Pelle Valentin Olsen, “Al-Qahira-Baghdad: The Transnational and Transregional History of Iraq’s Early Cinema Industry” (New Texts Out Now)

Pelle Valentin Olsen, “Al-Qahira-Baghdad: The Transnational and Transregional History of Iraq’s Early Cinema Industry” (New Texts Out Now)

Pelle Valentin Olsen, “Al-Qahira-Baghdad: The Transnational and Transregional History of Iraq’s Early Cinema Industry” (New Texts Out Now)

By : Pelle Valentin Olsen

Pelle Valentin OlsenAl-Qahira-Baghdad: The Transnational and Transregional History of Iraq’s Early Cinema Industry,” Arab Studies Journal, Vol. XXIX, No. 2 (Fall 2021).

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

Pelle Valentin Olsen (PO): During the early twentieth century, due to influences both local and global, Iraq witnessed colonization, independence, the birth of new social classes, and experimentation with new forms of politics, ideologies, and cultural expression. As part of this process, urban environments changed rapidly and new spheres of work and leisure emerged. Simultaneously, leisure moved from the private realm and was transformed into public activities and performances that often took place on a commercial scale. For example, with the emergence of cafés and nightclubs, dancing and musical entertainment moved from private homes to public venues. I explored many of these topics in my dissertation, which I finished at the University of Chicago in 2020. My work on leisure sparked an interest in the history of cinema in Iraq, a subject that has received virtually no scholarly attention. 

Recently, an important rewriting of Iraq’s modern history has occurred. New studies have explored Iraq’s cultural, social, and intellectual pasts and connections with the rest of the region and world. With very few exceptions, however, scholars have not yet studied the history of Iraqi cinema and cinema-going. Even reference works and filmographies are few and far between, including in Arabic-language scholarship. My article is an attempt, a first stab so to speak, to write the history of cinema and film production in Iraq. The article suggests that we should not simply study Iraqi cinema through a national cinema framework, but also through its networks of affiliation with cinema in other countries, such as Egypt, as well as with other emerging capitalist industries and interests in Iraq and beyond. The article pays special attention to co-productions, which I argue were important in paving the way for subsequent Iraqi productions. Beyond shedding light on the creation of film and cinema infrastructure in Iraq, including cinemas, production companies, advertisement, and import companies, I also suggest that we should reinsert co-productions into Iraqi national narratives and film histories from which scholars have excluded them. My article borrows its title from al-Qahira-Baghdad (Cairo-Baghdad), an Egyptian-Iraqi co-production that premiered in Baghdad on 10 March 1947. Al-Qahira-Baghdad was a truly collaborative endeavor between the two countries’ cinema industries and is a prime example of the transregional and transnational nature of early film production in Iraq. Trying to unearth these transregional and transnational connections is what really made me write this article.

I wanted to examine the historical entanglement of capital, culture, and leisure...

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

PO: The article interrogates the networks, connections, co-productions, and circulation of cultural products and material objects, including films and technology, and explores how they came together at a particular historical moment with capital, performers, and people with technical skills to establish a film industry in Iraq. In doing so, it adds to the growing scholarship on film histories in the Global South that challenge purely national frameworks and engage creatively with the lack of film texts and archives. Iraq is situated at the crossroads of Middle Eastern, South Asian, European, and US film production and distribution. Therefore, the history of Iraq’s cinema industry sheds light on the transregional and transnational qualities of cinema in the many areas across the Global South where national film production emerged only belatedly. The article uses previously unconsidered primary materials, including memoirs, the press, and personal accounts by Iraqis involved in the industry, in addition to secondary works by Iraqi historians and literature about the history of cinema in the regions surrounding Iraq. It draws on theorizations of transregional and transnational cinemas in other contexts, in dialogue with scholars in the fields of South and West Asian Black cinema studies who have developed a method of tracing the material roots of cinema.

The article begins to trace to these multidirectional networks, connections, and flows of capital that brought film exhibition and production to Iraq. I wanted to examine the historical entanglement of capital, culture, and leisure by mapping the local Iraqi capitalist and entrepreneurial elites, many of whom were upper-class Iraqi Jews with international entrepreneurial outlooks, who invested in exhibition and production technology. As a result of the fundamentally transregional and transnational nature of the film industry in Iraq, existing networks of trade and import were crucial for its emergence. Therefore, a small number of individuals and families with ties to other emerging capitalist industries came to dominate the early cinema infrastructures that remained entirely in private hands until the early 1960s. In terms of scope, this article examines the early history of cinema in Iraq, beginning with the screening of the first silent film in 1909 and ending with the emergence of a national film industry in the 1950s.

As elsewhere in the region, Iraqi critics, who viewed popular culture in a negative light, often neglected early melodramatic productions and co-productions that did not fit with later nationalistic notions of film production. As my colleague and friend Claire Cooley has argued, such national narratives also have a tendency to write out the involvement and contributions of women and those with hybrid identities. In the case of Iraq, some of the later accounts have also written out the role of Iraqi Jews in the cinema industry’s first four decades. In addition to Claire Cooley, the recent contributions of Kaveh Askari and Samhita SunyaGolbarg Rekabtalaei, and Deborah Starr have all made the task of looking beyond the nation a lot easier. I am very much inspired by and indebted to their work. In terms of tracing the material and parafilmic roots of cinema, Allyson Field’s work on African American cinema in the United States and Ghenwa Hayek’s recent articles on Lebanese cinema have shaped this article.

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

PO: The article is very much a continuation of my interest in the history of leisure in Iraq. However, this article departs from my previous work in the sense that it attempts to move beyond the screen and beyond cinema as a space of leisure. This article in only a first step and a more detailed account will have to wait until I can do more archival work, but it represents my growing interest in the entanglement of capital, culture, and leisure as well as the infrastructures, architectures and material contexts, and forms of production in which cinema is embedded. This focus was not as present in my previous work.

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

PO: Compared to the scholarly attention given to histories of cinema-going and film production elsewhere in the region, histories of early Iraqi cinema are largely absent. This is partially a result of the inaccessibility of Iraqi archives, cinematic and otherwise. At the same time, however, my article suggests that moving beyond the screen and understanding cinema as more than individual films can facilitate a more textured analysis of the myriad social, cultural, political, and economic phenomena that are part of cinema-going. I hope that this article shows that it is possible to construct an alternative archive of Iraq cinema across a variety of texts. More importantly perhaps, I hope the article can serve as the start of a conversation with scholars working on the history of cinema in the regions and countries surrounding Iraq.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

PO: In addition to my current postdoc project, which explores the global history of solidarity with the Palestinian revolution, I am turning my dissertation into a book titled Idle Days and Nights: Leisure, Time, and Modernity in Iraq. The book examines Iraqi history through the lens of leisure. However, while my dissertation centered on Baghdad, the book expands its focus to also include urban centers outside of the capital, and the ways in which religious time both structured and facilitated leisure. A new chapter argues that moments of religious celebration across confessions carved out temporary leisure spaces for women, children, and families otherwise excluded from public leisure. Another new chapter explores the transregional labor migration of female performers and sex workers who came to Iraq from across the region to work in nightclubs. This chapter argues that forms of labor and exploitation, including that of nightclub performers and female cinema stars, often remain hidden in studies of leisure.

I am also working on a couple of other articles. One of them, co-authored with my friend and colleague Sarah Farhan, examines the emergence of juvenile delinquency as a medico-legal category in Hashemite Iraq. Another article, co-authored with Rachel Schine, situates the 1955 novel Abū Nuwās fī Amrīkā by Ṣafāʾ Khulūṣī as an exemplar of and commentary on the dynamics of twentieth-century Iraqi cultural production. The article analyzes the novel’s protagonist—in the form of a reincarnated, radically reformed version of the ʿAbbasid-era poet Abū Nuwās—as engaging in a “riḥlah-road-trip,” traversing the United States. 

I am starting a two-year postdoc at Oxford in September 2022, which means that I will be able to fully devote my time to a historical project on the Iraqi cinema industry. In this project I will continue to focus on my interest in the transnational history of Iraqi cinema and film infrastructure.

 

Excerpt from the article (from pp. 21-24) 

Failures, Coproductions, and the First Iraqi Films

Because several of the first Iraqi films were coproductions with Egypt, Turkey, and Lebanon and often employed foreign directors, used foreign actors, and relied on investments, equipment, and trained workers from abroad, in the very limited scholarship on the history of cinema and film in Iraq there has been much debate about what can rightly be called the first Iraqi film. Similarly, critics have written both the early failures and the coproductions out of the narrative of Iraqi cinema history. This section examines examples of failure and coproduction and shows that these were not only an essential feature of the early Iraqi film industry, but that they paved the way for subsequent productions. 

Bhaskar Sarkar has described how global media theory outside of the global centers of production has been preoccupied with novelty and national firsts. Similarly, in a recent article on the connections between Iranian, Indian, and Egyptian cinemas Cooley argues that the “intertwined histories such as those of cinemas in the Middle East and South Asia have been chronically erased in national narratives of cinemas that were not globally dominant” and that the task is therefore to excavate the way in which “film and media in a national space are implicated and legitimated by an array of transnational, regional, and local networks.” Cooley accomplishes this task through a study of the traveling sound technologies and transnational sound networks that created Iranian national cinema. In particular, she examines the Iranian entrepreneurs who travelled to India and Egypt in search of technology, training, and collaboration and concludes that “Iranian cinema was partly born of material connections to Egypt and India.” In Iraq as well, film production was established through transregional and transnational cultural and material collaborations in addition to training and education that connected Iraq to film and cinema infrastructures abroad.

Already in the mid-1930s, there were attempts to produce films in Iraq. The popularity of talkies, first from the United States and Europe and later on also from Egypt and India, had increased ticket sales. It was in this context that Iraqi businessmen, cinema owners, and importers of films began to show interest in film production. Around 1935, the US company Fox approached Iraqi actor Haqqi al-Shibli with ideas of producing a film in Iraq with Iraqi actors. The project never materialized. In 1938, the Iraqi businessman Hafidh al-Qadi announced his interest in producing films in Iraq to the press. Al-Qadi had made a fortune through his business, which imported radios and Ford cars to Iraq. In 1938, he sent his brother, Mustafa al-Qadi, to London to purchase the necessary equipment and materials. For unknown reasons, al-Qadi’s project failed. In 1942, an Iraqi production company, about which little is known, was established by Iraqi businessmen. Although the company was licensed to produce films, none were ever produced. The fact that these projects failed makes them difficult to study and only very limited information about them is available. But they nonetheless index Iraqi interest in film production and attempts to bring it to the country. Similarly, stories of failure reveal the difficulties facing capitalist endeavors at the time, particularly in the cultural sphere, where the necessary infrastructures did not yet exist. 

Attempts to produce films in Iraq did not materialize until the late 1940s when a number of joint Egyptian-Iraqi production companies were created. The first of these joint companies, Aflam al-Rashid, was founded by ‘Adil ‘Abd al-Wahhab, an Iraqi studying medicine in Cairo. Ibn al-Sharq (Son of the East), the first and only film produced by Aflam al-Rashid was directed by the Egyptian directors Ibrahim Hilmi and Maurice Murad and coproduced with al-Ahram Studios in Cairo. Ibn al-Sharq featured both Iraqi and Egyptian actors and musicians, including ‘Adil ‘Abd al-Wahhab himself, the Egyptian actress Madiha Yusri, and several Iraqi musicians. Ibn al-Sharq premiered in late November 1946 in King Ghazi Cinema in Baghdad and shortly after in Cairo. A semi-autobiographical melodrama, the no-longer-extant Ibn al-Sharq tells the story of an Iraqi medical student in Cairo. In Cairo, a wealthy Egyptian woman seduces the film’s hero, played by ‘Adil ‘Abd al-Wahhab himself and also named ‘Adil, who leaves his fiancée. After a while, however, ‘Adil regrets what he has done and returns to his fiancée. Now a wealthy man due to his discovery of a cure for a dangerous but unknown disease, ‘Adil marries his fiancée and together they return to Baghdad.

The year after the premiere of Ibn al-Sharq, another joint Egyptian-Iraqi production appeared – al-Qahira-Baghdad, described in detail in the introduction to this article. Like al-Qahira-Baghdad, in addition to its actors, directors, and technical staff, the plot of Ibn al-Sharq also moves between Cairo and Baghdad, thereby culturally and materially connecting the two capitals. Both al-Qahira-Baghdad and Ibn al-Sharq were filmed in Egypt and Iraq and the local dialects of both countries appear in the films. On a general level beyond the Middle East, coproductions deserve more empirical and theoretical attention. For now, because they were important in paving the way for subsequent Iraqi productions, it is important to reinstate such collaborations into Iraqi national narratives and film histories, which tend to exclude them. In addition, reinstating coproductions reveals the extent of the transregional transfer of knowledge, culture, film infrastructure, and private capital.

In 1946, the Sawda’i family created Studio Baghdad, the first studio in Iraq. As a joint business venture, the Sawda’i family established Studio Baghdad with investments from Anton Messayeh, whose family owned Iraq’s largest arak distillery, an Iraqi Jewish businessman by the name of Salman Zilkha, and a Muslim business partner named Kamil al-Khudayri. In the first couple of years, Studio Baghdad relied heavily on experts hired from Europe and Egypt. With time, however, Iraqis who had trained abroad took overIt is not clear who took ownership of Studio Baghdad after 1951 when the Sawda’i family, together with other members of Iraq’s Jewish community, left for Israel. In 1954, Studio Baghdad was sold to Iraqis living abroad, but it continued to make films until 1966, when the Coca-Cola Company acquired the land and buildings in order to build a factory. During its first two years, the newly established company produced documentary films, including one for the Iraqi police. In 1948, Studio Baghdad produced its first film, ‘Aliya wa ‘Isam‘Aliya wa ‘Isam is a Romeo and Juliet-like melodrama about a prince and a princess from two warring Iraqi tribes looking for revenge. It ends with the tragic suicide of the two protagonists. André Shatan, a French director,directed ‘Aliya wa ‘Isam and employed French equipment and materials in its production. In fact, the majority of Studio Baghdad’s materials and equipment came from France where Me’ir Sawda’i, who had studied engineering there, had contacts. Studio Baghdad commissioned the Iraqi Jewish lawyer, journalist, poet, and editor of the Iraqi cultural magazine al-Hasid, Anwar Sha’ul, to write the songs and script for ‘Aliya wa ‘Isam. Being a poet, Sha’ul wrote the first version of the script in metered and rhymed verse. The owners of the studio, however, found it too formal and he was asked to rewrite it, which shows how aesthetic standards and processes had to be negotiated during the early years of the industry in order to fit the demands of the new medium. Inspired by American, European, and Egyptian productions, the Sawda’is, and Me’ir in particular, wanted a modern melodrama, not a production that could be confused with earlier forms and aesthetic standards.

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.