Banu Karaca, The National Frame: Art and State Violence in Turkey and Germany (New Texts Out Now)

Banu Karaca, The National Frame: Art and State Violence in Turkey and Germany (New Texts Out Now)

Banu Karaca, The National Frame: Art and State Violence in Turkey and Germany (New Texts Out Now)

By : Banu Karaca

Banu Karaca, The National Frame: Art and State Violence in Turkey and Germany (Fordham University Press, 2021).

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

Banu Karaca (BK): The politics of art and the ways in which art is governed have preoccupied me for quite some time. The comparative reading of Turkey and Germany that The National Frame offers was motivated by their strikingly similar struggles in claiming modern nationhood through the arts. I came across these similarities by happenstance. When reading Martin Stokes’s account of Turkey’s cultural policy in his The Arabesk Debate, I was struck how much it mirrored discussions in Germany, where I had grown up. Comparisons between Turkey and Germany have been largely foreclosed by geopolitical imaginaries that have construed the world in terms of “East” and “West,” and, more recently, “Islam” and “Christianity.” Grappling with this foreclosure, I wondered what would happen when one takes seriously that Germany and Turkey, just as their imperial formations, share a long and troubling history of cultural encounters and political affiliations; when one does not center radical alterity but begins with the assumption of familiarity, intimacy, and co-constitution? Initially, the project was animated by two rather simple questions: How have these historical parallels produced such vastly different outcomes? And to what extent do these histories shape contemporary art worlds in Turkey and Germany? I pursued these questions through an ethnography of the art settings of Istanbul and Berlin by examining how artists speak about their work and how they navigate the art world, including state policies pertaining to the arts.

Tracing the trajectories of cultural policy in Turkey and Germany, I came to understand this field of statecraft as a push and pull between the political expediency of art—mainly mediated through ideas of art as a greater good—and the desire to control its transformative potential. I interviewed corporate sponsors, who cast themselves as civil society actors and hence as alternatives to the state, while de facto sharing in a division of labor with the state in governing the arts. I began to follow the monies that sustain the art world, and that, for the most part, are rooted in histories of state violence and dispossession. I found that collectors describe their practices as intensely personal, while always also referencing the national frame to legitimize their possession of artworks. Censorship was frequently set in motion when artists engaged unfaced experiences of state violence. It is no coincidence that, since the 2000s, such censorship has drawn on the vocabulary of the “global war on terror” to mark moments in which art was seen to cede its “civilizing” function.

And, lastly, I wanted to look at the role of art in urban space, at biennials and large-scale arts events that increasingly have had to content with how deeply dispossession, genocide, exile, war, and military violence remain intertwined with the history of art and its institutions. By the end of this research, the bulk of which covers the period between 2005 and 2011, I arrived at conceptualizing the art world as a terrain of struggle in which the supposed inherent goodness of art, its assumed civilizing power, is constantly constructed and disrupted. But even more so, it was the joint analysis of the cases of Turkey and Germany, that crystallized how the production, circulation, and presentation—indeed the very understanding—of art are predicated on histories of violence and their disavowal. It is this disavowal that keeps calling art back into the national frame.

It examines art as a site for “taming” social difference and obscuring state violence but also as a space for emancipatory politics ...

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

BK: The book works its way through the debates on the arts in nationalist projects, emphasizing the unease that characterizes cultural policy. For instance, it probes the obstacles in situating first West and then a reunited Germany firmly within the artistic heritage of “the West.” This move entailed concerted efforts to suppress both the history of East Germany’s socialist art and of the anti-modernism that had guided German cultural policy before the Third Reich. It reads the contingencies of this process along with those of the “Turkification” of Turkey, with cultural policies that until very recently had the dual mission of researching and disseminating a “Turkish culture” that was supposedly “already out there” and still coming into being, the very foundation of the republic and yet—given the unwieldy heterogeneity of its population—nowhere to be found. 

The National Frame discusses how the art worlds of Istanbul and Berlin have been shaped by genocidal violence and dispossession, a dispossession that is now reproduced through the enterprising of art and the aestheticization of business. It examines art as a site for “taming” social difference and obscuring state violence but also as a space for emancipatory politics, for accounting for the past and imagining different futures.

The book closes with recent artistic exchanges between Turkey and Germany, the latest iterations of an enduring asymmetric perception, in which art from Turkey continues to be categorized as either “ethnic cultural production” rather than art, or first and foremost “political.” Here the “political” denotes local or national concerns that stand in contrast to the purported universalism of unmarked German art. The book brings these analyses together by drawing on critical and postcolonial theory, art theory and aesthetics, political anthropology, and the anthropology of art to show that despite the intensified and much-studied globalization of the arts, artistic practices, arts patronage, and sponsorship, collecting and curating art, and the modalities of censorship continue to be refracted through the conceptual lens of the nation-state.

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

BK: My hope is that the book will be a companion to scholars interested in local formations of the global art world, and to those who engage questions of art and memory, state violence, aesthetics, urban and museum studies as well as institutional critique. The goal was to make the book as accessible as possible to enter into a dialogue with scholars and practitioners in the arts, cultural policy, and the public humanities, as well as general readerships interested in the inner workings of the art world.

At this moment, there is heightened attention to how imperial and colonial violence have been constitutive for historical collections of art—and for monumental regimes the world over. With grassroots organizing, this attention is now more systematically reaching contemporary arts institutions. I see The National Frame as a contribution to these struggles that seek to (re)claim the emancipatory potential of art by showing that state violence and dispossession are not aberrations or “solely” constitutive for collections of the past, but the structuring elements of the contemporary art world and its institutional landscape. This seems especially important as calls to decolonialize the museum are met with a vicious backlash and artistic memory is (once again) under attack by nationalist, right-wing politics. Since unleashing military violence on Kurdish cities in 2015, Turkey has experienced a deterioration of human rights and with it arts freedom, which has deepened in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt of 2016. The two-year state of emergency, now codified into law, has allowed the government to target independent arts spaces, first in the Kurdish provinces and then the entire country, confiscate their archives, and tear down community memorials honoring victims of state violence. In Berlin, the Humboldt Forum, a partially resurrected palace indexing Prussian imperialism, aims to bring the city’s non-European collections and their problematic provenance to its famed museum island. At the same time, the third largest party in parliament, the right-wing Alternative for Germany, is pursuing its agenda for a return to “German art” by targeting BPOC art spaces and inundating federal and local cultural departments with inquiries asking for “justifications” for arts funding that goes abroad or to “non-German” artists (that is, artists with an immigrant background) at home. These are but a few examples of how ideas of “national art” continue to hold their sway in politics and how national frames keep inserting themselves back into the globalized art world.

J: What other projects are you working on now? 

BK: Currently, I am working on two interrelated projects that examine how both the possession and dispossession of art—that is, questions of ownership and loss—have shaped the knowledge production on art and heritage. One strand of this research focuses on episodes of state violence against non-Muslims in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish republic, beginning with the Armenian genocide, during which artworks were looted, confiscated, or made illegible. The second strand is a more general contemplation of the role that imperial and colonial plunder and the experience of the Nazi art loot have played in shaping international heritage regimes, especially in legal terms. Along with the debates on restitution, I continue to work on questions of arts freedom and censorship.

J: How has it been to launch a book during a pandemic? 

BK: Initially, I feared that it might be a bit of an anticlimactic experience, as I was unsure as to what extent online formats would work. But actually, it has given me a chance not only to give book talks at the university departments that kindly invited me, but also to virtually visit classes and meet with independent reading groups and art world practitioners across the globe. While I hope that we can be in each other’s presence again soon, rather than across small rectangles on a screen, I am truly grateful for these generative, intimate gatherings.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the introduction: Intimate Encounters, pp. 1-3, 16-17)

Intimate Encounters

Istanbul, October 5, 1993. Enter Kenan Evren, retired chief of the military staff and leader of the infamous 1980 coup d’état. During his presidency (1980—1989) and under his direct orders, 650,000 people were taken into custody and tortured, at least three hundred died or disappeared under unknown circumstances, tens of thousands had to leave the country, more than one and a half million were blacklisted, fifty people received the death penalty, nine hundred films were banned, and unions and associational life in Turkey were completely disbanded. But on this day, he did not don his military uniform, nor was he receiving accolades for this political “service.” He was celebrating his first solo show at Aksanat. The gallery had opened only a few months prior, designed to be the cultural flagship of Akbank, the banking arm of the Sabancı conglomerate. The exhibition, it seemed, was well received. Politicians, business leaders, and retired army officers were in attendance, the press interest was lively, and at least one painting was sold for the sensationally high price of 500 million lira (about $35,592 at the time, and a hefty sum for the local art market in those days). One notable absence, however, marked the event: Artists and curators, incensed by the exhibition, had decided to boycott the opening. We would hear from them the next day, in a review written by the art critic Ahu Antmen (1993) for the daily Cumhuriyet: The painter Mehmet Güleryüz suggested that Evren had better chosen a prison to show his paintings. The artist Gülsün Karamustafa found it inconceivable to “accept Evren as a colleague,” and Orhan Taylan went even further, noting that it was “shameful" for the entire discipline of painting that Evren, the “enemy of democracy” incarnate, had taken to “paint and brush.”

How can one explain the discomfort and outrage that this exhibition induced? It was the obvious connection between art and power, politics and money, the unmasked presence of the military-industrial complex in the art world. The outrage was directed at the effort of an ex-dictator to legitimize, even absolve, himself through the recognition of the art world. It was, most likely, further fueled by the fact that when in office, Evren had personally intervened in art exhibitions and openly professed his distaste for abstract and conceptual art. Perhaps it was also that he reinforced the almost stereotypical image of the artist-dictator or that he repudiated the curiously powerful idea that someone “sensitive to art” cannot possibly be such a bad person."

Fast forward to Berlin, April 2004. Another arts institution, another controversy. The Hamburger Bahnhof, part of the national gallery network of the State of Berlin, announced that it had secured a seven-year loan from the collection of Friedrich Christian Flick. Having negotiated the loan, the German government presented it as a win for the city and its inhabitants. The; financially squeezed German capital had long been hampered in its pursuit for new acquisitions for its museums, and this loan would enhance the state collection. The first exhibition curated from the Flick loan was to be presented in 2005. But then, news emerged that Flick had assembled his collection of 2,500 pieces of contemporary art and modern masters with the Nazi fortune accumulated by his grandfather, Friedrich Flick. The latter had successfully avoided paying reparations to the thousands of forced laborers, mostly Eastern European Jews, he had exploited during the Third Reich, and this despite his conviction at the Nuremberg Trials. Berlin’s art world was up in arms. For the local artists’ association Friedrich Christian Flick’s deal with the Hamburger Bahnhof was nothing short of an attempt to whitewash his family name through art. To make matters worse, he had managed to do so by having his collection exhibited in a public museum, and hence at the taxpayers’ expense, as the upkeep, storage, and insurance of the artworks in question would be covered by the state.

I take these two examples, the tensions and unease they produced, as ethnographic occasions to tackle understandings of art and its emancipatory potential, of art as a reflection of Enlightenment values, and an avenue for critique and self-reflection. Today, art is described through a wide range of theories and positions, yet the majority, if not all, of public and official discourses on the national (the state) and supranational level (for example, UNESCO or the European Union) share the assumption that art is inherently good. This idea of the inherent goodness of art, its daily trials and tribulations, be they structural or contingent, forms the basis of this book. While transnationalism and globalization are increasingly at the forefront of both artistic practices and the scholarly analysis of art – and for good reason – l propose to reexamine what it means that the idea of the emancipatory potential of art has been intrinsically bound up with the history of the nation-state and, hence, understandings of what it means to be modern, indeed what it means to be “civilized.” Wrestling with the paradox that within a globalized art world dominant understandings of art remain refracted through the national frame, this book interrogates the assumption of the inherent goodness of art through, against, and across the national contexts of Turkey and Germany. It does so by exploring instances that cast doubts on the assumed civilizing power of art, that unsettle discourses on art as a vanguard of freedom and democracy. It proposes that exclusionary narratives of national art histories, censorship, and the role of economic dispossession in the assemblage of art collections, that is, different forms of state violence, are as important to understanding art as is its emancipatory potential.

[…] The Enduring Power of Asymmetric Perception 

In their video work Road to Tate Modern (2003), Şener Özmen and Erkan Özgen appear to us as present-day versions of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Donning suits and ties, they are on horse- and donkeyback respectively, with Özmen carrying the iconic Quixotian spear – in his case, a long stick. Riding through the mountainous outskirts of Diyarbakir, where both artists hail from, they seem weary. A soft song hummed in the background accompanies them. 

Tired from the long journey – forty days and forty nights, according to Özgen/Panza – they decide to refresh themselves at a little stream that cuts through the arid landscape. Once back in the saddle and a little farther along the way, they cross paths with another traveler. Addressing him in Kurdish, they say that they have lost their way and ask which path to take to reach the Tate Modern. With gestures and words, the traveler directs them up the mountain. "Is it far?” they ask. “Yes,” he replies, “yes, it is very far, but you can make it.” Road to the Tate Modern humorously yet forcefully questions the possibility of arriving at the center of the global art world – exemplified by the seemingly unreachable Tate Modern – when producing in its double “periphery.” Here, the notion of periphery denotes not merely Turkey, or Istanbul for that matter, but the war-torn Kurdish landscape. Özmen and Özgen’s work poignantly addresses the fact that where artists come from not only affects the conditions of artistic production but continues to shape the perception of their work. The global hierarchy of value pervades the transnational circulation of contemporary art through dichotomies of “East” and “West,” “ethnic art” and “art proper,” “artistic centers” and “peripheries.” […]

A more recent inflection of this assessment is the notion that art from Turkey is first and foremost “political” – with political denoting local or national concerns. In contrast, German art is now understood as unquestionably modern and as not (or at least not necessarily or primarily) related to national politics. “Now” is the operative term here, since this has not always been the case, not least in the official German imagination, in which modernism in the arts was long identified as decidedly “un-German.” It was, after all, not until the 19508 that West Germany adopted explicitly Occidental cultural policies to transcend long-standing anti-Western and antimodernist currents as part of its post-World War II rehabilitation into the international community, a process that the historian Konrad Jarausch (2006) has described as "recivilizing Germany” – a term I will return to in more detail in the course of the book. What makes this asymmetric perception even more notable is that Turkey embarked on aligning itself with the “West" by “modernizing” its artistic canon as early as 1923. As Ottoman art, like all aspects of its cultural landscape, was deemed unfit for the modern nation-state in the eyes of its new leaders, modernism was officially, if contradictorily, embraced. Whereas Germany’s position has been normalized – that is, it has been accepted as part of the modern West – the question of what makes for Turkey’s modernness in the arts and beyond has remained a matter of contention ever since. Despite these notable divergences and the long-standing emphasis on alterity between Turkey and Germany in politics, scholarship, and public discourses, both locations share intriguing historical and structural similarities.

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.