Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (New Texts Out Now)

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Oct 12, 2020 Israel
Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (New Texts Out Now)

Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (New Texts Out Now)

By : Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili

Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili, Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

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

Wendy Pearlman and Boaz Atzili (WP & BA): The project began when we both had post-docs at Harvard in 2007 to 2008. The 2006 war between Israel and Hizballah was still fresh, and we had many hallway conversations about it. We were both deeply alarmed by Israel’s severe bombardment of Lebanon on the demand that Lebanon “take responsibility” and stop Hizballah. We wondered, why would Israel expect that pounding a famously weak state would somehow get it to stop a notably strong nonstate actor?

We began to research the topic and noted that many states try to combat nonstate actors by punishing the states that host them. We eventually came to call this strategy triadic coercion. We looked to history to try to understand why Israel uses triadic coercion, how that policy has changed over time, and with what effects. We researched Israeli military institutions, doctrine, and decision-making going back to the first years of statehood. We also studied the Arab states that Israel targeted with triadic coercion, as well as the complex relationships between those host regimes and the nonstate actors on their soil.

Based on our research, we wrote a 2012 article explaining the varied effects of triadic coercion. But there was much more to say, including on the drivers of triadic coercion. We decided to expand the research significantly, both in terms of theory and empirical scope. The result is this book.
For the host state to act effectively against a nonstate actor on its soil, it requires internal political cohesion and institutional capacity.

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

WP & BA: Two main questions drive our research. First, we investigate the conditions under which triadic coercion is likely to succeed. Traditional discussions of interstate conflict assume that the greater a state’s power relative to the state that it seeks to coerce, the more likely it is to succeed. The coercer state should thus prefer its adversary to be weak. Triadic coercion turns this logic on its head. For the host state to act effectively against a nonstate actor on its soil, it requires internal political cohesion and institutional capacity. The host state’s executive decision-making must be consolidated to recognize the national security interest in averting another state’s coercive assaults. It likewise must possess the competencies to design measures against the nonstate actor and the domestic clout to implement such policies even if they are unpopular. Strong regimes possess these means, whereas weak ones do not. As a result, we argue, triadic coercion can only succeed when directed against a host state with at least a minimum level of regime strength. Triadic coercion strategies against weak hosts are unlikely to suppress nonstate actor violence, regardless of the military power that the coercer state projects.

Second, if triadic coercion only is effective against strong regimes, why do states frequently employ it against weak ones? We attribute such actions to strategic culture. A state’s system of beliefs, values, and practices can elevate the use of coercive force as an appropriate response—and host states as appropriate targets—independent of the efficacy of those choices. Politicians, public opinion, media, and military leaders might contribute to rhetoric, attitudes, images, and analogies that crystalize this strategic culture. Under these circumstances, national security decision-making elite, and perhaps even the social and political environment at large, encourage triadic coercion on the basis of conviction rather than calculation, and due to a utility that is intrinsic rather than instrumental. The outcome is increased use of the strategy, even when it is bound to be ineffective or even backfire.

The book elaborates and illustrates these arguments in an analysis of seventy years of Israel’s practice of triadic coercion against every state on its borders. It offers a comprehensive account of the causes and effects of Israel’s use of triadic coercion from 1949 to the present. It first presents a general theory that we believe applies well beyond the Middle East, followed by a discussion of how Israel’s use of this strategy took shape in early conflicts with Jordan. Then we explore Israel’s use of triadic coercion against each of its other neighbors: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority. Finally, we briefly examine the validity of our arguments in the ways that India’s battle against Kashmiri separatist movements has brought it into conflict with Pakistan and Turkey’s struggle against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has brought it into conflict with the states of Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

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

WP & BA: What excited us about this project is that it allowed each of us to make use of our prior work, to bring it in dialogue with each other, and to extend it in new ways. 

Boaz is a student of international relations and security studies. His earlier work on territorial conflicts and the politics of borders, culminating in Good Fences Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict. That book highlighted the importance of state and regime weakness in affecting their territorial policy. Triadic Coercion digs much deeper and shows how such factors operate in very different arenas 

Wendy studies the comparative politics of the Middle East. When we began this project, she was finishing her book manuscript on the politics and strategies of the Palestinian struggle from the 1920s through the second Intifada, what became Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement. That research continually alerted her to the movement’s complicated relations to Arab states and how carrying out operation from those states into Israel complicated those relations even further. Researching Triadic Coercion allowed her to examine those dynamics further.

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

WP & BA: We hope that this book will be read by anyone interested in inter- and intra-state conflict and security. We hoped to advance academic conversations on coercive policies and also provide a rich and nuanced history of this particular facet of the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

We also hope that decision-makers attend to the book’s policy recommendations. The Arab-Israeli conflict is much larger than triadic coercion. The key to sustainable and just peace in the region does not lie simply in enforcing quiet along borders that have been determined by war and dispossession. Nor can genuine peace be built on thwarting violence by nonstate actors while ignoring the much larger popular and historical grievances that animate their struggles. Peace requires political agreements that address all peoples’ aspirations for freedom, security, dignity, and national self-determination. 

Effective triadic coercion is not a substitute for political solutions that safeguard individual and collective rights. Misapplied triadic coercion, however, can cause tremendous destruction and bloodshed, and all should be done to avoid such needless violence. States and societies should scrutinize how policies that they think are rational might actually be fueled by socially engrained assumptions and institutionally reinforced tendencies toward excessive and misguided use of military force. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

WP & BA: Since 2012, Wendy has conducted interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians across three continents. She published We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria in 2017. She continues to conduct interviews and, on that basis, is starting a new book project on Syrians’ evolving experiences of identity, home, and belonging. 

Boaz is currently working on a project on buffer zones (geographic spaces designed to separate two rival states) and their effect on both the states involved and the residents of these zones. He is also researching the emergence of the territorial status of Jerusalem in the early 1950s. 

J: Could you give us an example of how the strength of the targeted regime affects the outcome of triadic coercion?  

WP & BA: During the decade after 1949, Palestinian individuals and then groups crossed from Egyptian-controlled territory into Israel, sometimes attacking Israeli forces or civilians. Israel retaliated against Egyptian state targets. During the early 1950s, we argue, this triadic coercion proved futile due to the weakness of two successive regimes: the monarchy of King Farouk and the first years after the Free Officers’ coup. While these regimes were very different, both wanted to prevent nonstate actors from antagonizing Israel from their territory and both were unable to translate that preference into effective policy. Lacking internal political cohesion and institutional capacity, Egyptian governments in this era did not wield the policing power or authority over social forces in the Gaza Strip necessary to fulfill Israel’s demands that it control the nonstate actors under its rule. 

This situation changed dramatically after 1956. Nasser’s political victory in the Suez War, along with the sweeping domestic reforms he instituted thereafter, greatly increased the strength of his regime. At the same time, Israel’s demonstrated military power in the war increased Nasser’s incentives to prevent nonstate actors from embroiling him in a confrontation that he knew he could not win. The result was a striking shift in the effectiveness of triadic coercion: Egypt took various steps on its border with Israel, and especially along the Gaza Strip. These measures were effective and prevented attacks from nonstate actors on Israel from Egyptian territory.

 

Excerpt from the book

This excerpt examines the 2006 War and the ideas that shaped Israel’s decision to attack the state of Lebanon. 

Strategic culture: ideas

The role of strategic culture in shaping triadic coercion was also apparent in assumptions and contentions that, having taken root in prior years, were heavily impactful in 2006. Four ideas proved especially dominant in Israel’s strategy against Lebanon, just as they had had been against the PA during the second Intifada.

Inherent utility of actions in pursuit of deterrence

In advocating triadic coercion, military elites appeared to be acting on an inherited faith in military force more than a reasoned assessment of how the costs of such actions compared with their likely benefits. Dug Henrikson explains:

Israel’s decision to go to war was not based on a thorough in-depth analysis of the specific situation at hand, but rather rooted in its strategic outlook cultivated in the decades preceding the war. This thinking has largely focused on the concept of deterrence, and should deterrence fail, to restore deterrence.

This circular thinking was front and center in the IDF command’s first meeting with the Minister of Defense after the adduction. Halutz argued that Hezbollah’s attack was a breach of Israeli sovereignty made all the more intolerable by Hamas’s kidnapping of a corporal near Gaza three weeks earlier. “We have to restore our deterrence, which got hit by the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and now received another blow,” Halutz said. This perspective informed the IDF’s design of goals for the operation in Lebanon. Amongst the most paramount was “to strengthen deterrence against Hezbollah and the entire region.”

It does not appear that high-ranking officers stopped to spell out the logic by which their military strikes would actually generate deterrence. In this sense, they seemed to focus on the pursuit of a deterrent posture as a goal in and of itself, not regarding such activity as a tool whose value lay only in its ability to produce greater security. The closest that decision-makers came to probing the instrumental, rather than inherent, utility of deterrence strikes came in an exchange between Halutz and then-Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Halutz reportedly declared, “Israel’s deterrence will not be maintained just because they [Arabs] think we have this or that stuff. Even if we have them, it does not prove itself on the ground. The fact is that things [like the abduction] occur.” Peres asked the assembled leaders to think a few steps into the future, and to consider what might be Arabs’ responses to Israeli actions, Israel’s counter-responses, etc. Both the chief of staff and the prime minister reportedly brushed his comments aside. 

Just as the defense establishment made no serious effort to evaluate the expected benefits of operations to “restore deterrence,” they made no attempt to assess its potential costs. There is scant evidence of any serious reckoning with such calculations during or even after the war. In leading books of investigative reporting by Israeli journalists, one is hard pressed to find evidence of someone in the Israeli government or military command undertaking analysis of this type. Neither does the meticulously-detailed Winograd Report offer such an account. 

We were unable to find any sort of retrospective, counterfactual analysis that compares the Israel’s material and human losses in 2006 to a forecasting of what losses might have been had Israel not gone to war and instead sustained the pre-war status quo. Bracketing the important issue of Lebanese losses, this kind of an analysis is useful for gauging the effectiveness of Israel’s strategy for protecting its own citizens. In the six years between Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and the war, four Israelis lost their lives on average each year to Hezbollah’s attacks, most of them soldiers. Assuming continuation of the same pattern, it would take almost forty years for Israel to suffer the same number of casualties that it suffered in the war (165 fatalities). Of course, there is no assurance that the non-occurrence of the 2006 war would have yielded continuation of the same casualty rates. Those rates might have been higher, lower, or fluctuated. Nevertheless, they offer a sound starting point for a rational calculation about the expected costs and benefits of war. To our knowledge, no such calculation was made. In choosing war, Israeli leaders did not ask whether existing trends in border clashes presented were tolerable or intolerable. Rather Israel’s security elites observed what they interpreted to indicate a lapse of deterrence and judged that to be the one loss that Israel could not tolerate.

Lack of Nuance

This drive for deterrence indicated an understanding of the threat to Israel’s north that was painted with a very broad brush. Decision-makers made insufficient distinctions among the different actors constituting the Lebanese landscape, no less their varying interests and resources. As Ofer Shelah and Yoav Limor observed, “Few [in Israel’s leadership] were concerned with nuances, such as the differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Lebanese – not only as targets of shelling but as future levers to achieve the goal of strengthening internal pressure on Hezbollah.” They cite a telling example. As the war began, Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri reportedly sent a secret message to Israel promising to remain neutral in the war as long as Israel did not attack his Amal movement, a Shiite rival to Hezbollah. Ignoring this offer, Israel attacked the movement on July 14. 

As damaging was the lack of serious thinking about the weakness of the Lebanese state and government, and how this mediated the effectiveness of triadic coercion. All indicators suggest that the IDF did not act on the basis of careful, convincing analysis indicating that Lebanese authorities had the capacity to coerce Hezbollah into submission, or that Israeli pressure would even compel them to try. Such an analysis would have required attention to the Lebanese government’s institutional competencies, relationship to social forces, structure of political incentives, and domestic constraints. It would likewise have required an estimation of how, precisely, strikes on infrastructure would increase the likelihood that this government would assume the sovereign responsibility that Israel had never observed it assuming in the past. Halutz and the rest of the General Staff showed no interest in such analysis. “Halutz,” Harel and Issacharoff commented, “was keen to strike immediately. He didn’t mull over a detailed analysis of power centers in Lebanon.” 

The lack of nuanced thinking came to the fore on August 9, when the cabinet discussed going beyond the bombing campaign to launch a massive ground invasion. Referring to the Lebanese government, Halutz reportedly said: 

We tell them pay attention: The electricity supply will start to decrease by small portions, the fuel will stop flowing in portions … We will present steps: ten percent, twenty-five, thirty, seventy, a hundred. I don’t know a stronger signal for taking responsibility.

One minister asked Halutz if the government in Beirut had the capacity to stop Hezbollah even if it wanted to. “That,” Halutz reputedly responded, “is not my business.” The Chief of Staff thus relieved himself from the need to account for how exactly his plan would leverage pressure on the state to influence the non-state actor. He simply assumed it would. 

This and other anecdotes from the war suggest that IDF leaders approached the problem of restoring deterrence with a simple, one-size-fits-all solution. The IDF’s almost automatic transfer of the target of triadic coercion from Syria in “Defense of the Land” to Lebanon in “Elevated Waters” and “Ice Breaker” point to the same unnuanced way of thinking. They did not devote careful attention to precisely whom it should try to coerce and how this would increase Israeli security rather than yield new security problems. Instead, the defense establishment, as well as the civilian leaders who trusted its judgment, adopted the assumption that the harder the blow to Lebanon, the more Israel’s deterrence would be restored.

Logic of appropriateness

The discussion thus far has critiqued the strategic soundness of Israeli leaders’ choice of triadic coercion in the 2006 War. However, decision-makers often justified triadic coercion on grounds that had nothing to do with strategic soundness, and instead asserted its moral appropriateness. This conviction stemmed from the widespread view among Israelis that, in withdrawing from Lebanon in 2000, Israel had prioritized international principles and obligations, even at jeopardy to its own national security. 

This understanding carried two implications. First, in Israeli eyes, taking the risk of pulling back to its own side of the border legitimated nearly whatever Israel believed necessary to do to defend that border. In demanding an end to border hostilities, the state was not advancing expansionist or otherwise questionable ambitions. Rather, it was protecting its land and innocent civilians. Fulfilling that mission was the government and army’s obligation to its people. Second, if Israel was demonstrating its respect for Lebanon’s territorial and national sovereignty, then it was Lebanon’s obligation to do the same for Israel. Israelis believed that they had made great sacrifices, and endured great expense to show the world that it was committed to complying with UN resolutions. The Lebanese now had to do the same. This was particularly the case after Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Israel concluded that there was no longer any denying that the Lebanese state was the rightful custodian of its frontiers and thus the correct address to which to direct any complaint about violations.
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.