Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad, Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring (New Texts Out Now)

Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad, Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring (New Texts Out Now)

Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad, Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring (New Texts Out Now)

By : Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad

Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad, Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring (New York University Press, 2020).

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

Rita Stephan and Mounira Charrad (RS & MC): When women flamed in protests from Tunisia to Yemen calling for political reforms, the world was quick to proclaim that Arab women had finally risen. Yet we knew that Arab women had been protesting, voting, running for office, and leading organizations since the 1920s, through the Arab Spring years, and up until today. We saw the events of the Arab Spring as a historical marker that brought women’s activism to the fore and during which women’s activism intensified.

We decided to put out a call for paper on the topic of women’s protest and resistance. We received a larger number of submissions than we ever expected. The submissions offered a diverse range of perspectives focusing on marginalized voices, including rural women, housewives, students, and artists. So as to accommodate as many voices as possible, we limited the length of each chapter. In addition to voices not heard before and discovered through our call for papers, we invited some of the most distinguished scholars in the field of gender politics in the region to contribute to the volume. We chose forty essays that cover sixteen geographical contexts to include even the Arab Diaspora. We combined analysis and testimony by authors from diverse communities in the region as well as Australia, Japan, Europe, and the United States. For the cover, we chose to represent the diversity of Arab women by including an image of the most recent, at the time, revolution in Sudan.

We aim to amplify marginalized voices that are often excluded from the political arena...

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

RS & MC: In Women Rising, we want to elevate women’s voices and highlight their resistance. We aim to amplify marginalized voices that are often excluded from the political arena and to offer an on-the-ground understanding of Arab women’s activism. Now that the Arab Spring 1.0 and 2.0 protests are no longer popular media stories, this book stresses the significance of preserving women’s perspectives on their contributions to political and social change in the region. Women Rising is about women’s political resistance in sixteen countries before, during, and since the Arab Spring protests first began in 2011. It brings together groundbreaking essays by female activists and scholars documenting women’s resistance and provides insight into a diverse range of perspectives and voices across the entire movement. In telling the story of women’s activism, Women Rising offers an in-depth understanding of an important twenty-first century movement. It demonstrates how Arab women have been resisting victimization and marginalization and continue to struggle to be accepted as full citizens with equal rights locally and globally.

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

RS & MC: In the past, Mounira has studied top-down gender reforms, for which state actors were primarily responsible and Rita has examined the role of grassroots women’s movements in MENA countries. The book builds on our respective work and moves in new directions. Rather than focusing on top-down reforms, we now consider women’s call for reforms. Rather than grassroots women’s activism in a given space, we now expand to cover a wide range of situations and countries.

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

RS & MC: Women Rising speaks to scholars interested not only in Middle Eastern gender politics but also in women’s movements throughout the world. In addition, we aim to reach a broad audience concerned with understanding contemporary social and women’s movements. As a textbook, Women Rising makes a great addition to lists of required and recommended readings in graduate and undergraduate courses on feminism, social movements, protests and revolutions, Middle Eastern studies, Middle Eastern women’s studies, and the Arab Spring. More broadly, and because of its highly accessible writing style, the book appeals to a general readership as it offers an overview of Arab feminists’ contributions and struggles for democracy, liberation, and human rights. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

RS: I am working on an edited collection on the intersection of gender and the COVID-19 pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa and addressing challenges and opportunities in public health, policies, inclusion, safety, and economic livelihoods. By taking a gender-focused lens, this book will contribute to understanding the contemporary social impact of public health on women and LGBTQI groups during the crises of the pandemic in various contexts of war, conflict, and instability.

MC: I am working on a book on secular feminist associations in Tunisia. I consider how these associations resisted authoritarianism for several decades and built enough organizational strength to have a voice in national politics in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. I see the book as a contribution to understanding the development of civil society and feminism under conditions of repression in the MENA region and elsewhere.

J: What practices helped you complete this work?

RS & MC: Constant communication is what helped us bring the book to completion.  As co-editors, we responded quickly to each other’s ideas, suggestions, drafts, and revisions. We also maintained tight communication with contributors when we requested revisions or further information. Editors and contributors shared a commitment to the ideas captured in the book. Cooperation and a spirit of team work were key to the project. It also greatly helped that we were on the same wave length. We enjoyed working closely with each other again, as we had when Rita was Mounira’s graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas. This was another step in our intellectual partnership.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction, pp. 2-7) 

Some have been quick to write democracy’s obituary in the region, but we argue that the democratic transition to consolidation is messy, lengthy, and problematic. Like us, however, the contributors to this volume believe that there is no going back. Social and political norms that have traditionally rewarded compliance are now changing to encourage innovation; male dominated social structures and powers are now shaken; and women have gained confidence in their ability to influence politics and to challenge the secular-Islamist power poles. We believe that a social revolution has made women more self-assured of their collective power to fight exclusion, silence and oppression.

Women Rising: In the Arab Spring and Beyond features women fighting for reformsresisting oppression; and engaging in protests and revolutions to change the status quo. The volume also takes these terms beyond the chronological, geographical, and thematic spaces of the Arab Spring and explores women’s agency before and after the events of the Arab Spring themselves. While the majority of the pieces in this volume focus on women’s activism during the Arab Spring uprisings, ten chapters emphasize the expression of women’s agency that predates this era. By providing historical context for their political activism long before the Arab Spring, these contributions shake the claim that Arab women just “woke up” in 2011. In the same vein, women’s struggle for rights extends beyond this historical marker itself, and seven pieces continue into the aftermath of Arab Spring in a variety of angles.

We present resistance, revolution, and reform as three theoretical concepts that correspond to three bodies of literature. The Arab Spring events brought new challenges to the fields of feminism, social revolutions, and gender politics, as we know them.

Resisting Feminist Narrative: Just as Arab women resisted oppressive regimes, their activism was also a form of resistance to how they have been portrayed in the narrative of Western, Transnational, and even Third World feminisms. Their actions during the uprisings revealed the shortcomings of how Arab women were overwhelmingly misrepresented as “victims” and subordinate by nature; who operate in a highly patriarchal setting; and whose activism is limited to “bargaining with patriarchy”. This representation strips Arab women from their feminism and denies them agency and “the ability to exercise their own approaches to local and global problem solving”. Western scholars who claim expertise on global and Middle Eastern gender politics often misinterpret Arab women’s activism as lacking feminist consciousness or identification. Other Western feminists tend to believe that gender struggle is universal; in other words, women everywhere tend to face similar oppression merely by virtue of their sex/gender, and regardless of their cultural or geopolitical context. Therefore, these feminists assume that they can play a leadership role in saving, and speaking on behalf of, Third World, minority, and Arab women.

Equally misrepresentative of Arab women’s activism are transnational feminists who view gender inequality from a single global lens that focuses on the intersection of nationality, sex, class, and race. They assume a unified subaltern identity exists among all victims of colonialism and imperialism. While colonial powers are indeed oppressive, past and present, Arabs’ relations with them have been complicated, before and after the Arab Spring. Internal conflicts and unusual alliances have made Western forces the lesser of two evils in some instances, and have aided Arab women’s resistance of their corrupt regimes, oppressive laws, and restrictive social norms. In their position of rejecting nation-states and viewing nationalism as detrimental to feminism, transnational feminists have claimed hegemony over the discourse on Third World women. The Arab Spring showed that women’s struggle within the context of the nation-state is still relevant, and that the nostalgic feelings of global sisterhood were shaken even within the region’s boundaries.

The literature on Third World feminism does not fully represent Arab feminists either. Despite sharing a colonial heritage with East Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, Arab women view their experience as hybrid. Moreover, Third World feminism literature, which is based mostly on the experience of these East Asian, African, and Latin America women, assumes that, by extension, their struggles apply to Arab women. But this is not the case. Arab women see themselves living in a geography that is hybrid economically, politically, and socially. 

Economically, one third of Arab countries are high income, and the rest are either high middle or lower middle incomePolitically, Arab countries range between oil-rich monarchies, dictatorships, and quasi democracies. Socially, Arab social norms vary between conservative Saudi Arabian and westernized Lebanese. With these diverse characteristics, Arab women tend to construct their feminism vis-à-vis Western, Transnational and Third World Feminisms, on an intersectional understanding of nation, patriarchy, and Islam as both resources for mobilization and grounds for revolution and reform.

Social Revolutions: Numerous experts argue that the Arab Spring uprisings were failed revolutions that have instead produced violence and renewed state repression. They claim that a true shift in politics, institutions, and identities did not occur; and that “most rulers of the Middle East managed to survive the uprisings of 2011… [and] dictators have strengthened their grip on power”. Typically, democratic transitions are multicausal, notoriously difficult, and unpredictably nonlinear. Goldstone reminds us “Revolutions are just the beginning of a long process. Even after a peaceful revolution, it generally takes half a decade for any type of stable regime to consolidate” and Kurzman further posits, “Most new democracies fail. They dissolve into civil wars, or are overtaken by coups or collapse under authoritarian bureaucrats and demagogues”.

We propose to shift the evaluation of the Arab Spring to a different spectrum and caution against declaring the game as “over.” The uprisings of the Arab Spring did not produce revolutions in the sense of “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures” as defined by Skocpol. However, they did raise citizens’ awareness of the power of collective action. We believe that while the foundations for democratic transition were not present before the Arab Spring, they certainly emerged with it. What we see as irreversible after the Arab Spring is the fact that citizens now realize the power of collective action: protest and campaigning. At the very least, the Arab Spring uprisings produced a political environment amenable to advancing women’s political participation and contentious collective action.

Simply put, the revolution of Arab women resulted in their increased participation in public life, representation in decision-making, and emboldened leadership of women’s organizations. The rising rates of women’s participation in the public sphere also led them to assume a larger role in governance. In December 2016, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) reported that women’s representation in parliament (single or lower house) in the Arab states reached 19.1 percent, compared to 12.5 percent in 2010 (the lowest in the world then). This advancement however does not reflect improving conditions for women in all Arab countries. Arab women continue to face “obstacles toward achieving parity in elected legislative bodies” and, despite many great achievements, “stark variations across the region in terms of the numerical presence of women in Arab parliaments” remain.

Since 2011, women have also infiltrated the contentious collective space en masse. They fought for women’s rights and representation as parts of the greater plight for political and economic reforms. They made their claim not only through women’s organizations but also in nongovernmental, nonprofit, governmental, and for-profit entities. Although, to the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive data has been collected on women’s organizations in the region, the chapters in this volume provide evidence on the activism that is taking place. In a nutshell, however diverse their geographies and societies might have been, women’s participation in the Arab Spring has elevated their ability to influence the decision-making process. Despite being underrepresented in the new political order, women are refusing to take the backseat.

Reforms in Gender Politics: Historically, liberalization of women’s rights in the region has been initiated primarily from above. In exploring the process of the expansion of women’s rights in the Tunisian Law of Personal Status in 1956, Charrad shows that reforms were a state-building strategy, initiated in the absence of on-the-ground activism, designed to weaken tribal governance, and to contribute to the formation of a “modern” centralized state. This top-down model locates power as it relates to gender with the state, rather than with civil society or the public. Whereas the bottom-up, grassroots, model suggests that persons’ dissatisfaction with the gendered social order results in pressure and social change, the top-down model demonstrates how the agency of the state shapes power as it relates to gender. Since the Arab Spring women have intensified pressure from below in efforts to introduce reforms in gender politics.

Women collaborated with international actors, civil society organizations, private sector partners, and “willing” state actors to pass a number of gender legal reforms that protect women’s rights, combat gender-based violence, and promote gender equality. Most notably (listed in chronological order from most recent) were laws criminalizing gender-based violence in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria and advancing social and political rights in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

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.