is not responsible for civilian casualties. We also realized that this line of reasoning was common in other theaters of political violence, from the military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq, to the wars in Yemen and Syria. The fact that hundreds of thousands of civilians across the globe were suddenly being cast as human shields seemed odd and prompted us to ask a series of questions: Why has the figure of the human shield become so prominent in contemporary war zones throughout the Middle East? What does this figure tell us about the broader global history of political violence? And why are some people used as human shields while others are not? 

We quickly understood that the human shield is a peculiar figure that is simultaneously both a human and a weapon, and as such it destabilizes fundamental legal and ethical categories and assumptions. Indeed, as we began reading about the history of human shielding, from the American Civil War until today, we were intrigued by how a relatively marginal and controversial figure produces a series of moral and legal quandaries and how these quandaries provide insight into who is considered fully human, how the laws of war operate, and how the ethics of violence have developed over time. We thought that grappling with these issues would be fascinating, and so we decided to write a second book.

Our goal was that the chapters would read almost like magazine articles.

J: We noticed that the book adopts an uncommon style and format. Can you say a few words about how you wrote it?

NG & NP: Shortly after we began working on the book, we made the decision to abandon the standard format of academic writing, with ten-thousand-word chapters that are often written for an expert audience. We were convinced that an analysis of human shielding sheds light on a number of urgent issues, and we thus wanted to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. We then adopted a number of general guidelines. We would begin each chapter with a vignette of human shielding, refrain from using jargon, and limit the length of each chapter to about 3,500 words. Our goal was that the chapters would read almost like magazine articles. Overall, the book has twenty-two chapters, covering over 150 years of wars, environmental struggles, political protests, and even computer games. 

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

NG & NP: Human shielding is essentially a politics of vulnerability, where human frailty is weaponized and then used to achieve a range of political, military, and legal goals. Yet, deterrence is successful only when the attacking party values the shield’s humanity and feels morally compelled to stop the attack in order not to harm the person who is serving as a shield. Therefore, the story of human shields is also the story of those who have been included as well as those who have been excluded from the fold of humanity, revealing that humanity is politically variable rather than a universal and neutral category. We noticed, for instance, that “women-and-children” could not serve as shields during the American Civil War but have over time become the primary protagonists in shielding accusations, especially since the Vietnam War. In a similar vein, non-white people also could not serve as human shields in colonial wars, but are currently cast as shields in numerous Middle East conflicts. A different kind of puzzle emerged when we began examining eco-shielding. We found, for example, that environmental activists who use their bodies to protect whales or stop nuclear testing have been more effective than human shields in war zones. 

In order to make sense of these and other historical changes, while also trying to understand their significance, we naturally read the work of our colleagues working on colonialism and post-colonialism as well as those who have contributed to critical race, legal, and war studies. But we were also interested in other literatures. For the chapter on shielding during the Italian attempt to colonize Ethiopia in the mid-1930s, we read, for example, the memoir of Benito Mussolini’s son, Vittorio, who served as a pilot during the war. His memoir helped us better understand how the Italian fascists rationalized and justified the bombing of civilian sites in Ethiopia. Reading pamphlets and sermons written in the 1920s and 1930s by Maude Royden, the first female preacher in the United Kingdom and a leading pacifist activist, helped us trace the emergence of voluntary shielding as a strategy to prevent war. Along similar lines, we read Mao Tse-tung and the Vietnamese General Giap, alongside military policymakers in the United States, to understand why and how the latter framed people’s wars waged by the Viet Cong as a form of terrorist use of human shields. We read the diaries of members from the 2003 Iraq Human Shield Action group and Rachel Corrie in order to understand how they conceived the deployment of their privilege in the midst of war. It was an exhausting but extremely fascinating process.

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

NG & NP: Without The Human Right to Dominate it is difficult to imagine Human Shields. In our first book, we showed and analyzed how the discourse of human rights, which is commonly perceived as emancipatory, is frequently used to enhance domination. Focusing on Israel’s settler colonial project, we outlined how acts of domination and dispossession are often framed by Israel and its international allies as protecting the human rights of Jews who had been subjected to egregious abuse in Europe. In Human Shields we engage with another paradox, this time related to what we refer to as the ethics of humane violence. We interrogate how international law, specifically the laws of war that aim to protect civilians during armed conflict and military occupation, are being used to justify the deployment of violence against civilian populations and how this violence gets cast as humane. 

Israel-Palestine remained important for Human Shields, and the 2014 Gaza war was a revelatory moment for both of us. But in this book, we zoom out and dramatically expand our purview both historically and geographically. As mentioned, we begin the book with the American Civil War and we end it in Gaza, 2020. This is a 150-year history. We examine several other conflict zones in the Middle East and beyond, chronicling the role human shields have come to play in numerous conflicts. We were also interested in the way activists have adopted human shielding as a form of resistance and were intrigued by the ways they differ from human rights practitioners, not least because they willingly use their own body to protect the lives of others. 

As the research advanced, we increasingly felt that the figure of the human shield allowed us to grapple with a broader set of questions than the ones we examined in The Human Right to DominateHuman Shields is in this sense more ambitious methodologically, theoretically, historically, and geographically. 

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

NG & NP: Niels Hooper, our editor at the University of California Press, thinks everybody should read this book! Given the different lines of investigation and the stories that emerge, people interested in political violence and resistance, ethics, the laws of war, military studies and, more generally, in global histories will, we hope, find the book interesting. We also believe that policy-oriented think-tanks, military officers, and everyone working for international humanitarian and human rights organizations will find it useful. Since we tried to “de-academicize” the book, we really hope it reaches as broad an audience as possible. 

As to impact, we are a bit suspicious of the term not least due to the way it is currently used in certain academic circles. We obviously hope that we have written a rigorous and compelling history. And good history is always also a history of the present. It is, however, important to keep in mind that even though human shields are the book’s main protagonists, the production of humane violence is its plot. So, broadly speaking, if people interested in the different ways violence has been produced as humane in numerous historical events, as well as in a variety of contemporary sites—from the “war on terror” and Black Lives Matter protests to computer games—find this book useful, then we will be extremely pleased! 

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

NG & NP: We are both taking our time to think carefully about future projects.


Excerpt from the book (from Chapter 11, pp. 109-113)

Resistance

Antimilitary Activism in Iraq and Palestine 

[…] Following the First Gulf War, the United Nations Security Council imposed a series of harsh economic sanctions on Iraq with the aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The measures remained in place for over a decade, and, in spite of numerous claims that the sanctions did not affect key humanitarian supplies, a leading medical journal characterized them as a “weapon of mass destruction” that caused the death of about 1.5 million people. In 2002, the United States finally admitted that the sanctions had not undermined Saddam Hussein’s regime and decided to launch a new military campaign. The attack was justified as part of the war on terror by highlighting Iraq’s presumed links with the 9/11 terrorist attacks alongside the accusation that the regime was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

Concerned about the terrible humanitarian and political repercussions such a war would likely have for the entire region, citizens across the globe organized popular protests in an attempt to prevent the imminent invasion of a country already devastated by years of economic sanctions. Moreover, as it became clear that the United States intended to attack without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council, international solidarity activists concluded that any attempt to resist the war on terror necessitated direct action rather than traditional forms of democratic mobilization.

At the end of 2002, US military veteran Kenneth O’Keefe implored various activist groups to join forces in an effort to stop the war through pacifist intervention “from below.” Scores of people heeded his call and formed the Human Shield Action group. They bought three double-decker buses in London and drove across Europe and through Turkey and Syria all the way to Baghdad. Meanwhile, groups ready to join the movement and serve as voluntary human shields in Iraq began mushrooming in Australia, India, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, New Zealand, Korea, and Japan. At its peak, the movement numbered five hundred activists.

Two of the buses transporting voluntary human shields from London to Baghdad, 2002. Credit: Ali Kabas, Alamy.

Among those who reached Iraq was the former director of Greenpeace Turkey, who in her memoir recounts that the volunteers came from different walks of life and included Buddhists, Islamists, Christian socialists, anarchists, social democrats, monarchists, and conscientious objectors. Their commitment to human life united them, as well as their willingness to act in solidarity with those who were being put in danger’s way. Ultimately, they believed that risking their lives was the best way to prevent the Western aerial bombing campaign and predictable civilian deaths. Thus, resistance through human shielding became the glue uniting activists from radically different political, ideological, and spiritual backgrounds.

Humanitarian shielding action

Determined to reach the battlefield, the Human Shield Action group coordinated their entry into Iraq with Saddam Hussein’s government—they had no other option if they wanted to enter the country—while simultaneously trying to preserve their political autonomy. Although they did not want to be manipulated by the Iraqi regime, they followed this route because they believed that their action could actually have a tangible impact on the impending war.

On the eve of the US attack, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a report entitled Putting Noncombatants at Risk: Saddam’s Use of “Human Shields,” which denounced Saddam Hussein’s use of involuntary shields—Iraqi and foreign civilians, as well as prisoners of war—to protect strategic installations during the 1990–1991 First Gulf War. The CIA then went on to analyze the current crisis, claiming that “Baghdad is encouraging international peace groups to send members to Iraq to serve as voluntary human shields, and the Iraqi military continues its longstanding policy of placing military assets near civilian facilities and in densely populated areas.” Two months later, General Richard B. Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added that all forms of shielding of military targets are illegal, even when civilians “volunteer for this purpose.” Legally speaking, there was, in his eyes, no difference between involuntary and voluntary shields.

Things on the ground were, however, more complicated than the CIA and General Meyers claimed. The shields repeatedly stressed their independence from Saddam Hussein’s regime both in their press releases and in official exchanges with the Iraqi government. Donna Mulhearn—an Australian human shield in charge of media relations—explained the group’s position in a journal entry from Baghdad: “The human shields value life, all life. We opposed the Iraqi regime and its crimes before it was trendy to do so. . . . To say that opponents to war are automatically Hussein supporters is just childish and implicates millions of people around the world who have expressed their opposition.” 

In a letter to President George W. Bush, the activists further reiterated their autonomy from the Iraqi government and underscored that the locations they had selected for shielding were not military targets. “You,” they wrote the president, “should be aware that each of these human shields has voluntarily installed him or herself on these sites in an effort to deter the aerial bombing of vital infrastructure without which normal civilian life cannot exist.”

Since their action was prompted by a nonviolent ethic of care by civilians for civilians, their aim was not to protect Iraqi military installations; they situated themselves, instead, at power plants, water treatment stations, and food silos that sustained millions of civilians, as well as in oil refineries located close to civilian areas, hospitals, and communication centers. Their intervention represented a specific form of nongovernmental solidarity that could be characterized as a humanitarian shielding action—a form of human shielding driven by a sense of humanity and compassion for vulnerable civilians trapped in a war zone. 

This type of direct action differs, however, from classical forms of humanitarian aid. Both humanitarian aid and humanitarian shielding actions are responses to real or potential humanitarian crises affecting civilian populations, yet humanitarian aid organizations like Oxfam or CARE rely on sophisticated bureaucratic mechanisms that aim to alleviate suffering while, at least ostensibly, excluding politics and political activists. By contrast, humanitarian shielding is political through and through and sets out to prevent the horrors of war rather than mitigate its devastating effects. If humanitarian organizations aspire to ease and relieve the suffering caused by war, humanitarian shields attempt to avert or stop it altogether.

Just as important, guaranteeing the staff’s protection within the conflict zone is a key imperative that informs the way humanitarian aid organizations operate, while, for humanitarian shields, risk is the essential means for averting a humanitarian catastrophe. They understand that resisting violence and shielding innocent lives might entail taking the ultimate risk, the risk of dying.

Active civilians

Contrary to their hopes, the Human Shield Action group did not manage to stop the war. Nonetheless, they did demonstrate that civilians willing to risk their lives in an effort to protect other civilians trapped in a war zone can, in fact, create a peaceful obstacle against the use of lethal violence. Significantly, none of the sites they occupied were hit by aerial strikes, except for a telecommunication building that was bombed the day after the human shields had abandoned it. Those in the United States who supported the invasion argued that this clearly demonstrated the surgical and proportionate nature of the military’s use of force and that the troops had never intended to target civilian sites. From another perspective, this observation suggests that the shielding had actually worked. Precisely because human shielding altered the military and legal calculations in the battlefield, it served as a successful form of deterrence and resistance.

Irrespective of the reasons why the civilian sites were not bombed, the voluntary human shields in Iraq did present a legal challenge to the attacking forces. This became obvious when the US government decided to charge citizens who had served as human shields after they returned home. The activists were sued for up to $1 million on the grounds that their travel to Iraq was “unauthorized” and that their shielding actions comprised an “exportation of services” that violated the sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s regime. They were also accused of “shielding a Government of Iraq (GOI) infrastructure from possible U.S. military action.” 

The courts, however, were unable to convict the citizens because the locations they stayed in were not legitimate military targets. While military and legal experts have continued to frame voluntary human shielding as a form of direct participation in hostilities—which means that civilians who serve as shields lose the protections bestowed upon them by international law—civilian sites tend to be illegitimate targets. Therefore, it is difficult legally to characterize people protecting them as human shields and thus as participants in hostilities. 

Simultaneously, the voluntary shields challenged the laws of armed conflict because the legal articles dealing with human shielding are restricted to situations where civilians or prisoners of war are forced to become shields and do not, as one report stated, “cover an event where individuals acted knowingly and on their own initiative.” This, as we have seen, is due to the way international law construes civilians as passive actors. Thus, when civilians become active in a nonviolent and protective way, they challenge existing legal assumptions. Precisely because voluntary human shields in the case of Iraq were active civilians protecting civilian sites, the question of how to treat them remained unresolved. Accordingly, such shielding activities elude the law….

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.