Zainab Saleh, Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (New Texts Out Now)

Zainab Saleh, Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (New Texts Out Now)

Zainab Saleh, Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (New Texts Out Now)

By : Zainab Saleh

Zainab Saleh, Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (Stanford University Press, 2020).

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

Zainab Saleh (ZS): In the summer of 2002, I started my doctoral degree at Columbia University in New York City. The atmosphere was charged with war talk. Everyone was discussing the Bush administration’s preparations to invade Iraq. The antiwar camp was strong on Columbia’s campus. Students and professors demonstrated against the war, organizing sit-ins and lectures to warn of its consequences and expose the hypocrisy of the US government. The pro-war camp, especially outside academia, was more powerful. It agitated about weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein’s oppression of Iraqis, and the alleged links between Hussein and al-Qaeda. The camps shouted at each other, and among themselves, about freedom and democracy versus colonialism, sovereignty versus imperialism, and human rights versus oil. Iraqis, who have borne the brunt of Western governments’ support of Hussein (and their falling out with his regime), and who were going to bear the brunt of another war, were marginal and faceless in these struggles and debates. As the invasion of Iraq proceeded in 2003, the Orientalist discourse about Iraq, which perceived the country as riddled with primordial sentiments, further silenced the voices of Iraqis. The erasure of Iraqi individuals from discussions and news about the US occupation prompted me to focus my research on them. As a privileged Iraqi who now lives abroad, I owe it to Iraqis to offer a more nuanced version of their stories, their hopes, their disappointments, and their losses. Since it was almost impossible to do research in Iraq given the deteriorating situation there, I chose London, home to the largest Iraqi diasporic community in Europe at the time.

The history of US imperial entanglement means that Iraqis have constantly lived in the shadow of wars, authoritarian brutalities, and imperial violence. Through military interventions, the prolonging of wars, and the support of Saddam Hussein, the United States has created conditions of dispossession and death for Iraqis inside Iraq and in diaspora. As an empire, the United States has resorted to practices and policies that unequally distribute life and death; it has exercised the power to kill populations outside its national territories. In these instances, it was not only an illiberal state that was killing its own citizens, but also a liberal state eliminating the lives of imperial subjects in the name of national security, democracy and freedom, and the protection of global peace. I wrote this book to show this history and its impact on Iraqis.

These imperial trajectories also became dynamic terrains in which political, gendered, religious, and class differences were inscribed, invoked, and reconfigured in diaspora.

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

ZS: This book focuses on the interrelationships between empire, subjectivity, and exile. As I listened to Iraqis during my fieldwork (2006 to 2019), I realized that their narratives of displacement, as well as their general life trajectories, were deeply enmeshed in imperial interventions in Iraq that have taken place since the early twentieth century and continue to the present. Iraqis in London, like those in Iraq, are “imperial subjects,” whose lives are inseparable from the histories of Britain and the United States in the region, particularly the latter’s efforts to safeguard US oil companies’ access to Iraqi oil, to deter Iraq from embracing communism during the Cold War, and to support regimes that would guarantee what the United States perceived as regional stability. These imperial trajectories also became dynamic terrains in which political, gendered, religious, and class differences were inscribed, invoked, and reconfigured in diaspora. This book focuses on how Iraqi political subjectivity in diaspora has been shaped by British colonial rule, US imperial intervention, resource extraction, histories of exile, local and international struggles, and other structures of power. It also explores how Iraqis have responded to these events in culturally specific ways. Moreover, it examines the impact of the US occupation on the diasporic experiences of the Iraqi community in London, as well as the transnational connections it opened and the possibilities it foreclosed. 

The story of Iraqi exile and dispossession is closely enmeshed in a genealogy of imperialism. Through its support of authoritarian regimes since the 1960s and the fueling of ongoing wars for the past four decades in Iraq, the United States has inscribed itself on the lives of Iraqis. This imperial violence has led to the exile of thousands of Iraqis and to the formation of diasporic communities abroad. The effects of the US interventions in Iraq have not been contained within the borders of Iraq, but touched Iraqis in diaspora as well. It prolonged their exile, prevented them from enjoying a safe Iraq when they visited after 2003, and caused them anxiety over the fates of relatives and friends and over the possible disintegration of the country. In other words, Iraqis have inhabited an imperial past and present. Scholars have described empire as a “way of life” as far as the United States’ foreign policy is concerned, inscribed in its very institutions and practices. But this is also true for Iraqis, who have lived and experienced empire for decades.

J: Why did you choose to employ empire as a framework for this book?

ZS: This book sheds light on how Britain’s and the United States’ interventions in Iraq have shaped Iraqis’ life trajectories and experiences of exile. While British colonial rule in Iraq has received wide scholarly attention, the role the United States has played in the country since the early 1960s has been mainly limited to studies of the occupation in 2003. Therefore, the book aims to write Iraqis back into the imperial history of particularly the United States. The histories of Iraq and the United States are deeply intertwined. I employ the concept of imperial encounter to shed light on how the United States and Iraq, countries usually seen to occupy different worlds, are entangled. This concept of the encounter decenters the nation state and emphasizes global connections. A mere focus on the nation state to understand histories of violence and displacement conceals the role of Western imperial powers in shaping affairs in Third World countries. The framework of the encounter demonstrates that Iraq and the United States are no longer separate entities, but are entangled in an unequal power relation that has reconfigured the lives of Iraqis. Scholars have advised against approaching the United States as an entity confined to its territorial boundaries; rather, we must examine the relationship between US imperialism and other countries, and US efforts to produce subjects beyond its national boundaries through neoliberal policies. 

I found Ann Stoler’s concept of disassemblage very helpful in thinking about US empire, and the connections between different imperial formations. In terms of US imperial interventions in the world, Iraq is not an exceptional case. Scholars have begun to historicize the debate on US imperialism and to situate the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan within the imperial legacy of the Unites States. Thus, the War on Terror after 9/11 can be seen as part and parcel of a long history of US expansion and global domination. Wars and military occupation were foundational to the United States in that genocidal violence was central to its establishment as a settler-colonial state, as well as to its political and economic hegemony. A permanent state of war, as far as the United States is concerned, thus represents a historical continuum of conquest, cleansing of new frontiers, and control of territories abroad. This approach to empire emphasizes connections between settler colonialism, racism, economic hegemony, and political interventions. Thus, the decades-long intervention of the United States in Iraq can be seen as part of a continuum of different imperial formations throughout the world. US empire can no longer be seen as a singular event or a relic of the past. Rather, it has persisted throughout the centuries, brought various peoples into its orbit, and left individual lives in ruins.

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

ZS: I hope that this book reaches both academic and general audience, particularly those who are interested in US imperial formations throughout the world, displacement, and subjectivity. To me, the story of Iraqi exile is part of a larger narrative about empire and exile, which is not limited to Iraq or the Middle East.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

ZS: Currently, I am working on a book, titled Uprooted Memories: Citizenship, Denaturalization, and Deportation in Iraq. This book project examines the citizenship laws and legal practices enacted by different Iraqi governments that led to the denaturalization and deportation of Iraqi Jews, Iraqi communists, and the so-called Iraqis of Iranian origin throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as the mechanisms that Iraqis devised to challenge state definitions of citizenship and to assert belonging to their homeland. Since its establishment in 1921, the Iraqi state—whether under monarchical, republican, or military regimes—has been responsible for the displacement and expulsion of different segments of the Iraqi population. These forced migrations from Iraq have been closely tied to projects of state-making and efforts to assert sovereignty, govern a diverse country, control and discipline groups that are seen as a threat, and silence oppositional political movements. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this project shows how this long history of persecution and migration led to the emergence of Iraqi communities in diaspora and to heated debates about belonging that continue today—and provide insight into forms of citizenship that emerge outside of state recognition, with different groups resorting to political mobilization and the creation of networks in order to assert belonging to Iraq.

 

Excerpt from the book (from Introduction: “Empire and Subjectivity,” pp. 19-24)

Just as Iraqi history has been entangled in national and imperial events, my London-based interlocutors’ efforts to carve out an Iraqi subjectivity have been historically contingent processes that involved different colonial and imperial powers, disciplinary national institutions, and personal circumstances and experiences. Different social and political constellations—including the state, family and community, colonial and imperial realities, and market logics—constitute the individual as a subject through social control. However, governmentality is not the only venue through which a subject is produced. Through inhabiting different political and social spaces, which also intersect with class and gender, subjects have the opportunity to reflect on their circumstances and fashion a self based on their experiences. Just as historically contingent settings constitute individuals as subjects, people themselves can carve a sense of selfhood through their narratives and attempts to make sense of their positions in the present and imagined future. 

Colonial and imperial relations have played a major role in defining Iraqis’ sense of selfhood, whether in the past or in the present. For older Iraqis who came of age under British colonial rule in Iraq, the solution to end colonial realities and to do away with the pro-British and feudal Iraqi government was through anticolonial struggle. By organizing in the underground Iraqi Communist Party and participating in protests against treaties that the British officials imposed on Iraq and against social inequality, young Iraqis at the time saw themselves as revolutionaries who were engaged in a struggle to bring about radical transformations in Iraq that would constitute a total rupture with the status quo. As such, the British presence in Iraq shaped consciousness of oneself as a revolutionary subject inhabiting a historical moment that swept Third World countries with anticolonial spirit.

Unlike in Egypt and India, the British in Iraq did not aim to produce Iraqi subjects through regulation of the individual body or techniques of social control. Rather, they resorted to aerial bombardment, servitude, and corporal punishment as means to control and discipline the population. They also engaged in heated debates with Iraqi officials and educators over reforming the educational system, the family, and the citizenship law. The British thought of development as the ability to access Iraq’s natural resources, especially oil, and to develop the country according to native lines. British officials in Iraq were against the expansion of the public school system, fearing that over-education would produce subjects engaged in political agitation and unwilling to do manual labor. Iraqi nationalists, by contrast, saw the school and the family as arenas of social reform and economic development, which aimed to produce new Iraqi subjects worthy of sovereignty. They particularly saw that educating young women would produce modern mothers who were capable of raising healthy citizens. However, the family and the school did not become sites to produce docile and governable subjects. Rather, they emerged as hubs for revolutionary action and imagination. Older Iraqis spoke of progressive and nationalist parents and brothers who from a young age made them aware of social inequality in the Iraqi society and of anticolonial struggle worldwide. Once they went to secondary schools, they were further exposed to communist and nationalist trends that advocated for political freedom, women’s liberation, and social justice, all of which fueled their political and social activism.

In addition to colonial relations, class, gender, and religious sensibilities also played a role in shaping how my interlocutors perceived themselves and other Iraqis. When older Iraqis reminisced about the “good old days” as a time of political mobilization, social vibrancy, and cultural renaissance, they often spoke about the experience of middle-class Baghdadis whose families could afford to send both their sons and daughters to school and college and who had the means to participate in the intellectual and artistic scene in the capital. This imagination of the vibrant past sidelined the experiences of the majority of Iraqis, who lived in abject poverty under the monarchy. When the poor figured into these narratives, they were presented as people in need of social intervention—through education and medical care—to refashion them as healthy citizens who could leave behind their backward traditions and participate in the development of the country. As such, the revolutionary project that aimed to produce modern subjects dedicated to national liberation and progress was also disciplinary in its outlook toward the poor. These notions of the self were rooted in debates on modernity, tradition, and religion. Iraqis who participated in the anticolonial struggle and endorsed communist ideals saw themselves as modern and progressive subjects who were doing away with tradition—such as the subordination of women and outmoded religious practices—and imagining a utopian future of sovereignty and equality. Moreover, this construction of the self as a revolutionary subject was gendered to a great extent in that the status of women became the marker of the modernity of the nation and the self. The debate over women’s access to legal and political rights became a heated issue over national liberation and the role of women in contributing to the building of a modern state in Iraq.

While the idea of Iraqis as revolutionaries became a prevailing discourse in diaspora, it began to be challenged by another discourse of the self, namely the construction of Iraqis as pious selves. With the rise of religiosity in diaspora since the 1990s, some of the younger Iraqis in London began to identify themselves as modern pious Muslims, whose idea of selfhood combined notions of religiosity, nationhood, and modernity. Rather than a hub for revolutionary ideas, Iraq emerges as a land of holy cities and Shi‘i religious history that dates back to the seventh century. However, this discourse of the self constituted a rupture with religious practices of the past. Young religious Iraqis in London saw themselves as different from their parents, who practiced religion out of habit, rather than a true understanding based on the reading of religious texts. They saw this form of religiosity as modern in its outlook in that it aimed to break away from a traditional approach that entailed the blind following of religious scholars. This modern, pious self was combined with a strong sense of attachment to Iraq as a nation-state because families had instilled nationalistic feelings in the youth through recurrent reminiscences of Iraq as a place of prosperity and social vibrancy. While this was a class-based discourse in its yearning for “the golden age of Iraq,” it was also gendered in that historical religious women emerged as figures to emulate in facing a life defined by exile and diaspora. Religious women who played a major role in historical events in the past and had formidable religious knowledge—especially Prophet Mohammed’s daughter and granddaughter—became role models for young religious women, who could not relate to communist women with their negative attitude toward religion. 

The imagination of oneself as a revolutionary or a pious Muslim took place against the backdrop of exile and displacement, as well as the fragmentation of Iraq brought about by the U.S. intervention in Iraq for decades. The chronic conditions of dispossession under which Iraqis in Iraq and diaspora lived prompted questions of what is politically possible and what matters most in the making and unmaking of the self. After decades of exile and viewing from afar the wars and violence raging in their homeland, Iraqis in London grappled with what it means to be an Iraqi. The response of Iraqis to this status quo no longer consisted in anti-imperial struggle against the United States. The failure of the postcolonial project of freedom and prosperity and the inability to imagine alternative futures after decades of authoritarianism and war prompted Iraqis in London to perceive Iraqis who arrived in London after 2003 through a narrative of endurance. The Iraqi subject after 2003 was no longer a revolutionary who dreamed of a radical break with the realities of colonialism and inequality through anticolonial struggle, nor was this subject the pious Muslim who believed that a religious project could be the solution to the situation in Iraq. Rather, U.S. imperialism had produced Iraqis as enduring subjects who persisted under conditions of dispossession. To Iraqis who had arrived in London in the late 1970s and early 1990s, it was the Iraqis who had stayed in Iraq throughout Saddam Hussein’s reign and who had been displaced after the U.S. occupation, who had persisted and suffered through decades of wars and sanctions that emerged as the authentic Iraqis. It was the ability to endure and linger under precarious conditions of imperial and national violence, economic deprivation, and legal uncertainty that engendered a new sensibility of what it means to be an Iraqi. Providing an account of oneself became a survival technique that aimed to combat the politics of erasure. Whereas the U.S. imperial project was embedded in the denial of Iraqis’ humanity, Iraqis found different ways to form themselves as subjects in order to survive and give meaning to their lives. 

Throughout the span of my fieldwork in London (2006–2019), I was struck by the efforts of Iraqis to carve out political subjectivities and to provide an alternative account of events in Iraq. These debates took place against the backdrop of the desire to show that Iraqis were true nationalists who felt a strong attachment to Iraq and that the salience of sectarian affiliations after 2003 marked a shift in the political landscape in Iraq and forms of self-making. As such, these narratives speak to the fact that subject formation was shaped by colonial rule; imperial interventions; anticolonial struggle; familial and state practices; and gendered, classed, and religious sensibilities. Moreover, the efforts to construct an Iraqi self took place in the context of a diasporic existence brought about by the U.S. interventions in Iraq since the late 1950s until the present.

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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.