Carly Beckerman, Unexpected State: British Politics and the Creation of Israel (New Texts Out Now)

Carly Beckerman, Unexpected State: British Politics and the Creation of Israel (New Texts Out Now)

Carly Beckerman, Unexpected State: British Politics and the Creation of Israel (New Texts Out Now)

By : Carly Beckerman

Carly Beckerman, Unexpected State: British Politics and the Creation of Israel (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020). 

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

Carly Beckerman (CB): The first book I read about Britain in the Middle East was Tom Segev’s One Palestine, Complete. He is a talented writer and I fell completely in love with the topic, but the book and lots of other works on the British Mandate also niggled at me. Their explanations of British politicians’ motives towards Jews and Arabs in Palestine always struck me as inauthentic, and I realized that their interpretations of British behavior mostly relied on the letters and diaries from prominent Zionists at the time. I decided to do my own investigation, going back to the British National Archives in Kew, as well as British politicians’ personal papers and collections held all over the United Kingdom, at the United Nations archives, and at the Truman Presidential Library in the United States. This archival work was often very difficult, trudging through huge volumes of forgotten Foreign Office and Colonial Office lore, but at times it was also tragic. In New York I held the crumbling surveys completed by Jewish displaced persons that pleaded over and over again for a new life in Palestine since losing mothers, children, fathers, brothers, and whole villages to the ravages of death camps. I also read the letters of British servicemen who casually joked about torturing young Palestinian men while informing their doting British mothers that all was well since jelly was served in the canteen that day. Archives can be haunting. 

It was not always serious, however, and my favorite part was the gossip. I found out, for example, that the hostesses of Britain’s political elite had to store their silver when inviting the War Secretary to a function. Lord Kitchener, of the famous “Your Country Needs You” posters, was a notorious kleptomaniac who everyone was too polite to confront. The scathing manner in which British politicians and their wives discussed one another was also an endless source of delight.

The work has also felt important in a small way. In figuring out why Britain did what it did with Zionism and the Palestine Mandate, I ended up locating some more truths and falsehoods in both Israeli and Palestinian narratives of the time—competing memories of power and victimization that still play into their relationship today. As hardly any British people even know about the Empire’s history in Palestine, it has felt very worthwhile uncovering more of our role, intentions, and mistakes. I am very proud of the work and I hope that it gives readers some useful different perspectives. 

Rather than well thought-out strategy, what the cases reveal is a chaotic process of muddling through ...

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

CB: The book explains the importance of narratives today and introduces the reader to a political psychology approach to the study of this history. It then goes through four detailed case studies of British policymaking in Palestine. Although the Balfour Declaration has received a great deal of scholarly attention, the lesser episodes surrounding the Churchill White Paper, the reversal of the Passfield White Paper, the partition commissions, and the British promise of an independent Arab Palestine (before withdrawing entirely) are explored in depth. Rather than well thought-out strategy, what the cases reveal is a chaotic process of muddling through, as British officials changed the world in ways they did not understand in order to stave off political opposition and criticism at home. Rifts and misunderstandings in the British-American relationship over Zionism were particularly interesting to research.  

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

CB: This is my first book, but it is based on my PhD research and several academic articles and book chapters that deal with British foreign policy in the Middle East. My general interest is in the most complex of conflicts and security problems and why politicians make seemingly irrational decisions.

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

CB: I hope that anyone interested in Israeli and Palestinian history will want to read the book. That is especially true for people who have strong feelings and opinions about one or both communities, as understanding more of the British interpretation of events makes it harder to have easily defined opinions about any violence and peace processes that have happened subsequently. It is difficult to read the accounts of British politicians in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s and not see repetition in the history of the conflict and outside attempts to solve it.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

CB: I am still working on political decision-making towards the Middle East, but I am particularly interested in the role of emerging technologies in waging wars and promoting peace, and the tools they provide for diplomacy and collective problem solving. My next book is in collaboration with colleagues at Dartmouth College’s Institute for Security, Technology, and Society; it explores how Artificial Intelligence is challenging old paradigms of international affairs, security, and strategy. 

J: What material do you wish you could have included in the book but could not?

CB: One of the most surprising things about archival research in the United States was how much remains redacted. My requests at the United States archive in Maryland were covered in black and totally useless. Luckily, President Truman and his team were enthusiastic composers of memos, letters, and diaries, and so I got the unpolished version of events from his presidential library. Some of the documents were still bound with original, literal, bureaucratic “red tape.” At the United Nations, I was allowed one tiny folder of material at a time, and an archivist had to go through and remove all of the sheets that were off limits. These were documents from the League of Nations in the 1920s, and I have always wondered what information in those files could possibly remain too sensitive for researchers to view almost an entire century later.

 

Excerpt from the book

Introduction

The Balfour Declaration is a document that, despite having been written in 1917, still stirs staunch pride or vehement disgust, depending on who you ask. It was a brief but momentous memo, ostensibly from (but not written by) British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour. Although delivered to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild and published in The Times, Balfour’s note was, realistically, addressed to Jews around the world as it pledged Britain’s support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Since British forces invaded the Holy Land a month after the letter was issued and only vacated Palestine in 1948 as Israel formally declared its existence, Balfour’s declaration has achieved a somewhat contradictory symbolic status—as a sign of Britain’s laudable achievement in, and devastating culpability for, the subsequent triumph of Zionism

Former British prime minister David Cameron described this historic document as “the moment when the State of Israel went from a dream to a plan,” but it is generally considered throughout the Arab world to be Britain’s “original sin.” Supporting one viewpoint over the other depends on personal political preferences, but neither perspective is rooted in fact. The idea that Balfour signed a letter commencing the intentional and purposeful march toward Israeli statehood—in a territory that, at the time, was part of an Islamic empire and contained relatively few Jews—has become alarmingly unquestionable. Challenging this dichotomous history of British sentiment/animosity is always a precarious endeavor, but that is precisely what this book intends to do. Unexpected State aims, for the first time, to explain the how and the why behind Britain’s policies for Palestine. It argues that domestic politics in Westminster played a vital and inadvertent role in British patronage of and then leniency toward Zionism, allowing the British Empire to foster a Jewish national home and suppress Arab rebellion. Therefore, this book argues that the “muddling through” of everyday British politics was instrumental in conceiving and gestating a Jewish state.

By investigating how British governments endured moments of crisis with the representatives of Zionism, and how they dealt with indecision over the future of Palestine, it is possible to uncover a relatively clear pattern. The tumult of Westminster politics and Whitehall bureaucracy harnessed the idea of a Jewish presence in Palestine as a convenient political football—an issue to be analogized with and used pointedly to address other more pressing concerns, such as Bolshevism in the 1920s, Muslim riots in India in the early 1930s, and appeasement shortly before the start of World War II. The result was a stumbling, ad hoc policy journey toward Israel’s birth that never followed any centralized plan. Rather, for the British Empire of 1917, conditions culminating in Israeli independence were distinctly unlikely and unexpected.

Why such a situation occurred, however, is not exactly a straightforward inquiry, and the answer is relevant to a much wider discourse than merely the annals of obscure historical analysis. An ongoing search for peace in the Middle East cannot ignore how contemporary perceptions of the conflict are intimately bound to the parties’ understanding of their shared history. There are, naturally, multiple versions of this history, but, although the importance of Britain’s tenure in Palestine is hardly challenged, curiously few scholars have asked how British policy toward Palestine was made. This refers particularly to high policy decided by the cabinet in Westminster rather than the day-to-day activities of administering the territory, which was conducted chiefly through the bureaucracy of the Colonial Office. 

What emerges within the relevant literature, instead, is a consistent recourse to stubborn, unsubstantiated myths about British intentions and motivations—misconceptions that, in turn, fuel other attitudes that are distinctly unhelpful, such as the idea of an all-powerful Zionist lobby or the championing of Palestinian victimhood. This is explained extensively in chapter 1, but the “myths” on trial here are broadly those that highlight British politicians’ personal feelings toward Jews or Arabs, as though these prejudices must have had a substantial impact on Britain’s imperial planning. The main problem with this thinking is that it is too easy to describe any number of contextual factors that may have influenced the direction of British policy. However, the evidence that bias drove or determined Britain’s relationship with Zionism and Palestine is frequently lacking. As the decision makers themselves are long dead and understandably unavailable for cross-examination, how then is it possible to determine, with any accuracy, what thought processes occupied their minds during the interwar period? 

Bearing in mind this question, it is important to stress that some valid boundaries must be placed on the themes and issues explored in this type of investigation. Therefore, this book uses an innovative politics-first approach to illustrate four critical junctures of Britain’s policy making between the beginning of its occupation of Palestine in December 1917 and its withdrawal in May 1948. The following chapters argue that, contrary to the established literature on Mandate Palestine, British high policy reflected a stark lack of viable alternatives that left little room for consideration of personal biases, allegiances, or sentimental attachments to either Zionism or Arab nationalism during the tense moments when choices had to be made. This approach reveals how decisions about the future of Palestine were frequently more concerned with fighting narrow domestic or broader international political battles than preventing or dealing with a burgeoning conflict in a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean. 

As many previous books have focused chiefly on day-to-day interactions in Palestine, they have relied heavily on the original documentation of the Palestine administration and the high commissioner as well as his dealings with the Colonial Office in London and the diaries and memoirs of prominent Zionist leaders such as Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. This has meant that scholarly discussions about British policy decisions have been conducted almost exclusively through the prism of external parties’ opinions about what was going on in London at the time. As this book concentrates specifically on British policy decisions, the focus has been placed on British archives as well as relevant collections held in the United States that are useful for examining the postwar Mandate period. 

The Politics-First Approach

British policies generated many of the “demographic, economic, military, and organizational” conditions that were essential for Israel to achieve its statehood, so a thorough investigation into the reasoning and motivations that informed British policy making helps clarify a major moment in world history. Toward this end, this book deals primarily with the dynamics of choice in British policy making. It asks, given the range of available options, How and why did British governments make their final decisions? What factors did and did not influence those choices? Answering these questions is not simply a matter of combing the archives. Indeed, a great deal of the scholarship related to British Palestine has struggled in this regard because it ignores principles of political psychology. Without an appreciation for how the political brain operates, it is very difficult to discern causes from contexts.

Therefore, this book is based on a fundamental premise derived from political psychology—that the primary and immediate consideration of decision makers in government is their own political survival, making every other concern secondary. Therefore, policy makers faced with a crisis and a range of potential options will automatically discard any courses of action that threaten their political careers, deciding what to do based only on the possibilities that are leftover. Crucially, it does not matter how beneficial any of the discarded alternatives would have been for the economy, or the military, or the country as a whole—that benefit could not compensate for the political risk felt by politicians. This amounts to a “politics-first” way of understanding how leaders make choices, and it helps provide a much better understanding of policies that seem to have been irrational or counterproductive.

In applying this lens to Britain’s Palestine policy at four key junctures during the Palestine Mandate, it is possible to demonstrate why the cabinet decided to pursue action that worsened the burgeoning conflict between Palestine’s two communities, sometimes in a manner that seemed entirely contrary to British interests, and how these policy decisions were often concluded without direct reference to the desires of either Zionists or Palestinian Arabs. This analysis provides an invaluable contribution, revealing how the development of policy in Palestine was based primarily on the need to satisfy British domestic political concerns. This was not because Palestine was unimportant but, rather, because Palestine policy frequently overlapped with multiple issues more crucial to the political survival of individual governments. 

Therefore, this book highlights precisely how, while actual decisions varied during the British Mandate, Palestine policy making was driven by mechanisms that significantly narrowed the scope of options available to politicians as they tried to deal with successive crises. This means that although colorful, interesting, and engaging, the personal quirks, biases, and beliefs of decision makers had little demonstrable impact. There simply was no room, no space, for these feelings, because successive governments during this period faced a series of overly precarious political circumstances in general. This created a dynamic of “muddling through” that is detailed and evidenced in later chapters, demonstrating how the political climate prevented any kind of British grand strategy for the future birth of a Jewish state.

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.