Léopold Lambert, États d’urgence: Une histoire spatiale du continuum colonial français (States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum) (New Texts Out Now)

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Aug 19, 2021 Region
Léopold Lambert, États d’urgence: Une histoire spatiale du continuum colonial français (States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum) (New Texts Out Now)

Léopold Lambert, États d’urgence: Une histoire spatiale du continuum colonial français (States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum) (New Texts Out Now)

By : Léopold Lambert

Léopold Lambert, États d’urgence: Une histoire spatiale du continuum colonial français (States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum) (Éditions Premiers Matins de Novembre (PMN), 2021).

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

Léopold Lambert (LL): After the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris, we in France and people in most overseas colonies entered into a regime that not only saw fully armed police officers and soldiers patrolling the streets, but also that facilitated over 5,000 police searches of Muslim homes, offices, restaurants, and mosques, as well as over 750 arbitrary house arrests of Muslim people between 2015 and 2017. This regime felt less like an exceptional measure than an exacerbation of the structural violence we have witnessed for years. I remembered the state of emergency being applied against the banlieue uprising of 2005, when I was still a nineteen-year-old student who had recently moved to Paris. It was also relatively well known that the state of emergency was initiated to (unsuccessfully) crush the Algerian Revolution between 1954 and 1962. There were too few bridges between these three eras being made. This was even more true in relation to two lesser known (in France) applications of this legislation: in 1985 against the Kanak insurrection of 1984-1988 in Kanaky (i.e. the indigenous name of colonial New Caledonia) and in 1987 against the strike of Tahitian dockers who blocked the supplying of the French military nuclear bombing center in Mururoa. 

Creating bridges between these different moments was crucial for me, and I wanted to do it in a way that would be useful for the people involved in these political struggles. This is why it took me five years to do the research and write the book. In the context of France, where I wrote it, the part about Kanaky was particularly fundamental for me, since the Kanak political imaginary remains profoundly unknown in France, even in the anti-colonial movement. It is definitely not this book that will change this into depth, but I am hoping that it will humbly contribute to making a few dates, a few organizations, a few political figures and, most importantly, a fragment of the Kanak political cosmology enter our imaginary over here, at the core of the colonial empire.
Often, architecture is weaponized in order to serve counter-revolutionary purposes ...

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

LL: The book is essentially a historical description of three space-time: the Algerian Revolution, the Kanak insurrection of the 1980s, and the banlieues’ political organizing and revolts from the 1970s to today, particularly since 2005. As the book’s title indicates, I describe these three uprisings through spatial history. This means that I examine how space and the built environment are modified by them and how, in turn, they influence them. Often, architecture is weaponized in order to serve counter-revolutionary purposes: camps, prisons, colonies, massive modernist residential buildings, police stations, and so on. However, although the neighborhoods of colonized people, such as Algiers or Constantine’s casbahs, the Algerian shantytowns of the Paris banlieue, or the Kanak villages are always existing under the threat of police or military raids, their spatiality is instrumental in the way it can provide the conditions of a tenable asymmetrical warfare. 

Through the detailed account of these three space-time (to which we can add Tahiti in 1987), I tried to define the concept of a French colonial continuum. This is far from a new concept, and a good number of activists in France use it but, often, it is used exclusively in a temporal dimension, and I thought that it was important to talk about the spatial one as well. This is how the book also mobilizes Viet Nam, West Africa, Guadeloupe, Comoros, Reunion, Guyane, and other colonial geographies at different moments of their histories under French colonial domination. It also looks at how people navigate in this colonial continuum: colonized people, immigrant and undocumented workers, as well as exiles of course, but also the cogs of the empire: militaries, public servants, and politicians. I mapped the careers of a couple of dozens of them; they moved from one colony to another, acquiring counter-revolutionary skills and using them in their next destination which, sometimes is a prefecture with many banlieues in France. 

This map is part of several I made for the book to try to associate the text with more graphic documents. There are a certain number of photographs I took in France, Algeria, and Kanaky, but also some maps and a diagram that attempts to show the entire space-time of the book. It is not so easy to read but I believe that if one really dives into it, they can see how all the moments and geographies shown on it are somehow connected.  

 

Image caption: Chronocartography of the space-time examined in the book États d'urgence: Une histoire spatiale du continuum colonial français by Léopold Lambert

As for the literature, my research led me to three kinds of sources in addition to the many encounters with people—whether here in France, in Algeria, and even more poignantly in Kanaky. The first one was books that have been written on tangential subjects. In this regard, the works of Mathieu Rigouste, Samia Henni, Mogniss H. Abdallah, and Hassina Mechai have been absolutely instrumental, and I am very grateful to them for our conversations. 

The second type of source was newspapers from the different eras mobilized by the book. What I like the most about those is that sometimes an incredibly potent quote or detail would be found somewhere in the corner of a page, something that often the journalist probably did not even perceive as crucial. The other thing I find very interesting about newspapers is how they allow one to see the planetary context of each moment one is looking at. For instance, I had never realized that the colonial French officers’ 1961 putsch in Algiers happened when the world was still looking at Cuba and the failed US invasion of the Bay of Pigs. Some connections were more expected such as the concomitance of the last few months of the Kanak insurrection and the beginning of the Palestinian First Intifada…

The third kind of source was the activist publications. The Algerian National Liberation Front’s journal El Moudjahid and the Algerian National Movement’s La Voix du Peuple are references in this matter, but so should be the Kanak publications of Bwenando, L’Avenir Calédonien, or Kanak Immigré. Those bring the embodiment of the struggles in a much more acute way than any French journalist would ever be able to describe.

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

LL: I am trained as an architect and my work has always consisted of trying to show how space (whether we think of the built environment or geography at large) is instrumental in the enforcement of regimes of domination, in particular that of settler colonialism in Palestine. This book is the least architectural I wrote, and I had to consider the question of time as seriously as the question of space for it but, as its title suggests, the spatial dimension of the French colonial continuum remains crucial. 

My work as the editor-in-chief of The Funambulist also consists of cultivating internationalist solidarity between political struggles in the world. The bridges that the book attempts to build between these three space-time are made in the same spirit.

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

LL: This is a very important question as, for me, this book can only exist if it is somehow useful to the political struggles with which it stands in solidarity. In the context of the Kanak struggle, this means contributing to the re-activation of forms of solidarity between Kanaky and activists in France. In the context of the antiracist movement in France, it can try to tie the struggle to others, and also show the spatial dimension of what we are up against.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

LL: I am the editor-in-chief of The Funambulist, which has been my full time job even during these five years of writing this book. I am continuing to edit a new issue every other month around “the politics of space and bodies.” In terms of writing, I have wanted for a while to write a political analysis of a very simple architectural object we take for granted: the key. So, I might try to work on this in relation to settler colonialism, carceralism, and private property in the future.

 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction) 

Nous sommes le 16 mars 1871 à Bordj Bou Arreridj en Kabylie. Le cheikh El Mokrani et 6 000 soldats se lancent contre l’administration coloniale de la ville. Plus tard, ils seront près de 200 000 à mener l’attaque contre l’occupant français à Tizi-Ouzou, Larbaâ Nath Irathen (Fort-National), Dra-el-Mizan, Dellys, Béjaïa (Bougie) en Grande Kabylie. Quarante ans après l’invasion française de la Régence d’Alger et vingt-quatre ans depuis la capitulation de l’émir Abdelkader, c’est le début de la grande rébellion des Mokrani et de la confrérie soufie Rahmaniyya contre l’ordre colonial en Algérie. Quarante-huit heures plus tard, le 18 mars 1871, alors que le siège de l’armée prussienne sur Paris s’est achevé quelques semaines auparavant, les soldats du 88e régiment d’infanterie refusent d’obéir à l’ordre de tirer sur la foule, en particulier sur les nombreuses femmes venues les empêcher de récupérer les canons de la Garde nationale sur la colline de Montmartre. Leur mutinerie et fraternisation avec la population parisienne initie la Commune de Paris, prolétaire, socialiste et internationaliste – elle compte notamment de nombreux Italiens et Polonais, mais aussi un petit nombre d’Algériens. Après quelques courts mois de succès de ces révoltes, les répressions contre-révolutionnaires menées par Adolphe Thiers sont d’une immense violence. En Algérie, des milliers d’insurgés kabyles sont exécutés sommairement et des amendes imposées à leurs tribus forcent ces dernières à des décennies de pauvreté – leurs terres sont également mises sous séquestre. À Paris, la semaine sanglante (21-28 mai 1871) voit les troupes versaillaises reprendre Paris en tuant plusieurs dizaines de milliers de communards. Les dizaines de milliers de prisonniers kabyles, dont Boumezrag El Mokrani, le frère du cheikh, et communards – dont Louise Michel – sont jugés sommairement et envoyés au bagne colonial. Les condamnations lisibles sur les procès verbaux des jugements sont, quasi-identiques des deux côtés de la Méditerranée : « l’excitation à la guerre civile », « le pillage », « l’incendie », « la participation à l’insurrection » sont autant de chefs d’accusation que nous retrouvons indistinctement à l’encontre des insurgés kabyles ou communards. Certains de ces condamnés sont déportés vers la Guyane, tandis qu’une majorité est envoyée dans la colonie pénale appelée Nouvelle-Calédonie par les Européens. Là-bas, colonisés maghrébins et prolétaires européens se rencontrent sur la terre d’un troisième peuple, ou plutôt des nombreux autres peuples autochtones de la Grande Terre et des îles l’entourant. Il s’agit de celles et ceux qui, rassemblés politiquement des années plus tard, revendiqueront le nom de Kanak.

Le 25 juin 1878, une troisième révolte débute : celle de 3 000 Kanak de différentes tribus unifiées par le grand chef Ataï. Ils prennent d’assaut le village de La Foa sur la Grande Terre et libèrent un chef de clan emprisonné dans une gendarmerie française. L’administration coloniale est dépassée par cette révolte qui ébranle vingt-cinq ans d’occupation française dont une quinzaine d’années de bagne colonial. Elle propose des remises de peines aux bagnards qui acceptent de participer à la contre-révolution. Ils sont nombreux, y compris parmi les communards et les Kabyles, à accepter ce faux dilemme. Parmi les Parisiens, Louise Michel et Charles Malato se distinguent en prenant fait et cause pour la lutte anticoloniale des Kanak. Près d’un siècle plus tard, les deux organisations révolutionnaires kanak Foulards rouges et Groupe 1878 rendront compte de cette solidarité : les premiers dans leur nom même qui rappelle les foulards rouges offerts par l’institutrice anarchiste à des camarades kanak et les deuxièmes en rendant hommage à la Commune de Paris dans un texte intitulé « Il était une fois une grande ville ». Au cours de la contre-révolution coloniale, la négociation contrainte avec l’occupant n’est cependant pas l’apanage des déportés communards et kabyles. Certaines chefferies kanak, elles aussi, se voient offrir des marchés par l’administration coloniale. 

Ainsi, le 1er septembre 1878, Ataï est assassiné et décapité par l’un des membres d’une des tribus de Canala. Quelques mois plus tard, à l’issue de cette guerre asymétrique, les bagnards kabyles et communards sont amnistiés, l’administration coloniale leur donne des terres à cultiver mais leur interdit de quitter l’archipel. Le colonialisme de peuplement se construit ainsi : le bagnard devient soldat colonial puis exploitant de la terre autochtone spoliée. Conscient du vol de la terre qu’il prétend désormais être la sienne, le colon se force à demeurer milicien dans l’âme, comme nous le verrons à de multiples reprises dans cet ouvrage.

Cette histoire est autant une histoire des violences coloniales qu’elle est une histoire des révoltes à leur encontre. Il s’agit avant tout de rencontres : certaines délibérées, d’autres fortuites ; certaines violentes, d’autres solidaires. Ce qui les lie en premier lieu est bien-sûr la machine contre-révolutionnaire française, mais les résistances organisées face à celle-ci la transcendent et forment entre elles des solidarités fondatrices d’autres futurs.

Cette « rencontre » entre différents groupes révolutionnaires et/ou anticoloniaux peut servir d’exemple autant que de prologue de ce que j’appelle le continuum colonial français que je tâcherai d’expliquer plus longuement dans cette introduction. Le rapprochement des territoires d’Algérie, de Kanaky et de France m’intéresse particulièrement dans le cadre de ce livre. En effet, des années plus tard, ces trois géographies deviendront les trois principaux sites d’application d’une loi française contre-révolutionnaire : l’état d’urgence. La violence policière, militaire et judiciaire qu’une telle législation permet est déployée huit fois entre le moment de sa création et le 1er novembre 2017. À cette date, la loi SILT, dite « renforçant la sécurité intérieure et la lutte contre le terrorisme » initiée par Emmanuel Macron entre en vigueur et rend quasiment obsolètes les mesures permises par l’état d’urgence puisque cristallisant la majorité d’entre elles dans le droit commun.

[...] 

Comparer n’est pas équivaloir 

Les différents territoires au sein desquels l’état d’urgence est appliqué depuis sa création, offrent un panel de géographies liées de manière plus ou moins directe au colonialisme français. La première, l’Algérie, constitue le paradigme de la colonie de peuplement française. De même, sa Révolution incarne, avec celle d’Haïti 150 ans plus tôt, le paradigme du mouvement de libération anticoloniale. La deuxième géographie en question, Kanaky, bien que souvent associé aux autres territoires appelés « outre-mer » malgré des situations géographiques et historiques radicalement différentes, partage de nombreuses caractéristiques avec la situation algérienne, en particulier son statut de colonie de peuplement. La troisième enfin, plus diffuse, ce sont les quartiers populaires de France. La comparaison avec les deux premières peut sembler ici délicate. Comme me l’a rappelé le politiste kanak Pierre Wélépa lorsque je comparais maladroitement les luttes de la jeunesse de la tribu de Saint-Louis en périphérie de Nouméa avec celle des quartiers populaires en France : « Il n’y a pas beaucoup de similitudes entre ce qui se passe chez les colonisateurs dans leurs quartiers et la lutte d’un peuple autochtone. » Bien que cette affirmation puisse sembler de prime abord quelque peu excessive, il est crucial d’observer que l’exercice de comparaison est toujours périlleux. En effet, il a tendance à s’affranchir des spécificités liées aux contextes, aux peuples, aux histoires, aux combats et, en cela, les réduit à une compréhension simpliste.

En d’autres termes, cet exercice bien souvent essentialise les différentes nations colonisées et groupes racialisés, ainsi que leurs luttes respectives dans un grand groupe des « colonisés » ou des « racisés » en effaçant les particularités de chacun. Dans le cadre de ce livre, l’exercice comparatif qui en motive l’écriture est une comparaison entre des modes opératoires et une instrumentalisation de l’espace par la puissance coloniale dans différentes géographies à différents moments historiques. Cette comparaison, je le crois, se justifie précisément par le fait que le respect de la spécificité des lieux et des moments n’est pas particulièrement le fort de la gestion coloniale. Ainsi, les comparaisons entre formes de résistance à cette puissance coloniale ne sont que très peu nombreuses, sauf lorsque les groupes de résistance se revendiquent eux-mêmes d’un combat passé. À cet égard, la Révolution algérienne fait figure de référence.

La comparaison entre des espaces-temps proprement coloniaux comme l’Algérie des années 1950 ou Kanaky des années 1980 avec celui des quartiers populaires en France dans les années 2000 et 2010, bien que délicate, se justifie pour trois raisons a minima. La première, limpide, est qu’une majorité des habitants des quartiers populaires portent en eux la mémoire, les traumatismes, et les histoires personnelles et collectives de la domination coloniale – française pour la plupart, mais également britannique, belge, espagnole, italienne et portugaise. La deuxième est que le rapport de l’État français à ces populations (que ces dernières possèdent la nationalité française ou non), notamment dans les interactions avec sa police, se manifeste dans une généalogie claire d’une époque explicitement coloniale. La troisième raison est que la spatialité des quartiers populaires constitue un enjeu crucial partagée entre contrôle étatique et appropriation communautaire par les habitants eux-mêmes. Bien que cet enjeu ne soit pas du même ordre que la libération d’une terre sous domination coloniale comme dans le cas de l’Algérie et de Kanaky, ces combats font apparaître des similitudes non-négligeables. Ces trois aspects permettent d’inscrire l’espace et l’histoire des quartiers populaires ces soixante dernières années au sein du continuum colonial français, comme je le ferai tout au long de cet ouvrage. 
Oct 16, 2016 Lebanon
Mandy Turner By :
Mandy Turner

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

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

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

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

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

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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’.

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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.

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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.