Shay Hazkani, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (New Texts Out Now)

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Oct 6, 2021 Palestine
Shay Hazkani, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (New Texts Out Now)

Shay Hazkani, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (New Texts Out Now)

By : Shay Hazkani

Shay Hazkani, Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War (Stanford University Press, 2021).

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

Shay Hazkani (SH): The idea to write this book goes back to the time I worked as a journalist. That was a time so different from my life today that it is sometimes feels strange to think back to those days. From 2001 to 2008 I was a radio and then television correspondent in Israel, covering the Israeli military and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I was in my early 20s and very much a product of the Israeli education system. Unsurprisingly, I guess, I had some major misconceptions about what the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” was all about.  

One day in 2007, I was looking through records in the Israeli army archives for a television piece on Israel’s first arms deal with West Germany in the late 1950s, when I stumbled on a strange document. It summarized the views of rank-and-file Israeli soldiers about the deal. It may not seem particularly interesting today, but the thought that Israel would sell weapons to Germany a decade after the Nazi extermination campaign was very controversial in Israel at the time. The document stated that the soldiers’ views were extracted from their personal letters, but I was not sure what that meant. I could not understand how the Israeli army had got a hold of these private letters. So, I did some digging and discovered that from 1948 to 2004 Israel operated a massive Big Brother apparatus that secretly copied and stored letters for the purpose of sociological research. Israeli soldiers, it turned out, were a late addition to an operation that also copied letters by Palestinians and many others.

Getting those documents marked the first time I fought for declassification of documents in the Israeli archives. To my surprise, it was quite successful (unlike most of my later battles) and I was allowed to copy many of these sources. 

These documents were remarkable, because they told an unvarnished story of the establishment of modern Israel on the ruins of Arab Palestine. I found these letters so exciting that I ended up devoting the next twelve years, through an MA and then a PhD in the United States, to studying them. The result is Dear Palestine. 
These two narratives—the official and unofficial, the propaganda and the personal letters—flesh out the fissures between sanctioned nationalism and individual identity.

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

SH: Dear Palestine is primarily concerned with the way non-elites interacted with the elite narratives promoted during the 1948 war. The book is based on hundreds of personal letters of ordinary Jews, Palestinians, and other Arabs who came to Palestine as volunteers. I study the elite narratives, meanwhile, by looking at previously unexplored propaganda, disseminated by Israel and Arab states during the war. These two narratives—the official and unofficial, the propaganda and the personal letters—flesh out the fissures between sanctioned nationalism and individual identity. 

To make this slightly less cryptic, let me give a few concrete examples: by looking at the printed education materials produced by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the war, I show that education officers tried to teach Ashkenazi Jews that organized violence was in line with Jewish tradition. Officers tried to convince Mizrahi Jews that killing the Arab enemy in Palestine would be payback for their parents’ suffering under Arab rule. But Ashkenazi soldiers were not so easily convinced, and many Mizrahi soldiers did not feel that the Arabs were necessarily the enemy. This tension between the official narrative and lived experience also surfaced in the Arab Liberation Army (ALA), the Arab League’s volunteer army that fought alongside Palestinians in 1948. The army’s propagandists aimed to restrict Arab volunteers’ revolutionary zeal to fighting Jews by promoting the view that Jews transgressed the boundaries of their traditional place in Islamic society, only to discover that some volunteers and their families were not willing to separate the fight in Palestine from their struggle against their own corrupt governments.

A different kind of interaction between elites and non-elites took place among Palestinians in 1948. The promises of political elites to “liberate Palestine” and carry a swift victory against Zionism in the name of pan-Arabism are well-documented. What is less known is the way these narratives were perceived by Palestinians from different classes as they were being expelled from their towns and villages by Jewish forces. Some decried the frequent use of “empty words” by leaders or demanded that these elites be held accountable for their failures. Others continued to believe that true pan-Arabism could triumph over Zionism, and most worked to imagine a grassroot movement of return to their old villages, possibly without the participation of the old class of elites.

The questions I ask about the interactions between elites and non-elites stem to a large degree from the rich collections of oral histories of the nakba that have been published in recent decades. These testimonies have this candor to them that we typically do not see from politicians, generals, or the various histories that have relied on their words. Scholars who are reluctant to use oral history sometimes cite the lack of sources as a reason why perspectives “from below” are missing from their work. The most famed historian of the 1948 war, Benny Morris, claimed that “for all intents and purposes, the masses were silent. […] We have no records, or almost no records, about what the masses of peasants and urban poor and soldiery thought or felt, certainly not from their own pens or mouths.” This quote is a favorite of mine since Dear Palestine makes the exact opposite case. While it is concerned less with “what really happened” in 1948 (something we have a good record of), it focuses on what sense Arab and Jewish soldiers (and some civilians) made of the nakba and Israeli statehood in real time. 

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

SH: This is my first book, so not much “previous work” to speak of. It continues my interest in the representations of non-elites and its relation to nationalist narratives. In an article I wrote with Samuel Dolbee a few years back, we investigated a series of columns ostensibly authored by a Muslim peasant in the Jaffa-based newspaper Filastin in 1911 to 1912. What we found was that the author was a prominent Zionist agronomist, Menashe Meirovitch, who partnered with the editor of the newspaper Filastin, ʿIsa al-ʿIsa, considered one of the “founding fathers” of Palestinian nationalism. Their concealed cooperation attested to the complicated possibilities of the late Ottoman period, often elided in conventional narratives about this time.

Dear Palestine takes place in 1948, where it was considerably less likely for two figures like Meirovitch and al-ʿIsa to cooperate for a shared vision of any sort. Still, as late as 1949, elites had their own interests and concerns in Palestine, and those did not necessarily align with those of non-elites. In fact, the experiences of Jewish and Arab non-elites sometimes intersected in surprising ways. In my previous work, I often had to speculate what sense non-elites made of the enfolding reality. In Dear Palestine answering this question—with actual evidence—became my main endeavor. 

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

SH: The obvious audience would be scholars of Palestine/Israel, as well as undergraduate and graduate students. However, I also hope that some of those who care for Palestine or Israel from outside of academe may be interested. While Dear Palestine clearly does not discuss the recent May 2021 conflagration in Palestine, it provides some of the “prequel” history to today's violence. It sheds light on the affinity between Palestinians who became Israeli citizens and those who were made refugees, all of whom had risen up in the latest round of violence. Dear Palestine also tells the history of some of the mixed cities, and the way ordinary Palestinians narrated the violent process of “mixing” in real time.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

SH: The intercepted personal letters I worked with in Dear Palestine continue to intrigue me, and I intend to use them to tell another story, that of Moroccan Jews. Moroccan Jews were the largest group of Jews from the Arab world who fought in 1948, and the book follows those who were disenchanted with Israel because of racism against them by Ashkenazi Jews (a staggering seventy percent of Moroccan Jews wished to leave Israel and return to Morocco in the aftermath of the war). But while Dear Palestine ends in 1949, the Moroccan story does not. In some ways 1949 marks the beginning of a process that would culminate in the Moroccan uprising in Haifa against Ashkenazi hegemony, known as the Wadi Salib revolt. I argue this is a process of major radicalization, which stemmed to a large degree from a transnational and anti-colonial consciousness which evolved in Israel. This consciousness initially developed against the backdrop of the Moroccan struggle for independence against French colonialism; however, other anti-colonial and antiracist struggles of the 1950s also became influential. In other words, the prevailing assessment of the Wadi Salib revolt as primarily “an Israeli event” diminishes the longer trajectories of Moroccan radicalization. It is often assumed that communist Jews in Israel spearheaded radical politics post-1948, and I hope to make the case that this view needs to change.

 

Excerpt from the book (from “Where Are Those Beautiful Days?”, pp. 185-190)

Return was a central and acute issue not only for Palestinians forced from their homeland but also for Moroccan Jews who became disenchanted with Israel and wished to return to their former homeland. For Palestinians in the aftermath of the nakba, the struggle for survival and return was literally a matter of life or death. Moroccan Jews in Israel faced different but related challenges, including extreme poverty and Ashkenazi racism.

In the aftermath of the nakba, whatever did not involve immediate subsistence or the prospects for return had to wait. Palestinian refugees were scattered in hundreds of makeshift refugee compounds in Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Egypt, and Iraq. The Israeli intelligence apparatus invested substantial resources in following the lives and sentiments of Palestinian refugees in their new diaspora.  The refugees’ letters were used to track the exact place of residence for each group of Palestinians, and their activities in their host countries—making sure they could not return.  It appears that refugees in Lebanon were in especially dire straits. “We have 60 more Palestinian liras and 70 Lebanese liras. After that there would be no other option but to starve to death,” announced ʿAdil from Lebanon in September 1948 in a letter to his family in Israel.  “I often work so we can keep on living,” wrote Marwa in an effort to explain the reversal of traditional gender roles that had caused her to seek employment.  “There is no way to live but [taking on temporary] daily work,” she added.  But temporary work did not make much of a difference. Letters indicated that most refugees were denied permanent job permits or Lebanese ID cards that would allow them to secure higher-paying positions and move around freely.  The Lebanese government saw Muslim refugees in particular as a threat to Lebanon’s delicate demographic balance. Banning them from much of the job market and from renting apartments was in line with its overall policy of restricting their activities and encouraging their departure. Christian refugees, meanwhile, fared better. Many of them received Lebanese citizenship and were allowed to rent apartments in the larger cities and open businesses.

Refugees in Transjordan were better off than those in Syria and Lebanon, and they also received better treatment from the government, though poverty was still widespread.  The snow in Amman in January of 1949 was one source of hardship, and the Hashemite government moved the refugees from one place to another, fearing they would freeze to death.  Although renting apartments in Amman was allowed, rent was beyond the reach of most refugees. “Because of the high rent we live in the mountains. Most people live in tents and caves,” explained Amjad in February 1949.  Work in Transjordan, though not formally banned, was also hard to come by. From Salt, Fuad wrote to a relative, “Your brother was unable to find any job. He goes from one house to the other and sells zaʿatar [an herb that is a staple of the Palestinian diet].”

The nakba not only brought material losses and displacement but also depression and grief. Refugees missed Palestine’s beloved landscapes, and especially its celebrated oranges, as Iskandar from Amman wrote to a POW inside Israel in February 1949: “How are you and how are your oranges? We don’t get to see them here. One orange here is worth a camel’s head [i.e., very expensive].”  Life in a POW camp would seem unenviable. But it appeared differently from Iskandar’s vantage in Amman, where he was deprived of the citrus so evocative of home. From this perspective, being a POW meant maintaining a connection to these mundane aspects of life that for refugees had altogether disappeared. With the exception of pleas for monetary support, many Palestinians in their new diaspora chose not to write. Mona, a Christian Palestinian refugee in Transjordan, explained in February 1949 to her cousin who was a POW in Israel:

You ask me why I don’t write. The heart is heavy and is not free to write. There is nothing beautiful in this world . . . Where are those beautiful days? The laughter had stopped and there is no trace of humor . . . The entire life is a burden on us.

[…]

Alongside despair, however, was also optimism, especially on the west bank of the Jordan River, the part of historic Palestine now under Transjordanian rule.  Being so close to their former dwellings stoked the flame of hope: “Everyone is waiting for the imminent solution. With the help of God this will end soon with an agreement between the two rival sides, and then we can all go back to al-Ramlah, and life will return to what it used to be,” wrote Jalal in December 1948.  Munir added in January 1949, “May God make Transjordan and Israel into sisters.”  The optimistic view expressed by the refugees that they would soon return to their villages persisted throughout the armistice negotiations in Rhodes in 1949.  Even as the talks were concluded without the return of Palestinians, the hope in the refugees’ letters did not diminish.

While waiting to return, Palestinians were concerned with the status of their property left behind (as early as May 1948, Ben-Gurion issued an order to move new Jewish immigrants into houses emptied of their Arab inhabitants). Letters of refugees from Jaffa who ended up in Transjordan were especially imbued with such anxiety over the Jews looting their belongings: “Please inform me,” wrote Maha to an acquaintance still in Jaffa in October 1948, “if the house was completely ransacked or only partially, because there is a lot of news about stealing and robbery in Jaffa, and I am very concerned.”  ʿAzzam too wrote to a relative in Jaffa asking him to check on his house, and if it was indeed ransacked, to bring a carpenter to fix the door so that it could be locked again. He also instructed the relative to hire a guard for which ʿAzzam would pay.  In answering such queries, Habib from Acre wrote to his family abroad in July 1949 that “most buildings were taken by Jews and the gardens and vegetables [fields] were transferred into their hands in full. All this is the result of Arab men sitting in coffeehouses, speaking empty words.”  Although Habib did not explain what these empty words were exactly, it is likely he was referring to Palestinians echoing the propaganda of Arab leaders that the battle for Palestine would be an easy one.

[…]

By 1949 many Palestinians realized that a return to Palestine at that point could only be facilitated by their families still in Israel.  The letters intercepted by the censorship bureau extensively discuss the arrangements made with the state authorities for the return of relatives, even though most of the details of these arrangements had been redacted by the archives.  For the majority of Palestinians who were unable to obtain the government’s permission for the return of their loved ones, calling on their families to sneak across the border into Israel was the only way of reuniting their families. But as a letter from Iman in Haifa to her family in Lebanon from February 1949 indicated, not all Palestinians were easily convinced to let smugglers bring them back home:

How is our dear father, and why doesn’t he listen to what I say and take my advice? After all, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Read him my words . . . As long as the movement [of people] continues [between Arab states and Israel] . . . and others are paying thousands of liras to do it, why did your feelings die and your right mind disappear?

Iman was trying to get her family to cross the border into Israel despite the dangers. She realized that what was possible at that time would not be possible soon. But most Palestinians, even in late 1949, continued to hold onto the hope that the refugees would be allowed to return legally. According to the censor, Palestinians chose to believe “the rumors on the willingness of the government to return hundreds of thousands of refugees.”  A typical line in letters from July 1949 was that “the compassionate government of Israel will not agree to the splitting of the families of its citizens.”  Much like the laudatory portrayal of Israel in the letters of POWs, such messages were likely sarcastic or intended for the censor.

 

Excerpted from DEAR PALESTINE: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE 1948 WAR by Shay Hazkani, published by Stanford University Press, ©2021 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All Rights Reserved.
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.

[…]

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.